Watch Me: A Memoir (30 page)

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I had been speaking to Gordon Davidson, the director of the Center Theatre Group, for some time about doing a play at
the Mark Taper Forum, but between the time commitment and my stage fright, movies generally took precedence.

However, following the positive reception for my reading of Yeats’s poetry at UCLA, I proposed to Gregory Peck that we do an Irish poetry reading and ask Gabriel Byrne, Fionnula Flanagan, and Nóirín Ní Riain, an extraordinary singer and musician who sang with the monks of Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick, to perform excerpts from Seamus Heaney, Flann O’Brien, and Thomas Kinsella at the Taper. I had recently become aware of Nóirín’s work through Michael Fitzgerald, who produced
Wise Blood
and
Under the Volcano
for Dad, and it seemed right to ask Michael to come aboard to organize the evening. December 16 turned out to be a perfectly wonderful night; “And Wisdom Is a Butterfly—A Celebration of Irish Poetry, Prose and Song” supported Amnesty International and Project Children, an organization that provided summer holidays in the U.S. for both Protestant and Catholic kids from Northern Ireland. It should not have surprised me that I was vilified by some members of the British press who suggested that I was supporting the IRA, which could not have been further from the truth.

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On May 2, 1997, Bob and I drove from New York to Washington, D.C., with Bob’s favorite New York driver, Paul Cuomo, who always kept us laughing and entertained on the road. We were on our way to celebrate President Bill Clinton’s dedication of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. Bob’s contribution was a large bronze bas-relief of Roosevelt riding in a motorcade at his first inauguration. In a series of outdoor “rooms” designed by the landscape architect Larry Halprin, several monolithic standing cylinders and a bronze
wall described the fifty-four social programs instated by FDR’s government following the Great Depression.

A month later, I accompanied Bob to New York for the dedication ceremony for his memorial to Duke Ellington at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue. The celebrated cabaret singer and pianist Bobby Short had worked long and hard to get the project going, and it had involved many meetings and a lot of persuasion to get the Harlem community to approve the installation.

One such meeting took place at an uptown museum in a room filled to capacity with mostly outraged church ladies, upset that the maquette that had been presented to them by Bob depicted a number of nudes on a plinth, supporting the Duke’s piano. As the voices grew shriller and the conversation more heated, we began to worry for the future of the monument. Suddenly, an older gentleman stood up and began to speak. “I knew the Duke,” he said, “and I am sure he would want an end to this controversy. I was with him when he played on Vine Street in Kansas City, I was with him when he traveled to St. Louis, and here in New York. Duke Ellington loved it when, after he played a set, the ladies of the night would come out to see him and wave to him from their balconies. It is my conviction that no one would be more pleased than he to be supported by these beautiful nudes.”

The room was silent for a moment, then it erupted in cheers. The monument had gained approval and passed the board. Bob and I rushed down with Bobby Short to his haven, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel, and ordered a succession of martinis to commemorate the triumph.

In the spring of ’98, Bob was commissioned to create another piece for the FDR Memorial, a life-sized bronze portrait
of Roosevelt in his wheelchair. Because Roosevelt always refused to be portrayed as handicapped in photographs or illustrations, there was a good deal of controversy leading up to the final decision. Following a particularly heated discussion between the lobbyists, pro and con, the outcome proved positive for the statue, which was dedicated on January 10, 2001, in West Potomac Park. Today the FDR Memorial is one of the most popular in Washington and has close to three million visitors each year.

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On our last trip to Mexico City, when Bob was working on his show at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, a small busload from his studio went to the private museum and residence of Señora Dolores Olmedo. She was an art collector, an artists’ model and businesswoman, known for her friendship with and patronage of Diego Rivera, having sat for some twenty-seven of Rivera’s drawings and paintings. She was also a collector of Frida Kahlo. When interviewed by
The New York Times
, she said she was never a friend of Frida’s. “Frida Kahlo liked women. I liked men.” Rumor was that Dolores Olmedo was also a mistress of Rivera’s. Before he died in 1957, he named Señora Olmedo as administrator of his and Kahlo’s estate. The Olmedo collection now includes some of the most highly regarded Riveras and Kahlos—137 works of his, 25 of hers.

Her estate at La Noria spread out over several acres. The museum was, in effect, a shrine to Dolores herself, with fabulous jewelry and pre-Columbian art in glass vitrines and several commissioned Rivera portraits in oil of both her and her daughter.

A building next door was being prepared for dedication as
a library, and a third edifice, a fortress built of lava stone, was her residence. The interior was on a monumental scale; the rooms, though few, were vast, with white polished-marble floors and high ceilings. Light flooded through tall glass doors out to a tropical garden, where peacocks preened and a pack of hairless dogs in a variety of sizes prowled the grounds. It was explained to us that Señora Olmedo was more often than not confined to her bed these days but that she would be pleased to receive us in her private suite.

We were shown by the valet through several rooms of impressively carved chinoiserie—huge sculptures of jade horses and ivory goddesses, giant vases enameled and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Throughout the house were extravagant flower arrangements of banana leaves, tuberose, and shocking-pink ginger. When finally we entered the señora’s sanctuary, I was startled to see a raven-haired woman in her late eighties, fully recumbent on a chaise longue, her small puffy hands, with long scarlet nails adorned by three of the largest, whitest diamonds I’d ever seen, tugging at the hem of an Hermès blanket. Her makeup was spectacular—hair scraped back from brightly rouged cheeks, with finely arched, penciled eyebrows and a curtain of false lashes from under whose veil she contemplated Bob. “I like him,” she said. “He’s handsome.”

Señora Olmedo was fiercely independent. When asked once how she would like to be remembered, she said, “Just as I am, a woman who did whatever she felt like doing and, luckily, succeeded at it.”

Following this trip, Bob decided that we should acquire a Xoloitzcuintli, a hairless dog from Mexico. It also happened to be the favorite breed of the painter Toledo, who lived in
Oaxaca, and whose dogs, I believe, are descended from the Diego Rivera–Frida Kahlo strain. They are said to weep real tears when sad, and have an appetite for chocolate, which makes most dogs very sick. They are also prone to smile.

Guillermo Olguín was enlisted to help satisfy Bob’s desire, and a puppy was duly air-freighted on Aeroméxico to Los Angeles on April 16, 1998. It was a very busy time for us, and taking on a puppy seemed overly ambitious. We decided to offer the dog to Steven, who met her at the airport. She cried big tears when he took her out of her cage on the median by the parking lot, gave her chocolate, and christened her Lola.

Steven and Lola were a great match. Later, when he mated her, it was with another hairless Xoloitzcuintli that he had located in Palm Springs. Lola had five puppies, all different. Steven kept a little male with a shock of white hair atop his head, and Bob chose a female with a fine silvery coat. He named her Mecha, short for Mercedes, his aunt’s name; it also means “cowlick” in Spanish.

CHAPTER 28

T
he valley of the Dordogne is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. My assistant, Cristen Kauffman, and I arrived there in the summer to start shooting
Ever After
, with Drew Barrymore attached to play the role of a feisty Cinderella. I was to play her stepmother, Rodmilla. Initially, I wasn’t sure of the tone of the piece; it was the familiar fairy tale reimagined with modern dialogue and an updated storyline with creative touches, such as an appearance in the script by none other than Leonardo da Vinci, who attempts to walk on water and conceives of Cinderella as the Mona Lisa.

However, I enjoyed the chance to play Rodmilla not just as the usual wicked stepmother to Drew’s Danielle but as a thwarted and disappointed woman whose reaction to pain and fear is to lash out. Finally, there was a chance to make a case for her. It was great fun to explore her backstory—her reaction to her husband’s death and, consequently, the extreme necessity of seeing her daughters married. This hitherto one-dimensional character had become human on the page, like a bad-tempered Mrs. Bennet from
Pride and Prejudice.

The Dordogne is ravishing. Castles abound in its valley, home not only to the Lascaux Caves, which contain the earliest petroglyphs known to man, but to the strongholds that
defended France from England for more than three hundred years, until the end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453.

The landscape is epic and open, with soft rolling hills, lush and green, and the local stone used in all the masonry glows apricot in the pink sunlight. Along the wide river, there are ancient caves carved into the canyon, and the valley is so fruitful it is not hard to imagine primitive man roaming there with ease, feeding on bison and berries and running from the occasional saber-toothed tiger.

Sarlat, the little town where we were based, is also the home of foie gras. In the shops, almost everything pertained to goose—cans of confit, goose fat, Mason jars of pâté, drawings of geese, ceramics. There was a cobblestone square where the locals met for coffee and a little dog circus performed throughout the afternoon; these dogs seemed to enjoy a very social life all their own in the village. One of our locations was a castle and farmyard some ten miles from town. I had met the owner’s dog, a massive deerhound, so I was surprised when I saw him coming alone out of the local art shop and walking up the street. It turned out that the sister of the people who owned the castle ran the store, and every day at noon the dog would make his own way into town to visit her. Few of the dogs in Sarlat were leashed and all seemed independent and smart. Often I would see a number of them congregate in the square to watch the circus dogs, like an audience at the theater.

It was a lovely bucolic summer. Working with Drew was a pleasure; she was extremely intuitive and sensitive. One day, however, I felt she was not taking me seriously. We were working on a scene that I felt required a strong reaction on her part—the first time Danielle rebels against her stepmother. Drew seemed uncomfortable and giggled.

“All right, missy,” I snapped. “I’ve had it!”

This made her laugh even harder. “Missy?” she said. “I can’t believe you’re even calling me that!”

We finished the scene and I stalked off. The next day, a huge bouquet of daisies arrived. The card read, “Thank you for making me a better actress. Love, Drew.”

Cristen was ensconced upstairs in the old farmhouse I was renting, and I was occupying a large bedroom downstairs with an enormous fireplace that backed up at night, causing me to cough violently—in retrospect, I think it probably was carbon monoxide poisoning—and French doors that opened onto a wide walled garden. We had a surly chef called Mr. Poisson who cooked delicious meals for us straight from the local farmer’s market.

On Saturday nights the cast and crew would all go to the local nightclub outside Sarlat and dance to bad French disco music. Dougray Scott, who was playing Prince Henry, had some fun parties at his house as well. At the house Drew shared with her makeup and hair artists and her assistant, Gwenn, she decided to decorate the beams on the bedroom ceiling with swaths of leaves and flower stems. All the Americans on the crew were missing Mexican food, so the producer threw a Day of the Dead party with candy skulls and candles and lots of tequila. Gwenn liked to go antique shopping, and Cristen and I would get up early on Saturday mornings to go with her to the local Marché aux Puces.

One of the joys of
Ever After
for me was being around horses. I have loved them all my life, and riding was a big part of my growing up. We had two sets of horse wranglers—a handful of Irishmen who had come over with a stable of hunter-thoroughbreds, and a bunch of Spaniards who trained
the Andalusians, big high-stepping creatures with flowing manes and tails. Being up on those horses was like riding a floating dinner table. I soon made friends with this group, and on days when we were not working I’d drive up to their horse barn and the arena they used as a base and help put the horses through their paces. It was particularly fun to ride dressage on the big Carthusian warmbloods with flamenco playing over the loudspeakers in the arena, and to take the Irish horses cross-country out into the hills and forests. Sometimes the Spaniards’ wives would cook paella for us afterward, or strips of pork dipped in honey and peppers roasted on the grill. On my days off from the movie, I would drive over to the stables and go riding with the Irish boys. I developed a crush on one of them, Dolyn, and in spite of knowing better, I succumbed to the temptation of location romance.

One Sunday some of us decided to go on a long ride to a deserted castle we had spotted on a map. It rose above a forest some four or five miles west of Sarlat. At the last minute, two of the Irishmen canceled, but Dolyn and two French riders who were working at the stables decided to come along. The day was perfect. We took off in the morning and cantered gently over the lush green fields. One of the French riders, Annick, was familiar with the countryside and eventually guided us to a path leading into a wooded area where, above us on a hill, a castle became apparent, glowing in the midday sun. We had been out on the trail for several hours.

As we left the bridle path and entered the shaded forest, I noticed that the ground was very loose and wet, and before I knew it, the lovely chestnut mare I was riding was sinking fast—the mud was up to her knees. We had inadvertently entered a swamp, and it was taking us down like a suction
cup. By now the mud was over my boots. I looked up and saw a tree limb, thick as an elephant’s leg, above the mare’s head. When I jumped down from the saddle, I sank instantly up to my waist in muck. All around, the same thing was happening to the others. I heard Annick cry out and saw her mount submerged up to its neck. I was holding on to my mare’s reins, pulling them over her bridle to the front. Even if I were physically capable of pulling her out, the branch above her head would make it impossible. We were trapped; the situation looked utterly hopeless.