My Mother Was Nuts

  I tried a different approach. I looked for the kid who would be Josh’s best friend, and I picked Jared Rushton. He had the most spunk of those I saw. He worked well as I brought in actors, including Sean Penn, who was terrific but too young, and Andy Garcia, who was also great, though one of the studio executives said, “We don’t want to spend eighteen million on a kid who grows up to be Puerto Rican.”

  That was how they talked.

  “He’s Cuban,” I said.

  I also read Gary Busey, who had the energy of a child, but I didn’t think he could pull off playing an adult. John Travolta was dying to do it, but at the time he was box office poison and the studio didn’t want him. I started to get worried. Despite not having a lead actor, we were in pre-production in New York. I met with Robert Greenhut, one of our executive producers. This was our first film together. He was a slick line producer who had come up through the ranks and done all of Woody Allen’s films.

  I had an idea and asked him to think about working on a rewrite of a couple scenes. In TV, all the producers wrote. I assumed he did, too. He set me straight. He didn’t write; he managed the production. I apologized, explaining that I was still learning about movies. But he still had excellent ideas, and he turned into an ally and confidant when I decided to take my search for a lead actor in a different direction.

  I went to Robert De Niro. Bobby—or Bobby D. as I called him—was in the middle of making The Untouchables, playing Al Capone. Although I knew he didn’t ordinarily read other material when he was in the middle of a project, I called him anyway. That’s where I’m not at all shy or hesitant. I will call anyone. What’s the worst they can say?

  “Bobby, there’s a script,” I said. “I want you to read it, see if you like it.”

  I got him the material and called him back.

  “Did you read it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think?

  “I like it.”

  It turned out that he wanted to make a commercial film. He had done all of Marty Scorsese’s movies, but hadn’t broken out in a film the whole family could watch. I told Jim and Scott Rudin, who was running production at the studio, that De Niro was interested. They were surprised and somewhat intrigued. They were also skeptical. Besides having a hard time envisioning him in the role, they’d heard stories about him. They told me to get him to commit. The way they said it was like a challenge.

  I called Bobby.

  “What do I tell them when they ask me?” I asked. “Do you want to do it or not? I’ve got to give them an answer.”

  “Yeah, tell them I’ll do it,” he said.

  I hung up.

  I had Bobby.

  I told Jim and Scott, and I guess word spread. The next day I flew to Los Angeles to go to an event celebrating Paramount’s seventy-fifth anniversary and posed for a photo with everyone who ever worked at the studio. Word had spread about Bobby D. and a handful of actors who had turned me down, including Kevin Costner, now asked about Big. Bobby had given me validity.

  As work began on the script, Bobby told me to look at his movies and tell him what I wanted and didn’t want. What I wanted was the energy he had in Mean Streets in the scene when he was first in the bar and coming out around the car. That’s exactly what I got when he came to my house one day. I got him on tape with Jared. They skateboarded, shot baskets, and rode bicycles in my driveway. Bobby doesn’t give you much until the cameras are on. Jared yelled, “Come on, De Niro. Move it!”

  As word got out, actresses called to read with him. It was exciting. I didn’t know exactly where the process was leading, in terms of the script, but it was moving in a good direction. I would have paid to see Bobby dance on piano keys.

  Barry didn’t want Bobby, though. I said, “Counter me.” He said, “How about Warren Beatty?” To me, Warren was the same as De Niro, but different. He had already done something similar in Heaven Can Wait. But the two of us had dinner in New York and then we went up to my apartment. I asked if he would listen to me if I directed him. In the nicest way, he said no.

  Well, that was thrilling. Why bother?

  At least Warren was being honest. That’s all I ever ask. Just tell me the truth. I’ll deal with it. But I can’t deal unless I know the truth.

  Bobby was taken aback when I told him the studio had wanted me to meet with Warren. It’s never easy to hear that you aren’t someone’s top choice, even at his level. But that was only a small part of what became an even bigger problem. An article came out in the papers about how much money Chevy Chase, John Candy, and other people were paid for movies, and all were getting a hell of a lot more than Fox was going to pay Bobby.

  To be blunt, they were going to pay him shit and they weren’t budging. They just didn’t want him. Jim Brooks suggested I give Bobby my salary. I offered. Bobby didn’t want it.

  “We’re working together,” he said. “You and me, you know? I’ll take Jim’s.”

  However, he had second thoughts and called the next day. Apologetic, he explained he couldn’t do the movie anymore. He’d be too angry. I understood. But now I was back to square one. Sort of.

  CHAPTER 37

  Heart and Soul

  The cast and crew of Big celebrated when the movie grossed over $100 million. Left to right: Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, Tracy, Penny, Sarah Colleton, and Jim and Holly Brooks.

  Marshall personal collection

  BOTH TOM HANKS AND Jeff Bridges now wanted to be in Big. It was a nice problem to have. Tom was making Dragnet, and Jeff had done Starman, which I thought had the same kind of innocence I needed in Big. It came down to choosing between them, and I went with my gut. I decided to wait for Tom.

  I had known Tom for years and we’d always liked each other. He was one of the nicest guys in the business. I felt good about the decision. When we finally met about Big, I asked with raised eyebrows what he’d been doing with Danny Aykroyd in Dragnet, and he said, “Having fun.” As for playing Josh, he asked whether I wanted The Nutty Professor or Being There, and I said the latter. The movie was high concept, but in order to for it to work it had to be played with total honesty.

  As we waited for Tom, casting director Juliet Taylor worked on filling out the movie’s other parts. She brought in the world. I read them all. In fact, I was reading actresses for the part that went to Elizabeth Perkins when I saw John Heard waiting for his girlfriend to read. I asked if he would come in and read with her. I don’t like to read with people; I’m not the character. He did, and he made me laugh more than anyone. I gave him the part.

  When Tom was finally available, I heard from Bobby again. He had changed his mind and wanted to do the movie. Apologetic, I told him that we’d moved forward. By then Tom was reading with actresses for the part of Josh’s mother, which went to Mercedes Ruehl. I remember telling her not to go in the sun. So what’d she do? She went in the sun. One day on the set, someone said, “Who’s that Puerto Rican?” Well, that’s Josh’s Cliffside Park, New Jersey, mother.

  As for the young Josh, I liked David Moscow. And once he was signed, I taped him doing all of Tom’s scenes with the older actors so that Tom could use them as a guide for how an actual twelve-year-old boy would look and move and talk.

  We shot in New Jersey and New York. Once production began, I developed a good rhythm with Tom. In his early thirties, he was confident, but still full of the eagerness of a young actor determined to own the part. I asked him to play innocent and shy but with a youthful energy. It was a challenge because the movie’s high concept had to be honest, and there wasn’t much variation in the script. Josh was either scared, happy, or confused.

  I knew what it was like for an actor to find the right note, and I enjoyed watching Tom’s process. He would try everything in rehearsals. “Just let me get it out of my system,” he’d say. I’d wait him out. What’s good about Tom, though, is that he’s quick. We developed a shorthand. When I said “insh”—my own word—he knew it meant “be innocent and shy.” All I n
eeded to do was give him a word or a gesture and he’d run with it.

  This was the first movie where I wore a headset so I could hear the actors through the sound system, and after certain takes I’d make little noises, depending on how they did. I wasn’t aware of it. Then I must have groaned one too many times, and Tom finally said, “Penny, we can hear you.” It didn’t inhibit his performance. For the movie to work, he had to hit exactly the right note from the moment the audience first saw him as Josh waking up in the body of a thirty-year-old—and he nailed it.

  We labored over the sequence following his transformation when he hides from his mother, checks himself out in the bathroom mirror, and takes clothes from his father’s closet. It was key since the audience already knew Josh as a normal twelve-year-old boy, and Tom got better and better the more he did it. When he flees the house on his stingray bicycle, a grown up on a kid’s bike, there’s no doubt that he’s Josh. The buy-in was complete.

  I jokingly began referring to Tom as “Popo the Mute Boy”—or just “Popo” for short. It was because he was playing a kid and didn’t drive any of the scenes as an adult would. He reacted to things. Luckily Tom has a terrific sense of humor, especially about himself, and didn’t mind being Popo. But that lightness was part of the process. I think the secret to getting all that right was that we let ourselves play. I let Tom play. I let myself play, too. We always gave ourselves those precious five more minutes. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Tom had to find the kid in him and let that out rather than simply act like a kid.

  You can see that clearly in the scene at the office Christmas party. The table is full of adult food, including caviar, which Josh/Tom tries and spits out while coughing, sounding like a cat with something in its throat. That was in the script. But we did fifteen other bits. Tom put olives on each finger. He licked cream cheese out of celery. He played with the food. At one point, I spotted some baby corn in a salad on the prop table. I picked it up and mimed to Tom. He gave me a thumbs-up and knew exactly what to do.

  I lacked the same shorthand with my director of photography, Barry Sonnenfeld. Talented and opinionated, he had worked with the Coen brothers on their stylized film Blood Simple and he wanted to shoot Big from similar angles. Movies bring together dozens of strong-willed people with a sense of how they want to make the film and every day is a collaborative effort. But at the end of the day, only one person is in charge, and that was me. Despite Barry’s best intentions, I wanted the movie shot straight on and close up. The party scene was a good example. Barry didn’t want to go in close when Tom ate the baby corn.

  “You have to be in at least waist high,” I said.

  “I’m not going in,” he said.

  “It’s too wide,” I said.

  “I disagree,” he said.

  I thought he was more interested in impressing the studio with his shot.

  “Well, I’ll do an insert of him picking up a piece of corn,” he said. “Would you rather that?”

  In the end, he went in, and the bit got a laugh as big as, if not bigger than, when Tom spit out the caviar. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who only say yes. A good, healthy discussion creates new ways of looking at a scene or confirms initial thoughts, as it did in this case. As I told Barry, I wasn’t a director who made shot lists, but I knew what I wanted.

  For about seven weeks of the production I battled a nagging health issue that would have mattered only to a woman. I thought I had gotten my period, and then I didn’t stop bleeding. It kept up forever. Every day my assistant, Amy Lemisch, would point me to the bathroom and tell me which stall she’d left the Kotex in. “Second one on the left.” Finally, my body seized up on me. We were shooting the scene where Elizabeth takes care of Tom after he’s had a fight. Right before lunch I turned to my associate producer Tim Bourne and asked him to drive me to a gynecologist my assistant had found. Poor Tim got an earful of what I thought was going on with me.

  It turned out what I thought was an unusually long and heavy period was something else. After a brief exam, the doctor informed me that I’d actually had a miscarriage earlier. I was stunned. I had no idea that I was pregnant. Nor did I know who the father was. I supposed it could have been one of several guys, though I wasn’t sure. I’d been on location for a while and it’s easier to not worry about names. I know that sounds irresponsible, but I always took the proper precautions—or so I thought.

  The doctor cauterized me and told me to rest for the next day or two. I turned down his prescription for a pain medication, explaining I was allergic. Then I had Tim take me back to the set, where I finished directing the scene while lying on the floor. I don’t know if I was tough or stupid, but those who’d worked with me before knew I didn’t stop for nothing.

  Jim Brooks was in Washington, D.C., making Broadcast News, and he watched my footage and sent notes and suggestions. Sometimes I appreciated his input, and other times it seemed he was questioning my decisions. I was like, “Go do your own movie. You aren’t here to know the circumstances.”

  As a result of Jim’s comments, I reshot about ten scenes, though the film’s memorable scene of Tom and Robert Loggia, who played Josh’s boss, dancing on giant piano keys wasn’t one of them. I handled that on one of the two days we shot inside FAO Schwarz, the landmark toy store on New York City’s 5th Avenue. I had seen the piano months earlier, but it featured fewer keys than the one we used in the film, and the sounds that came out when you stepped on them didn’t correspond to actual notes.

  I found the piano’s inventor and said I needed a version that was practical enough to play “Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks.” The first song was in the script; however, I knew enough about playing the piano to think that the second one would be better visually. I also needed the keyboard made longer—long enough for two people to dance on it.

  As we waited for him to build it, I had cardboard facsimiles of the keyboard made and sent one to Robert, who was in France, and one to Tom, so they could practice. He rehearsed with intensity, and it made me laugh.

  We shot that scene from numerous angles. Greenhut hocked me to use dance doubles. I repeatedly said no. If I could do it—and I did do it—Tom and Robert could, too. What I should have used was a click track, which keeps the actors in the same tempo. It would have made life a lot easier for my poor editor, Barry Malkin. But each take was slightly different. In the end, though, Tom and Robert were happy with the way it came out, and so was I.

  After we finished, Tom asked me where to go on vacation with his then-girlfriend, Rita Wilson. I suggested St. Bart’s. They went there and he proposed to her at Maya’s, my friend’s restaurant. They got married a few months later in a big Greek wedding, which I attended, and the rest is one of Hollywood’s happiest marriages.

  Big was an education. The scene when Tom and Elizabeth (Susan) are in the back of the limo after the Christmas party is an example of where I screwed myself because I didn’t know shit. Someone convinced me that we could carry it on the back of a flatbed and shoot into it, which we did. But the way it was configured only let us shoot toward the back of the limo, and all the good stuff and gadgets, like the TV, were in the front part. What was Tom going to play with? He found the windows, the locks, the radio and the phone, but my lack of knowledge had limited my options. I learned from those mistakes.

  For as much as I shot, I was always asking, “Do we really need this scene?” If I said no, then I would move on. But I liked making things up. Take the scene when Josh shows Susan his apartment. That was crucial to the story’s progression. He is still innocent and oblivious to what’s on her mind as they get out of the limo and go upstairs. He’s twelve and she’s older. Even when she says flat out she wants to spend the night, he thinks she wants to have a sleepover.

  He invites her to jump on his trampoline. It’s fun. She didn’t know how to have fun yet. Again, it was this idea of play that I was constantly thinking about, that shaped me as a kid and influenced the rest of my lif
e. As we did it, I wanted to also go outside and shoot from across the street and see them through the windows. I needed a transition between Tom coming out of the bathroom and Elizabeth already in bed. If I had stayed in the room, I’d have to deal with the question: When did they change?

  I also thought the shot from outside was a way to convey fun and innocence, too. It signified a larger transition.

  But Bobby Greenhut didn’t want to go outside. He didn’t want to spend money lighting up the whole street. Why would we have to light up the whole street? I didn’t understand. We battled over that as we worked into the night. Determined to get my shot, I waited till he took a catnap. He wasn’t good late at night. Around 4 a.m., he was asleep. Barry and I stepped over him, took a camera into the building next door, and pointed it at the windows.

  I directed Tom and Elizabeth from the walkie-talkie. To your left. Okay, sit down. Now Elizabeth, jump. Sit. Jump sitting up. I was pleased with that effort.

  Toward the end of production I lost my assistant director, prop man, and a bunch of others. They all went to Woody’s picture because Bob Greenhut did Woody’s movies. I showed up one day and asked where is So-and-so? They were gone. Luckily we didn’t have much left. We were basically at the end where Josh, having decided he wants to go back home, is at the Zoltar machine, making his wish, and Susan finds him. The script had four lines, something like, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Don’t go.” And they both had to cry. It wasn’t right.

  Jim got on the phone with Bob and me and we rewrote it. In our version, Josh says there are a million reasons to go back but only one to stay. Hearing that she’s the one reason, they hug and she asks, “So how old are you anyway? Fifteen or sixteen?” When he says thirteen, she groans. I groaned, too. And that was the reaction I wanted—that bittersweet ache in the heart.