|
INTERVIEW WITH MR. SHOWBIZ
Magazine / Source: Mr. Showbiz, June 1999 |
America's drama queen fiddles with the school system in
Music of the Heart.
If there's anything stranger than the idea of Meryl Streep collaborating with Freddy Kruger creator Wes Craven, it's the notion that the 10-time Academy Award nominee (and two-time winner) generally regarded as America's greatest actress is playing a role originally intended for Madonna.
Streep and Craven's new film, Music of the Heart, is an unabashedly uplifting biopic of East Harlem violin teacher Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras, whose story was first told in the Oscar-nominated, 1996 documentary Small Wonders. Guaspari-Tzavaras, a divorced single mother of two boys returned to the New York neighborhood after years abroad as a military wife. While living in Greece, the artistically restless musician purchased 50 violins with the idea that she would one day teach children how to play. Her dream had laid dormant for years by the time she returned to East Harlem. Then a friend suggested the suddenly single Guaspari-Tzavaras seek work in the public school system. Intrigued, she applied and was granted the chance to teach local students — provided she supply her own violins.
Making a movie of the plucky teacher's inspiring story has been a pet project of Craven's for years. Madonna initially snared the plum lead role and even devoted herself to rigorous violin training to prepare for it. But the director and the pop diva each envisioned the story differently. They eventually agreed — amicably, Craven insists — to part ways, leaving Music of the Heart without a star and in danger of getting shelved. Enter Streep, who initially rebuffed Craven's entreaties, but was won over when the desperate director poured out his heart in a pleading letter.
For the reigning grand dame of American leading ladies — who learned to play the violin so no doubles would be needed — portraying Guaspari-Tzavaras is merely the latest accomplishment in a career that began with a cameo in 1977's Julia and includes such cinematic touchstones as Sophie's Choice, Kramer vs. Kramer, Out of Africa, Silkwood, and The Bridges of Madison County. The clout of Streep's artistic reputation is undeniable. "As soon as she came on," says Craven, "the world-class violinists like Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman were calling [me] back. Before they were saying, 'Get somebody who looks like me.' And [then] Gloria Estefan came aboard."
Now the title tune by 'N Sync and Estefan (who's featured in the film) is a No. 1 single, there's a White House reception celebrating Guaspari-Tzavaras in the works, and Streep, yet again, is being touted as a Best Actress Academy Award nominee. Not that it's gone to her head, says Craven: "She was an extraordinary combination [of] spirit and talent. You know how noisy New York is. We'd be filming on the street and she said, 'Don't worry, I dubbed all of Sophie's Choice and Out of Africa. Don't worry.' She was very down to earth."
Not unlike she was during her chat with Mr. Showbiz in Manhattan recently. Streep — almost like Robin Williams — can't help being animated; and she frequently changes voices and expressions as she talks. Wearing a casually dressy, all-black ensemble with a Japanese motif and scarf by Kinnu, "an Indian lady" she discovered in a shop near Soho, the chic star settled in with a luxuriant sigh — a mixture of whoop and singsong — and proceeded to explain just how persuasive Craven's letter was, why she never really lived in California, and what she thinks of actors practicing politics.
The year goes by so quickly. When we sat down to chat about One True Thing last year, you were talking about having neck pains from the violin —
And my neck is still a little cramped!
And now Music of the Heart is ready to hit theaters. Did you say yes immediately when it came to you?
I said no. Immediately I said no. Because they said, "We're all geared up and ready to go." They had [just] lost Madonna and one month they could conceivably keep people, everybody stretched on salary to hold everyone. They had children and lessons and the whole thing. I said, "It's great. Why couldn't you have come to me six months ago!" [Laughs.] But I said I couldn't do it at that time.
Wes [Craven, the director] wrote me this letter. I didn't [even] know him; this letter came out of the blue. And it was so heartfelt, and personal, and specific a plea. Because the project really meant a lot to him. And that's something you never really know when a script comes or the agent calls.
So generally you never know what level of emotional intensity is behind a given project?
Yeah, [or whether] the guy is doing it because he feels he should be doing a comedy this time. You don't know if people are invested in [a movie] in a serious way. He just really won me with his fierce passion about [Music of the Heart] in the letter. Really telling me things — as I said, personal — about his life, and how he came to be; who he is, and how he decided to drop a certain amount of credibility in the business and [at the] box-office and everything, to be able to do this film; how he'd been a teacher. Why, it was … an amazing letter. That's why when I got on the phone I could say, "Yeah, but can't I still have another month?" So he begged Harvey [Weinstein, of Miramax] for a stay of execution. And we got two months; I got eight weeks to practice before we began. Then we started.
Your violin coach was …
Sandy Park.
And you had never played the violin before in your life.
Never picked it up. [Pauses.] I think teaching is everything. There are a lot of great subjects in the world, very interesting subjects. Who's going to bring you to the subject? Who's going to interpret for you in this new land? It's everything! Every subject I ever studied, if the teacher was great, I got a lot out of it. And other things, if the teacher didn't come alive — well, my Sandy was so great to me. And the most patient person in America. And I don't know what's wrong with her ears, that she could listen to me six hours a day. She took me through a crash course. It's like the Berlitz blitz of violin study.
People see your movies and say, "Oh! She makes it look so easy." An accent, a character — now the violin.
The violin was a new thing, a hard thing. The violin was sort of what I needed to do in order to play the part. It was just something I had to do. It wasn't central to this particular woman's story. How well I play the violin is not that important. Who she was and her story being told — that's the thing that struck me when I watched it.
You never know how these things are going to turn out. But it's really the story of a lot of women, single moms just pulled in nine different directions. [My character is] pulled by financial worries, emotional problems, and kids growing up and out of her control, and who she is in the world, and what impact she has on her daily life, and the world at large. A lot of women contend with those things. She just seems so real to me. And she's not the independent woman at all, as we see when she begins her single life in New York, left by her husband for another woman. There's that devastating scene when she gets the call from her husband. She can't wait to go back and start what sounds like a terrible marriage all over again.
I have four children and I don't want to raise four children —
Alone?
No. Raising one alone is a hard thing. I have friends [who] do it. It's a hard thing. Everything is on you. What goes wrong, what goes [right]. [Laughs.] You never know, until your children grow up and are in the world, how they are able to manage it. That's when you can assess what kind of job you did. So it's an important, interesting, and unusual role in what I see for women at my age.
Did you meet Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras, the woman you play in the film? Was that important?
Yes that was important. I knew she'd be watching me like a hawk. She was on the set, oh yes! I had to send her away when I played the violin. I really didn't mind her watching me be her, but when I played, I would just be unnerved. She's larger than life. A real force.
Were you vocally trying to match her?
A little bit. There was a certain amount that I stole and took and used. Because I thought it was germane. To the story. The things that she yells at people, I yelled at people.
She almost seems a bit bitchy. She yells at her students.
A lot of people have said that.
They think you're too tough?
Yeah, when I was in Venice, the foreign press was like that. Here's the thing, I think you can say whatever you want to people who know that you love them. That was the thing I never wanted to make a mistake about with her. Because she does come down hard on these kids — [but] they know she loves them. She goes further than anybody [in] their behalf, and they know it.
Especially when we see what she walks into at the beginning, with the classroom in chaos. We see what she has to do to get these kids to pay attention.
Yes.
Let me ask you about Wes again: you get the letter from him, you call and say yes, and try to get another month. At that point he owes you the movie. If he didn't have somebody to play Roberta, this dream of his was going to go. Does that make him feel like on the set Meryl Streep can do whatever she wants with the character? Of did he have a vision for Roberta?
He had a vision about her but we were in cahoots about that. We both agreed. We talked about it before we began. I really trusted his eye. And a lot of that is because I knew he loved this story and had really fought hard for it. I trusted that if he said something, that he wanted something different. We didn't really disagree.
Did you tease him about his horror movies? Show up as Freddie Kruger one day?
Noooo! [Laughs.] That was a sore point. "I haven't seen any of your movies." No, I'm kidding. You know, he's very droll. Very smart. It's weird because just before I got this letter, I'd said no to the movie, and to my agent, and I thought that was it.
Has this ever happened before where you turned something down and it comes back and you change your mind?
No. It doesn't happen that way. With me, no means no. Really. I may take a long time to decide but I don't vacillate that much. And usually it takes me a long time to say no. If I get something I [really] want to do, I know right away. It's harder for me to say yes when I can [only] see a little possibility here and there. But this was like a physical impossibility, it had nothing to do with the material.
Because you had to learn to play the violin before filming?
I respect the art of music too much to do just a half-assed job, and fake it, and have somebody's else's hand. Plus I knew they didn't have the money to dick around with that stuff.
The movie has a jump, a 10-year gap in it. Movies don't generally film in sequence —
Pretty much he did do that. Because we were all on location, all in Manhattan. We were all over the place. No studio. It was real. We were really uptown. People were great. Wes did as much as he could in sequence because he knew [giggles] the more difficult music comes later. Sometimes he couldn't.
What about the kids? They always say, "Don't work with kids or animals" and you've got 'em both.
[Assumes peevish mother's tone.] I work with kids all day.
Every day. And a lot of the night. It's not something I'm not used to. Only these kids listen to me which is different from my own. That's interesting too. I'd go, "OK, everybody be quiet." And they'd be quiet. I could do that for hours [at home] and it's like my voice doesn't exist.
Here's the thing: I was so focused on [getting] up to snuff on the violin, that I didn't think about the acting. You know what I mean? Until I got to the set. Then it was, "Oh s--t! Ohmigod, I've got words! I've got to say some things in this scene. What were they?" The script lady would help. But the kids were a lot like that way too. They knew what they were supposed to say — and then they'd forget. We were all looking over the pages and it made it a little more immediate, the encounter with these kids. The thing with children, and that's because I've worked with children before —
In The River Wild.
Yeah, but that's a great actor, Joe Mazzello. A lot of these kids were not actors. My own in this movie [the boys who played Roberta's sons at various ages] were wonderful actors but the regular kids in the classes were just kids. Some of them were in Roberta's classes, or we pulled them in.
They had to be able to play violin.
Yeah. And they'll never give you a phony thing. But they'll either do it, once or twice. And then they won't. Then they're just tired.
So you have to be ready.
[Nods.] You have to be ready. And that's the thing. In the beginning we had to get our sea legs about [working with] them. Speak quietly to the DP [director of photography] and say, "It may not be your prettiest shot, the one they're going to get. But they're going to do it when they do it, and we're going to have to use that one." Because it's just unbelievable when [the kids] are just who they are, and they are right on.
What about being on the stage of Carnegie Hall. Had you ever been up there before, for benefits or whatever?
No, I hadn't. But it occupies hallowed space. Certainly growing up in the tri-state area, that was it. Mecca.
How long did you film there? A week?
No, only two days, because we couldn't tie up the hall. For me it was like being in Heaven. The second day it was five o'clock in the morning, and we wrapped and I said, "God! It just flew by!" And Wes [just] looked at me. Here he'd been wrangling 2,000 extras, all these great musicians who all have really important lives, and the children, and the music. And crane shots. It was a real ordeal for him, I guess. But I had a ball, it was a real Walter Mitty moment.
What about the actual music we see for the final concert with Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman? Usually they film the action to a prerecorded playback.
No, these people played. They played on every take, we all did. It was a nightmare for the music editor. That's why they had so many different cameras shooting at the same time. Because ideally you use the same take because incrementally, the piece, the Bach Double, is different each time they do it. Probably only musicians would hear [the difference]. But I think it's fitted together to one track but he might have switched sections — you'd have to ask Wes.
You've been an activist in the past. Was one of the reasons to do this film its message, about the need for musical programs in schools?
You see, I think everything has a message. Some of them have bad messages and there are good ones. Everything has a message, everything has something. It goes into all of us. Pure entertainment has a message, you don't think of it, [but] it's there. Look, I can't pretend that arts education in schools is not really important. I think it's everything.
I once went to the White House for one of those Kennedy Center Honors. It was back in the olden days, Alexander Haig [Nixon's post-Watergate Chief of Staff and Reagan's Secretary of State] was there. He got up there at the dinner and he was not the most popular person in the arts community. He gave this speech and it was extraordinary. [Assumes tone of elder statesman.] "I'm a military man, been a military man all my life. But the measure of society, the measure of a culture, is not how many airplanes you have and it's not how many skirmishes you've fought and won around the world. The measure of our society will be the music we've made, the art we've given the world. That is the thing that resides, that's the only thing that matters." He was not speaking from notes, he was saying what he really thought. And I completely agree with him!
Given your activism, how do you look at your showbiz contemporaries flirting with politics: Beatty, Schwarzenegger, Cybill Shepherd. What do you make of it all?
[With mock gravity.] It's only a matter of time before Tom Hanks comes to lead us.
Would you like to play Hillary?
[Assumes Master Thespian tone.] No, I wasn't asked to play in Primary Colors by the director. [Reverts to normal.] No, I'm passionate about issues and not terribly political. It's different.
So you'll never run for office you think?
I'm sure of it.
Music of the Heart sort of fell into your lap. But it's odd to think of Madonna and Meryl Streep doing the same role.
Not really. You can see where she'd be pulled into this. She's very like Roberta in her background, I think [she's] from Detroit or something. She really understands music, Madonna, she really understands its power. I think she would have been a great Roberta.
Do you know what you're doing next? You've been announced for this movie with Michael Douglas.
[With mock irritability.] I cannot be pinned down.
Is it because the scripts aren't done?
I'm not sure until I'm sure. I'm not even sure then [laughs], but I'll sign on.
Weren't you at one point considering an All About Eve-style drama with Cameron Diaz?
Oh, there was that. Scott Rudin [the megaproducer who did Marvin's Room with Streep] had a film he wanted to make, sort of an update of All About Eve. He had that out to some directors but I don't think it ever … that was one script that was not right. It was one of those things where they jumped the gun and were so eager to [announce it]. But in the beginning was the word and if that's OK, you can create life.
In the '80s, you moved out to California and now you're back here on the East Coast in Connecticut. There's been this shake-up among agents, with William Morris, for example, shutting down its New York base; there is no movie department here anymore. What's your take on all of that?
I don't like that. They want to have all the business out there, because it's the divided loyalties, the crowned heads of England thing.
You don't feel isolated from the business then, living here?
Yes, I feel isolated. I covet my isolation. And by the way, I never really moved to California. We rented a series of houses there and then, in a moment of weakness, bought one. Which we lived in for about a year and then sold for an enormous loss.
Oh God!
[Laughs.] It was worth it! This is a great place, especially for children.
I know you've set your career priorities by your family and don't have time for the stage. But do you ever think of doing something for just two months? Any producer would love to have you do Broadway, even for a limited time.
I know. I'd love to. But it's just that I'd have to relocate everybody because I'm just not going to do that helicopter thing anymore. I did that for three movies. It just began that about 4 p.m. I'd start to be terrified. And [then there was] getting up at four in the morning, and [I'd] be terrified for another couple of hours, and then I'd be all right all day. Four months back and forth everyday.
Getting up in something that's for civilian evacuation of war zones. And when they go down, they just go.
More moving parts than anything that flies. More than anything, so more chances. I'm sure helicopters are wonderful, and everyone that piloted me was very good and competent. But you just feel you have a certain number of chits you're using up, and maybe you shouldn't push your luck.
You came to the Oscars last March with your daughter, who looked so lovely, as if she's ready to spring forth.
[Motherly tone comes back.] Into her junior year. She's in high school. That's what she's ready to do.
Does she seem eager to head off and do summer stock someplace?
No, not really. [Sighs deeply.] You know maybe they're leery of it because of me. I remember that Robert Redford [her co-star in Out of Africa] was always so leery of his relationship to what he did, the hyperbole, the celebrity. And he kept his kids separate. Maybe it turns them off in a way. I don't really want to do that. Yet I know how hard it is.
You went into it with this great —
I always went into it with this great ambivalence. Always. I remember signing up for the law boards when I was at my last year at Yale. It took me a long time to realize that, "Yes! It is a worthwhile way to spend your whole life." Part of it is I had so much success so early, that it just seemed fun. And also [it was] like "Well, this can't last!" The sword of Damocles is over your head. Even if you're brilliant, it's going to come down. I don't know.
When did you accept the fact that your career would continue? Without that fear?
I've never gotten over it. And also when I was beginning, early on, Al Pacino was the first famous person I met. I was walking along the street with him and people were screaming out car windows. This was around The Godfather stuff. I thought, "I never want that to happen to me! Never, never." That seemed to me the biggest nightmare. He couldn't go anywhere. It affected him, he was always hunched over and hunted. Horrible. A horrible way to live.
He seems to have survived.
He's fine.
Did you ever go through a period of people screaming, "Meryl! Meryl!"?
It's different. But I'm sure that had to do with my absenteeism, the possibility that I don't always want the attention to be on me. With my kids, it's a little more on who they are and who they're going to be. Let it be a little more wide open. More possibilities than just acting.
Can you really show up at school, though, and people won't make a fuss?
Yes! Because we've made a commitment to one place and we've been there a long time.
