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JESSICA LANGE just completed shooting on Grey
Gardens, the forthcoming fictional film version of
the film documentary about the mother-daughter duo who
went from being American aristocracy to crazy cat ladies
living in a falling-down Hamptons house. It was also
recently made into a musical. (Got that?) She costars
with Drew Barrymore; her long-time partner is Sam
Shepard, and she lives in New York.
When do
you get anonymity?
Well,
most of the time....When you haven’t been in the press
for a while, you don’t have a film out there—yeah, I can
go down the street forever and ever and they don’t know
who I am. Which is great! But you know, New York is cool
that way, they’ll say “hi” like they know you, or “Hey,
haven’t seen you in a while; what are you doing?” I love
that about
New York.
You
finished shooting on
Grey
Gardens. I’m completely freaked out! How’s it gonna be?
I don’t
know how it’s going to be! It was the greatest
experience I’ve had in so long, I can’t even tell you.
It was thrilling work. One, because the age range of the
character—Drew had the same range, I play Big Edie, she
plays Little Edie—but we cover a 40-year period in their
lives. I go from 39 to 79. The story starts with the
impression of the documentary of them in their later
years. Them living in this crazy squalor, and this
wildly eccentric relationship.
But then
we go back 40 years. So you also see them in their
heyday, at the height of New York society. And it tracks
them not continually, but it jumps like a decade, then
another decade. So you see this progression of them
going from A to Z.
What I did is, I had this marvelous reference, the
Maysles brothers documentary, what she was like then.
And then I got to imagine that woman 10 years earlier,
20 years earlier, 30 years earlier. A wonderful exercise
as an actor. And I had to sing and dance. And wearing
four hours’ worth of prosthetic makeup, and acting like
I’m 79 years old—and finding her voice and her crazy
mannerisms. It was a big, big part. A big job.
How many
times did you watch the documentary?
I can’t
even tell you. I was so familiar with it before the
project even came my way. Once I knew that I was going
to play the part, I watched it many times. When I was
shooting I would watch bits and pieces of it every day.
It was my morning exercise. Just to hear her voice. Or
to see her, then it would center me in the character,
even if I was playing her as a young woman. Yeah, I make
corn in the movie.
Had you
ever met Drew Barrymore before?
No. Not
until we determined to do this together. She’s great in
it.
She
better be.
She is!
She’s fearless, and she is great.
How near
are Frances Farmer and Edie Bouvier Beale? [Lange played
Frances Farmer in 1982’s
Frances.]
I would
say they were both survivors. That would seem like an
odd quality to choose, because
Frances
didn’t survive all that well. But the powers-that-be
overwhelmed her. But she had tremendous spirit, and I
think the same is true with Edie Beale. For Frances to
live through what she did and have a life past all of
that? And she did. I think that speaks well of her....
What was
that set like?
Frances was directed by an editor [Graeme Clifford].
Yeah, he
had edited [The Postman Always Rings Twice]. And
that’s how we came to work together on Frances. Who
knows your work better than the editor? And he came to
me and asked if I wanted to be Frances.
And off
you went! It sounds so easy.
Obviously, it wasn’t an easy shoot.
How dark
did that get?
Well, I
got dark....I had fallen into a deep well, trying to get
to the bottom of this character. But that’s just, you
know. Some characters stay with you more than others.
Some characters are really haunting, some you shed
quickly. Frances is a haunting character.
Did you
do yourself any permanent damage?
Well, I
don’t know, it could have! I can’t honestly speak to
that. I don’t know if it has, maybe it has.
When did
you pick up a camera?
I had
been interested in photography a long, long time ago.
And I got sidetracked with many other things. Life,
traveling, youth. And then falling into acting. So I
only picked up a camera about 15 years ago for the first
time again. And Sam had gotten me this great little
Leica, and my kids were growing, and I thought, “This is
great, I’ll just start taking pictures of them.” And I
started shooting in black and white and built myself a
darkroom. And it just kept expanding, and now I’m going
to have a book published. Which is such a dream come
true for me!
You’re
so fancy.
No, I’m
thrilled. So it’ll be a book that’ll come out in
October. Of all my—not all—but my black-and-white
photographs.
And you
get to spend quiet evenings in the darkroom.
I loved
it. It was quiet. I was in there all by myself,
listening to Sam Cooke, printing pictures. The most
exciting thing was that moment you exposed it: the
paper, the developer and you’re leaning over the tray
and watching this image come up. It used to give me
goose bumps sometimes when it was really good. You
thought...I did that, I can really do something. |
