Sachi got up to get some more tea. There were aspects to positive thinking that even we hadn’t thought about.
Mother looked over at me lovingly.
“Daddy says he’s still on top of the bed dressed, so I’ll come in and kiss him goodnight, right?” she asked.
“Right.”
She shrugged and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes.
“How would you feel,” I said, “if he went first?”
She folded her arms.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t like to think about how I’d feel.” Her eyes filled with pain for a moment and then as though she could orchestrate her emotions she said, “I know one thing, though. I’d be left with trying to figure out how to work all the machines in this house, because your father never taught me a thing. He wanted to be the big shot, so he never showed me how to work anything, Shirl.”
I always marveled at her disciplined practicality. Then she thought a moment.
“Evie says that when Glenn died, knowing she was in a silent house was the hardest part. But I’d miss talking about what we saw on television or what we were eating for dinner.” She faltered a moment. Then she continued: “I’ll miss that wonderful mind the most. That mind of his that never stops questioning and putting together connections. That brilliant, brilliant mind.” Her voice trailed off.
I kept very quiet.
Then she started up again, her tone vigorous. “But I’d come to see you kids more often.” She looked at me shyly. “That is, if you’d want a crotchety old woman around.”
Sachi walked in from the kitchen. “Listen, Grandmother,” she said. “You have to come and see me. I want to move away from Mother”—she gestured toward me—“so I can become more independent. So you come and we’ll have a good time on our own.”
Mother winked at me. She got up, gave Sachi a tweak on the cheek, and went in to say goodnight to the man she had loved and lived with for fifty-five years.
I knew both of them would be around for a while longer anyway.
During the next few days with Mom and Dad, I thought a lot about what Ambres had said regarding the trauma of my past lives with them. In a more total way I began to accept the reality that my parents—and my daughter, for that matter—were beings of extensive life experiences, just as I was.
As I sat talking with them, joking and sharing, I allowed the images of those past-life experiences to flow through my emotions while attempting to integrate my feelings for them today. Each of us had been abused by power and were abusers of power ourselves. Ambres was right. I had “seen” Mom and Dad in ways and days from the past. We had not always been parents and child. We had been involved in events that had been more than upsetting on the acupuncture table.
Now as I watched them closely over breakfast, two loving, spritely, compassionate human beings grappling with the ravages and inevitabilities of time, I was seeing them through ancient eyes in a long-forgotten time they could only barely acknowledge sharing. I was reminded once again that I had chosen these two as parental figures this time around because they always moved me so deeply, because they were the source of much of my learning and knowing of myself.
I had not only chosen them for myself now but in ancient times as well, and in many roles. Perhaps, indeed, I had chosen my own history. Perhaps what Ambres had really meant regarding “seeing” too soon had more to do with understanding the most profound of all truth: that I had been responsible for choosing to see everything I had seen, doing everything I had done. I had drawn to myself the people and events of all my lives in the long, slow, ongoing process of bringing myself, “somewhen,” to a completion.
As the emotional and spiritual pieces dovetailed into place, making the tangled web of our intertwined identities and purposes more clear, I felt myself relax. An easy calm began to flow through me. My appreciation for my mother and father became so tender, so affectionate, so much more understanding, and ultimately so self-reflective. They were me. And I was them, not in a familial way dictated by genealogy, but in a philosophic and spiritually true way, orchestrated by my own desire to know more about myself.
I fell asleep on the last night of my visit and slept for eleven hours. I was finally integrating the scenes from the past with the scenes of the present. As Lazaris had said, we create the present from the future against the backdrop of the past.
Chapter 11
After the Thanksgiving holiday, our film company assembled for our next location shoot in Hawaii. That ten-year-old love affair between Gerry and Shirley had clandestinely spanned the globe.
Now, we moved as a well-trained theatrical army from the clogged streets of London to the silent snows of Sweden, from the silent snows of Sweden to the lush, swaying, balmy paradise of the northern side of Oahu. I had a hotel room overlooking a turquoise sea, with waves crashing below that put my sound machine to shame.
In Hawaii it is always easy for me to relax into a soft rhythm with the whole ambiance of the islands. I feel perfectly at peace there. The islands speak to me of a balanced texture of life which existed long ago and could again if we ceased to commercialize it.
I met the American crew at a luau that the company gave when we arrived. There were Hawaiian flowered shirts, grass skirts, ukuleles, and undulating hips.
Brad had brought his girlfriend on location and Charles Dance was accompanied by his wife, JoAnna, and their children. Stan had his wife, Lillian, and I had Harold to hang out with (he had just bought a house on Oahu). When locations are pleasant, families and friends and lovers show up because there is something to do during the actors’ working hours.
Brad now had his American crew to work with. He felt more efficient and comfortable. They had read the script, of course, and more than a few of them were interested in metaphysics.
Most of them were fascinated by the concept of unseen energy. Theirs was basically a technological curiosity, but they quickly realized that when their questions were pursued and extended, they soon touched the issue of the Source. From what did all energy flow? And was this Source what was known as God? The crew members weren’t religious, necessarily. That had nothing to do with anything. They were simply aware that an intelligent and harmonious unseen energy seemed to be governing all activity in life whether they could identify it or not. And as we began to shoot we exchanged books and ideas in between setups.
Each person had a different reason for being interested. What began as small exchanges blossomed into full-blown discussions over lunch, mainly because each of us saw the similarity of cause and effect in technological energy to cause and effect in relationships in our own personal lives. The way the energy worked was analogous. In sharing our experiences, we saw more clearly that all of life, technological or emotional, was a question of working with positive and negative energies and that negative didn’t mean wrong. It simply meant the opposite polarity—the other end of the balance—of positive. Negative energy was as necessary as positive. It was the interacted combustion that produced and created life. The male energy (yang) was positive; the female energy (yin) negative. Science—and life—told us that. Life could not exist without both. Understanding the basic tenets of that principle was helpful then in extending our understanding that “evil” exists only in relation to the point of view: If a child steals to live, if a man kills to protect his family, if a woman aborts a fetus rather than give birth to an unwanted child, if a terrorist murders because he has been raised all his life to believe that killing is his right and proper duty—who is evil? And if a person kills “simply” out of hatred or greed, he perceives his motives as his need—others make the judgment that his act is “evil.”
Now this is not the kind of concept one can easily assimilate, or even accept, so our discussions were deep and colorful. At times one person would erupt with blockages and rage. Another would help him clear it out. At other times someone would have such a clear and corrective revelation that the rest of us would float on it for the ba
lance of the day.
The shooting of the film itself became a physical manifestation of what we were learning and personally going through. The sun and sand and breeze were glorious. The hours were unrelenting. We often worked from 6:30 in the morning (to get the sunlight) to well past midnight. On one occasion Charles and I shot our love scene at 4:30 A.M. We both had to break down and cry for the scene. It wasn’t difficult.
I got stung by a Portuguese man-of-war while rolling around in the surf for a scene. There was much speculation as to my past-life relationship with that creature.
Finally the “dailies” began to come in. We liked what we saw. They seemed personal, real, and well lit. The level of playing was documentarylike and whenever I heard someone refer to my character as “Shirley” I winced. It was so shockingly personal. It hit me in waves that I was actually playing myself.
Early on in preproduction we had all agreed that the color scheme of the production would remain muted; beiges, creams, earth tones, and nature colors would be our basics, and color would be used as accent. We were thinking ahead to the locations in Peru. To play down color before we got there would be good contrast. We changed our minds when we saw the dailies, I was garbed in beiges and creams. My red hair and lipstick were the only colors in the scenes. Frankly, it was boring. The burden on me as an actress was disproportionate without my even realizing it. At times like this I realized what an important part costume and production and scenic designers play in the conceptualization of screen art.
Here we were in colorful Hawaii. And I was clothed and running around in vanilla-flavored muumuus. It didn’t work. It made me look lackluster and lifeless. I was supposed to be in the throes of an exciting love affair. And I was dressing like mood music in an elevator. I switched to a pink muumuu with a colorful hat. It even picked up the playing of the scenes, to say nothing of my spirits (no pun intended).
For an actress, knowing there is a bathing suit scene coming up can become an event of such anticipation that it lives with you every waking moment, particularly when the dinners at the meal break are sumptuous buffets and the piña coladas are the best in the world. There was also something about being back again on American territory that compelled me to have two eggs over easy, a rasher of crisp bacon, and lots of toast and jam for breakfast every morning. I had been so satiated with English oatmeal and Swedish herring that to be in an American hotel compelled me to eat food I never would eat had I not been away.
So, taking all my indulgences into consideration, it meant that between setups I would need to do my yoga, several hundred sit-ups, and running in place if possible. That’s not fun when your makeup runs with perspiration and the clothes need to be protected. On top of that, the boredom of between-scenes leaves you with one impelling thought: food. Movie sets are famous for cookies, doughnuts, cakes, and muffins because they are a cheap way to feed the crew fast and you have the illusion you are extracting energy from the sugar. Nothing could be further from the truth. Though to turn down a coconut doughnut or a blueberry muffin in lieu of a mango is not easy. Besides, the mango could only be sensibly eaten in the shower anyway, which would jeopardize the makeup and hair. So you opt for the doughnut and coffee, cursing your hips and waistline for the rest of the day for betraying your lack of discipline. Then at dinner you feel it’s legitimate to need to eat. So you have a piña colada, swearing that the compromise will be no dessert. And so it goes. Until the bathing suit scene comes and you may or may not hear whistles from the crew. Either way you always knew the decision about weight should have been made months before principal photography began. Yet the illusion never really dissipates that you can lose twenty pounds in one night by cutting out dinner.
Then there are all sorts of well-schooled, hard-won professional tricks an actress can employ knowing full well where her grossest physical problems are. Mine is my stomach. I can be thin, eat an olive, and look like I’m ready for the maternity ward. It’s really quite incredible to me. I’ve tried to figure it out in therapy, past-life and otherwise, but I haven’t been able to trace why I do such a thing to my body. Because of this phenomenon I cannot eat before a scene that requires a full-figure silhouette. And of course I cannot eat before I dance, all of which sometimes presents complicated logistical problems where nourishment is concerned. I carefully calculate what I put in my stomach in relation to the time I have to digest and eliminate. If my calculations go according to plan, there is usually no problem. If there is a shift in schedule, I go to plan B, which usually involves wearing a prop such as a scarf or a shoulder bag or purse of some kind in a scene. I work with the prop in front of my stomach. If I need two hands for the scene, I’m in trouble, but usually I can conceal whatever I ate with a book I pick up, or an armful of flowers, or a sweater I drape over my arm. But there are times when what I’m doing looks exactly like what it is—a cover-up. It is then that I wish I could learn some kind of meditative technique which would enable me to go straight through the working day without food or sustenance. Maybe I never fully understood the role of Alex de Grunwald’s foodless days until now!
The fascination with crying scenes has always been a favorite of people who question me about acting. It is just as fascinating to me. I look at the breakdown of the scene: how many cuts there will be, how long it runs in a master shot, and of course the emotional intent and meaning of the scene itself. Since I am not an actress who either can or desires to cry in every cut, I have to make my decision when to really cry and when to break out the “Oscar bottle” (glycerine). I feel there’s no point in putting myself through the associative sorrow necessary to bring on real tears in a long shot when the audience won’t be able to see them anyway. So I usually play the scene out once (crying fully) so I’ll know where it’s going emotionally. Then, as the day and scene breakdowns occur, I make the choice. I’ve learned through bitter experience that if I use all the emotional associations that bring on tears too often too soon, I’ll have nothing left for the close-ups—which is where it counts. Ironic that artistic human expression becomes, out of necessity in the world of film-making, a chess-playing emotional game plan. A newcomer is always overwhelmed by the intricacy of interval rhythms required to get through even one day of movie acting. I remember how Baryshnikov had come to me a few weeks into shooting The Turning Point with a request for help in sustaining the emotional and psychological peaks all day.
“I can dance full-out for eight hours at a time and not get tired,” he said, “but I am exhausted from not knowing how to emotionally pace myself in these scenes. I am amazed that you people actually make your living at such a difficult task.”
He was right. And that was where the Oscar bottle came in. Glycerine is a sweet oily substance used primarily as a solvent and food preservative—and in the manufacture of explosives. But it photographs well as tears. So an experienced makeup artist can place the tears in strategic positions on the face, leaving the actress with the task only of looking as if she’s crying. It’s never as convincing as the real thing, but the real thing is difficult to repeat take after take. Ammonia capsules are also used. Passed under the nose or close to the open eye they produce a tearing effect that soon spills effectively over the brim and down the cheeks. The problem with ammonia is that the effect occurs immediately, and unless the camera is ready to roll, your big drama is gone before it’s recorded. It is difficult to describe the emotional gymnastics involved in acting deeply disturbing scenes. Obviously the highest priority is that your emoting be sincere, but the technical awareness of your marks, your key light, and consciousness of camera angle are of the utmost importance, to say nothing of the dialogue. So many times in my early days in film I believed I had been brilliant in a scene. The crew had applauded when it was over and my insides had been wrenched at the sincere emotion I touched. The problem was that I had missed my marks, hidden my face in shadow, and in one case had not even been in the camera frame. The marriage of technique and passion is the true union of an accomplished
actor and there is no way to short-circuit that learning experience. You have to go through it.
In shooting Out on a Limb, though, the remembered passion was closer to the surface because it had been my own life. I simply let the memories overwhelm me, and my reactions were real and easily flowing. Yet it was interesting that even playing myself I found I was first and last a professional. For example, if my remembered emotion was too much for the scene, I altered it. The important thing was how it played now, not how it played in my memory.
One of my lasting memories of making the movie, however, is that of my big crying love scene. I had done it fifteen times. We were shooting on a romantic balcony overlooking the Pacific at 3:30 in the morning, using glycerine on my cheeks and eyes because I had dried up. The glycerine attracted the Hawaiian mosquitoes. I tried to brush them away on Charles’s dialogue, thinking they would cut to him anyway, but it was no use. I finally broke down. But I wasn’t crying because of the scene. I was crying because the mosquitoes were killing me.
As lovely as Hawaii can look on the scene, to shoot intricate scenes with turquoise surf sweeping over us was more like a Marx Brothers comedy than a romp in paradise. First of all, if you see two actors lying in the surf, you know there’s got to be a crew in the water somewhere. If the angle is toward the land, the camera crew is definitely fighting the waves. If it’s a profile shot, they are going through whatever the actors are experiencing.
If the sun is peacefully setting in the West, with a magenta hue cascading around your head, bathing your face and shoulders in illuminating light, it doesn’t mean you’re not being eaten alive by sand crabs as you say lines of delicate and tender affection.
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