13. OVERBOARD
Capturing Love on the Ocean with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell
IREMEMBER SITTING beside a small harbor in Mendocino, California, trying to take stock of my life while the crew set up the next shot on Overboard. The reality was that Nothing in Common opened and even though critically it did well, financially it didn’t do very much. Still, I considered it one of my best works despite the fact it did little for my career at the time. Big box office ruled.
I did know that getting my first chance to direct Goldie Hawn was a director’s dream. Goldie represented that rare quality in an actress I have always found so alluring. She is not only funny but also beautiful. Some women who are great comedians are unfortunately not that attractive, so they can’t play a romantic lead. They can make audiences laugh in nightclubs until tears are rolling down their faces, but we don’t really want to see them kiss Brad Pitt on the big screen. Goldie, however, was and still is gorgeous and funny at the same time. She can get the laughs and win over the male lead. Plus, her training as a ballet dancer helped her have an elegance and grace that are rare for a comedian. I have heard it said before about Goldie that if you put a horizontal line across the center of her face, the top half is a glamorous movie star, while the bottom half is a quirky comedian. It is a winning combination.
Back in the 1960s, when I was producing my TV series Hey Landlord! Goldie worked on a series nearby called Good Morning, World, about early morning disc jockeys. I once acted in an episode of that show, so I knew her from that and seeing her around the studio lot. A few years later she won an Academy Award for her performance in the movie Cactus Flower and her career really took off. I was a big fan of her performances in Foul Play (which my friends Tom Miller and Bob Boyett produced) and Private Benjamin, which was written by my friends Nancy Meyers, Chuck Shyer, and Harvey Miller.
By the time Overboard was being discussed, Goldie was not just an actress but a powerful producer as well. The thought of working with her might intimidate some directors, but I was Laverne & Shirley strong. Working with strong, independent women has always appealed to me. The best news of all about the project was that she was in love with her costar, Kurt Russell. They had met on the film Swing Shift and had been together ever since. Unlike Nothing in Common, in which Tom Hanks was getting divorced, Goldie and Kurt were in the glow of falling in love.
When Goldie and I first met we talked about the things we valued most in life: our kids. Goldie had two little children at the time—Kate and Oliver. She had survived a bad divorce, and ironically her ex-husband eventually married my old friend Cindy Williams, who had starred in Laverne & Shirley. Goldie and I had a lot in common. I think I knew right from the start I was working with a woman who was not only talented and funny but a smart boss. There was no doubt she was a major motion picture star, but inside she was a decent human being.
Goldie was producing the movie with her business partner Anthea Sylbert and actor Roddy McDowall, who would play a small part as a butler. The only person in the equation who was totally new to me was Kurt. I knew that he had been working steadily since he was a child for Disney and other studios, but what I didn’t know was what a professional he was. (I also heard he had once played baseball for the Portland Beavers, a minor league team I had once owned. So I almost owned Kurt.) I didn’t know that Kurt would be one of the nicest actors I would ever work with because he was such a team player. He would turn in a beautiful performance in a scene. Yet a minute later if we started losing the light or the weather would turn on us, he would be the first one to pick up a light and help us move the entire set.
Kurt was always in a good mood and was great with the children. And it was fascinating to see him work so well side by side with Goldie. They have an amazing loving relationship despite the fact that she is a devout Democrat and he is a card-carrying Republican. I remember they would often fight openly on the set about their different political views. Kurt is, in every sense of the word, a regular guy, who told me he likes to go wild boar hunting without a gun. So basically he’s running after crazy boar with just a knife in his hand. He is so rare in Hollywood because he doesn’t have a neurotic bone in his body. He just exudes balance.
Before we began shooting Overboard, I had been waiting on another script called Beaches, which was the adaptation of a popular Iris Rainer Dart book with Bette Midler attached. As much as I wanted to direct Beaches and work with Bette Midler, I felt financially that I couldn’t wait. I talked to my agent, Joel Cohen, and he said I could direct Overboard first, and by the time I was done the script for Beaches would be ready. Joel was always right.
I talked to Francis Coppola about my financial troubles because he had been in debt as well. I remember he said to me, “Garry, don’t worry. You will make money again. Just get even.” He basically was saying do whatever you can to get out of debt and worry about making back your money later. He said a lot of people would be worried about starting from the ground up again, but he told me not to worry about that. “I have seen your work,” he said. “You will make the money back.” He seemed to have confidence that it would work out, and it did.
Overboard was a lonely picture for me because I felt so far away from my friends and family. My other movies had been shot in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, which are cities where I have many friends. But Mendocino, which is three hours north of San Francisco, seemed remote and isolated. My wife was able to visit the set, but her priority was getting us out of this real estate mess and making sure we had the financial security to survive and keep the kids in college.
With the exception of my family, we had hardly any visitors to the set. Our cast and crew, of course, fascinated the town’s people, but we were basically a small band of film people on our own. Aside from wineries and plenty of marijuana farmers, there are few activities or businesses in Mendocino. On the flip side, there were no paparazzi around. So even Goldie and Kurt were able to move about without being bothered by the press or autograph seekers. Alexandra Rose, my producer from Nothing in Common, was on this film, too, and she met her future husband, Rob Meadows, while we were on location. So being at a remote location has its pros as well as its cons.
At the time Mendocino had one nightclub with a band. On every movie I have to get a physical for insurance reasons. Before the Overboard shoot my doctor worried that I might get too exhausted by directing another movie so soon. He told me one thing that might help was dancing. So I made a nightly pilgrimage to the only nightclub in Mendocino to dance away my stress.
Overboard was the story of a wealthy woman who falls overboard on her own yacht, gets amnesia, and is adopted by a local carpenter (played by Kurt Russell) and his family. Kurt tries to convince her that she is poor, married, and the mother of four children. I thought the script, written by Leslie Dixon, was funny, and I was able to put together a great supporting cast. Edward Herrmann played Goldie’s husband and Katherine Helmond her mother. To play Kurt’s four sons we cast Jeffrey Wiseman, Jamie Wild, Brian Price, and Jared Rushton, who would go on to star the following year in my sister Penny’s movie Big.
I did not have a lot of experience working with young children. I had raised three children of my own and worked with the young cast on Happy Days, but directing four boys with relatively no experience was challenging. On purpose I cast the four kids out of Chicago because I didn’t want them to look like Hollywood kids with blow-dried hair and dyed eyelashes. In one scene the youngest son, Jeffrey, had to cry, and we talked about the scene and how we would approach it together. He said he never got sad, but then I asked him if he had ever had a pet that died. He said, “A dog named Fluffy.” So I said when we get ready to do the scene we will talk about Fluffy, and he agreed. Crying on-camera is not an easy thing, but six-year-old Jeffrey did a fine job, especially when we conjured up memories of Fluffy. But after we wrapped that scene, every once in a while he got a little paranoid and would say, “Are we going to talk about Fluffy again?” And I assured h
im no, we were done with Fluffy and the tears.
When you work with kids there is always the risk that one of them will get hurt, and that happened on Overboard. Jared twisted his ankle while he was riding on his skateboard between scenes one day. He couldn’t walk, and we were about to shoot a big chase scene in which Goldie runs through the woods after the boys. The doctor who looked at his ankle said he could run in a day or two, but I didn’t want to get behind schedule. It would have cost thousands of dollars to shut down for two days. So instead I improvised. I had the boys all put on Halloween masks. Then I could replace Jared just for that one scene with another young actor. Nobody knew the difference, and we were able to film the scene as written by purchasing some cheap Halloween masks. We didn’t lose even a half day.
The best part of Overboard for me was watching Goldie in the scenes when Kurt tries to convince her that she is his wife. In one scene he tells her that she used to be chubby and quite promiscuous. Goldie, wearing a frumpy hand-me-down dress, turns to Kurt and deadpans, “I was a short, fat slut?” It is one of the funniest moments in the entire movie, and I still laugh when I see it. There was also a scene in which she cooks a chicken, and the physical comedy is quintessential Goldie. I gave her the idea of cooking a chicken in a small pot and she ran with it.
I loved working with Goldie and seeing her be sophisticated in the fancy scenes and do slapstick comedy in the others. On some days when Goldie was filming, her daughter, Kate, who was then nine years old, would come and sit in the director’s chair with me. I would say, “Let’s say ‘Action, Mommy,’ ” and Kate would do the slate with me. Years later I would direct Kate in a movie of her own called Raising Helen, and we talked about our memories of filming Overboard, in Mendocino.
I cast a couple of friends in Overboard, too. My smoking coach Carol Williard had a small part, as did Hector Elizondo. Hector couldn’t have a big part in this picture because he was busy doing another project. But we did manage to squeeze him in as a Portuguese captain of a boat that finds Goldie after she has fallen overboard. Although I had a tough time working with him on Nothing in Common, I used cinematographer John Alonzo again because he does a fine job of shooting women. I needed him to capture Goldie. John and I were able to get along better on this picture. Sometimes knowing a person’s baggage helps you both sort it out. He still didn’t like my less than authoritative style, but we could work together to shoot a great scene with Goldie. One of the most memorable scenes with audiences is when Kurt reveals to Goldie her new walk-in closet that he has built especially for her. John shot a great sequence to reveal every girl’s dream closet set to the beautiful musical score of Alan Silvestri.
I always try to put something in the actors’ hands to make them appear more real. This worked well for Kurt because he likes to gesture and have something in his hands when he talks. I told him in one scene, “Your character likes walnuts. So sometimes we will have him cracking walnuts and eating them out of the shell.” Kurt latched on to this immediately and sometimes would use it as a metaphor for needing something, anything, in his hands. He would look across the set to me and say, “Garry! I need walnuts.” I knew that meant he wanted to have something in his hand or something physical to do while he was talking. At the end of the movie he sent me a silver walnut from Tiffany as a gift.
I have now watched Overboard dozens of times, often with my children and my grandchildren. One of my favorite scenes is the end of the picture—when Goldie, wearing a beautiful gold lamé dress, leaps off a fancy yacht and swims toward Kurt’s waiting arms. The reason I like the scene so much is that we almost didn’t get to put it in the picture.
In our story the Coast Guard gets an emergency call and has to rush away from Goldie’s boat. This precipitates Goldie jumping off the boat and making a beeline for Kurt. Goldie’s first jump was hard. We were shooting in the Long Beach harbor, and the water was freezing. After a few practice runs Goldie looked at me and said, “It’s too cold. I don’t want to jump in the water anymore.” Kurt overheard this and walked over to talk to Goldie while the crew was drying her off. He said, “Honey, for the money they are paying you, you have to jump again.” She looked back at her partner, knowingly, and prepared to shoot the scene again and again. She did a great job, and so did Kurt.
Over the several months of shooting Overboard, I was able to concentrate and even find my way out of my sadness, depression, and worry about going bankrupt. Working with Goldie was the perfect antidote for my mood. The picture, unfortunately, was not a big hit, but the problem was that the studio executives marketed it wrong. They thought it was an upscale comedy and they should target all of their marketing to rich people. They were wrong. It was a comedy that would appeal to families and children, even small children. Overboard didn’t find that audience until it hit the video market, where it turned out to be a big hit. Sometimes you create a film you like yet the studio executives miss the whole point. Overboard is the perfect example of this. People with beluga caviar on their crackers didn’t want to see it, while people with peanut butter and jelly on their crackers did.
So while I had fun making the movie, Overboard was a critical and box office disappointment. My finances were still up in the air, and again I wasn’t sure what to do next. Should I do a comedy? Should I do a drama? Should I take a break and refocus my career? Some people even thought I should do a television show in order to make some fast money. Then I got the phone call that I had been waiting for. “The script for Beaches is done. Bette Midler is happy with it and ready to go,” said my agent. So my decision was made: My next picture would be Beaches, starring Bette Midler. I packed my bags and headed back to the city of my own roots, New York.
14. BEACHES
Exploring Female Friendship with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey
WHEN THE SCRIPT for Beaches was ready, my agent, Joel Cohen, went to the powers that be at Disney and told them about my ongoing financial struggles in Pasadena. He was honest with them and told them I was deeply in debt. Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg made the decision to pay $500,000 of my salary up front, before even one scene of the movie was shot. I remember thinking the advance on my salary was unprecedented, and it still is. I asked Joel why they were being so kind to me. He said they knew my work and could count on me to turn in a movie on budget and on schedule. So as I began to direct Beaches, my fifth feature film, I felt grateful for the support from Katzenberg and Disney’s head, Michael Eisner.
Both Katzenberg and Eisner are infamous in Hollywood for many things, but I will remember them most for what they taught me: Eisner taught me how to make the difficult phone call. He said every day when you are an executive or boss you will have to make at least one difficult phone call, whether it be to fire someone or to get mad at them for a job not well done. He told me to pick a time of day when you are most comfortable and confident to make that call. Katzenberg taught me that no phone call, no matter how important, should last more than two minutes. Both men taught me about the importance of an efficient telephone call.
Following a movie staring Goldie Hawn with a movie staring Bette Midler made me feel as if suddenly I was a hot movie director. Back when I started directing I’d never dreamed that I would get to direct these famous women, or that I would find my calling as a director with a talent for directing women. I was raised in a house full of women, including my grandmother, mother, and two sisters. Then I became the father of two daughters and would eventually have four granddaughters. I felt by the time I did Beaches I had developed a sensitivity for figuring out how to make women happy. And perhaps most important, I understood that if they were upset, there were a number of avenues I could travel down to bring them back to happy. It goes without saying that when female stars are happy, they act better, too.
The script for Beaches was based on the wildly popular Iris Rainer Dart book of the same name. It was the story of two childhood girlfriends, CC Bloom and Hillary Whitney, who have a falling-out and lose touch, only to reunite a
fter one is diagnosed with terminal cancer. So the premise was a heavy one: How do you help your best friend die with grace and dignity? Initially Disney didn’t want to make the movie because they thought it was too dark. That’s where I came in. I was often brought in to lighten up a script. I can just imagine the executives pitching the idea. “We’ll get Garry Marshall to direct, and then we’ll save money on the rewrite. Mr. Happy Days can lighten our dark script for less money than hiring another writer.” So that was my assignment with Beaches. I was not to dwell on the death but instead to up the stakes on the comedy and the friendship between the two women from opposite sides of the track.
Beaches needed star power to work. It was not a small independent movie but a mainstream movie-star vehicle. The script came with Bette attached, so we had to find someone who not only could play the other part but also looked right side by side with Bette. We decided to screen-test five actresses. I watched each screen test on tape but still couldn’t decide. So I watched them all again, only this time I turned off the sound. My decision became clear in an aha moment. It was Barbara Hershey who looked right with Bette. The two of them had the best chemistry. One of the other actresses was Sissy Spacek, whom I love, respect, and admire very much. But alongside Bette, Sissy looked like just another pretty, pale redhead. In a two-shot Bette and Barbara had a certain amount of class and elegance to them.
My Happy Days in Hollywood Page 17