Post by Pineapples101 on Jun 18, 2009 3:37:37 GMT -5
www.avclub.com/articles/random-roles-margot-kidder,24554/
Fascinating reading.
I still maintain she was at her uber hottest in DePalma's 'Sisters'.
Superman (1978)—“Lois Lane”
MK: There you go. I’ll have that inscribed on my damn grave. I still get stopped for being Lois Lane, and I’m 60 and have two grandchildren. So it’s kind of weird.
AVC: The casting of Superman is legendary. It seems like every actor in the world tested for it.
MK: Which I didn’t know, because I was living with Tom on a ranch with my little baby. I didn’t have a clue. I just knew that I had to get back to work, because this ranch-life shit was not my cup of tea. So I had called someone in the business and said, “Please, you don’t know me, but could you get me a job?” And he said, “Well, they’re casting for Superman.” I’d never read comics, so I didn’t know much about Superman. But I read this very funny script, and I went in and did a couple scenes, and next thing I knew, I was being flown to England to screen-test, and that was that. It was also the end of my marriage. Thomas wanted me to be a subservient writer’s wife. Which was never going to happen, so our relationship had a distinct expiration date on it. “Subservient” is not something I’ve ever really been.
AVC: What was it like making Superman?
MK: Well, it’s so hard. We were a year over schedule. We were there a year and a half, the first time. And in a year and a half, you go through everything you go through in a life. So you can’t really go, “Oh, it must have been fun to work with Chris Reeve.” In a year and a half, you bonded like a family, so you know someone far too well to think something as simplistic as “Oh, it’s just fun.” You know their secrets. I mean, it was everything. It was truly—it’s a cliché to say we were family, but we really were. Especially those of us from the States, who were over in England all that time, and away from home. It was wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. I love Dick Donner with my heart and soul, and I always will. It was a whole big hunk of life, for all of us. And we grew up, and I went through a divorce. And Chris had his first baby. You know, we shared a lot of stuff, all of us. So not only did we end up with a hit movie, which surprised the heck out of me, but it was—I don’t know how to describe it—a big turning point for a lot of us. When you finally end something like that and then find yourself world-famous, it’s pretty weird, lemme tell ya. Fame is weird, is what it really is. It’s the weirdest thing in the world.
AVC: Doing a shoot that long and intense, it’s almost like you’re fighting in a war, and you have that kind of a bond with the people around you.
MK: Yeah! And it was! We were fighting the producers, and Donner was exhausted. But we shared birthdays and marriages and divorces and Mother’s Day and Christmas. You know, it was big stuff.
AVC: Wasn’t it filmed at the same time, or back to back, with Superman II?
MK: Well, it went Superman, then Star Wars would move into the studio, then Superman II would come in, then Star Wars II would come in. Umm… it was… wow. And it was London, which in those days was extraordinary and fun and lively. It was—I don’t know, it was kind of everything. It was our lives for a long time.
Superman II (1980)—“Lois Lane”
MK: Well, that wasn’t a bit—the parts we went back and shot with Richard Lester weren’t as much fun, because we were all pissed off that Donner had been fired. You can see it in our faces, where the tension is just… [Loud, emphatic disgusted sound.] Did you see Donner’s version of Superman II? Go see it. It’s so much better. It’s breathtaking. It’s so good. We would have finished it, except for a couple of scenes. I mean, it’s a far superior movie. So them firing Donner was such a betrayal to this family we’d constructed, to the script, to the notion of how it was being filmed, which was with great love and verisimilitude. We all really believed in it. And then Richard Lester, who’s a wonderful director and a very witty, delightful, charming guy, did it all kind of tongue-in-cheek and making fun of it as he did it, because I think he was slightly embarrassed to be making—Brits! He’s a Brit, you know—to be making a movie of an American cartoon character. So it was snide. Also, the producers wanted it done cheaply and fast, so it was done cheaply and fast. Three cameras at once. So all the love kind of went out, and thus all the air out of the balloon. So we were not very happy campers. And boy, did you ever see it in our faces. And you can tell which scenes in that were shot by Donner, and which weren’t. But they just released, a couple years ago, Donner’s version, which is so superior, it’s breathtaking. Go look at it. Oh, I’m so wonderful, too. God, I was heartbreaking. I thought, “Fuck, Kidder, you could have had an Oscar nomination.” I’m so good in Donner’s version, and I’m so bad in Lester’s.
AVC: Is that because the tone was so different?
MK: I think we were all in a different space. The tone is different. And Lester’s known for being clever and hip, and Donner was being, not reverential really, but really true to his vision.
AVC: There’s definitely an element of American mythology to Donner’s Superman.
MK: Yeah. So why would you hire a British director? Hel-LO!
Superman III (1983)—“Lois Lane”
MK: Well, I wasn’t in that one, of course, except for 12 lines, because I said the producers were beneath contempt as human beings to Time Out magazine. So they cut me.
AVC: Which has to be incredibly frustrating.
MK: Ehh. You know, it wasn’t a very good movie. I was having my fourth go at romance with Richard Pryor on that one. So that was okay. I got to hang out with Rich in London and drink a lot of Cristal champagne.
AVC: The year before, you had been in Some Kind Of Hero with Pryor.
MK: I fell in love with him in two seconds flat.
AVC: What about him appealed—
MK: About Richard? Oh, I defy any woman in those days—in fact, I just watched him last night. Oh, what the heck’s it on? You know Henry Heinsberg, Hesiman, the guy who writes for The New Yorker? Heisberg? [Hendrik Hertzberg. —ed.] There’s a thing on the New Yorker blog where you can click on Richard in 1977 in a sketch about the first black president. It’s wonderful. I just watched him this morning, dear Richie. He was smart and funny and sexy, and you wanted to take care of him. He was wonderful. Oh gosh. [Whispers.] This is why we’re calling the book I Slept With Everyone On Television. He was just—Richard was irresistible.
AVC: He had a vulnerability—
MK: Yeah, to say the least. I remember when we were doing the love scene in Some Kind Of Hero, we got in bed nervously. Then he looked up, and it was very genuine, and he went, “[Gasps.] Richard Pryor’s in bed with Lois Lane!” And it was so cute! [Laughs.] He was really adorable. He was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man. Much underrated as a human being. I mean, he was really generous and kind and thoughtful, and I think the best actor I’d worked with, in the sense of when you were in a scene with him, it was like doing a dance. He didn’t miss an eyelash-flicker. He was so in the present. And I remember saying to him, “God, you’re really a good actor. Why does everybody insist you be funny all the time?” And he said, “Yeah, I know my craft.” I mean, he was really a good actor, but everybody wanted him to be funny, and that didn’t work. Halfway through, the powers that be at Paramount decided he had to make [Some Kind Of Hero] funnier. And he was heartbroken about it.
AVC: He was a great dramatic actor, but he got so few chances.
MK: Nobody would let him. And most directors didn’t direct him, they just let him go, thinking suddenly he could turn in a brilliant performance just by—I don’t know what they thought. They were a little intimidated by him. I remember visiting him on The Toy, and my dear Donner was directing it, and Richard was really frustrated, because Donner wasn’t directing him. Donner had directed me so meticulously, I don’t think I could have failed with Donner. But I think he, too, was a little flummoxed as to how to approach Richard. So they didn’t get along, which broke my heart.
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987)—“Lois Lane”
MK: Oh, God! [Laughs.] What a dreadful piece of shit.
AVC: You must have been a little relieved that the Salkinds weren’t in charge anymore, and Golan-Globus had taken over the franchise.
MK: I was, and I actually loved Menahem Golan, who was outrageous! I don’t even know if he’s still alive. Is he? A wild, outrageous human being, who’s sort of irresistible. [Laughs.] I think he’s probably a crook. I mean, he’s all sorts of things. But he was just bigger than life. But the movie was not good, and Chris [Reeve] was really full of himself because he’d written part of it, and thought it was going to be a hit. So Chris and I were really bickering on that one. I was yelling things like, “Don’t tell me how to act!”
AVC: I guess the idea was, to get Reeve back, they had to give him a bigger role behind the scenes.
MK: Yeah but once it was a flop, Chris pretended he hadn’t written it.
AVC: It had a very heavy-handed sort of anti—
MK: It certainly did. It was a bad one.
AVC: Quest For Peace was so much cheaper than the other movies. At what point did you realize, “Okay, this isn’t what I signed up for”?
MK: Well you realized it when you read that dreadful script, for starters. So you got paid, and you went and did it. I don’t regret it. I usually have fun in bad situations, because things make me laugh that don’t make other people laugh. I’m a little bit sick. So it was probably another one—you know, you were in London. You were getting paid enormous sums of money. What’s to complain about?
AVC: Golan’s kind of a fascinating figure. He—
MK: He’s outrageous! He is really outrageous. I did a version, a very bad version, of Crime And Punishment that he directed in Russia, with Vanessa Redgrave and John Neville and John Hurt and Crispin Glover. Now, he was not a good director, but again, you had this humongous personality. [Laughs.] Just this humongous, humongous personality, who took it upon himself to rewrite Dostoyevsky, and got very flustered whenever Crispin Glover would point out that the script was betraying the book. At one point, I remember he screamed my favorite line in movie history, when we were arguing about a scene. I had this great death, initially, where I died in great sobbing heaps on a bridge, and I go mad and die of tuberculosis, blood spurting out of my mouth and lungs. Every actor’s dream. And we got there, and there was some demonstration and then a counter-demonstration by the communists that day, and it was really exciting coming to Russia. And I’ve always loved Russia, and Russian history. So I was kind of, again, having a really good time. But I remember getting to the set, and Menahem said, “I’ve cut the death. We can’t do it anymore, because the communists are demonstrating,” or something. And so Crispin said “Cut the death? You can’t cut the death, it says right here in the book—” and he brings out this dog-eared copy of Crime And Punishment and Menahem says “This book, I’m sick of hearing about this book. I wrote the script!” Which was just my favorite thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, it was just fabulous.
And then he tried to cheat people, as Menahem will do. There was some lawsuit going on where he’d taken some American ship that he’d rented, shot it full of holes for a movie, returned it full of holes, and said it had been shot up in one of the many Palestinian-Israeli skirmishes. I mean, he’s one of those characters that would only be in movies, and who is delicious. And I don’t have a clue what he’s doing now. I’m living in a little town in the Rocky Mountains, so all this is very, very, very far from my immediate life.
AVC: But he always had a bit of con-man—
MK: Well, in a cheerful way! Remember when The Producers first came out, Zero Mostel? There’s a bit of that. I mean he’s just—yeah, sure, he’s a con man. But he’s so much bigger than life that you just laugh. You kind of can’t resist him, even when he’s conning you. [Laughs.] I don’t think I got paid for that, and everybody’s checks bounced. And he told me I should have been honored to be working with Vanessa Redgrave, and that was true, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have to pay me.
Fascinating reading.
I still maintain she was at her uber hottest in DePalma's 'Sisters'.
Superman (1978)—“Lois Lane”
MK: There you go. I’ll have that inscribed on my damn grave. I still get stopped for being Lois Lane, and I’m 60 and have two grandchildren. So it’s kind of weird.
AVC: The casting of Superman is legendary. It seems like every actor in the world tested for it.
MK: Which I didn’t know, because I was living with Tom on a ranch with my little baby. I didn’t have a clue. I just knew that I had to get back to work, because this ranch-life shit was not my cup of tea. So I had called someone in the business and said, “Please, you don’t know me, but could you get me a job?” And he said, “Well, they’re casting for Superman.” I’d never read comics, so I didn’t know much about Superman. But I read this very funny script, and I went in and did a couple scenes, and next thing I knew, I was being flown to England to screen-test, and that was that. It was also the end of my marriage. Thomas wanted me to be a subservient writer’s wife. Which was never going to happen, so our relationship had a distinct expiration date on it. “Subservient” is not something I’ve ever really been.
AVC: What was it like making Superman?
MK: Well, it’s so hard. We were a year over schedule. We were there a year and a half, the first time. And in a year and a half, you go through everything you go through in a life. So you can’t really go, “Oh, it must have been fun to work with Chris Reeve.” In a year and a half, you bonded like a family, so you know someone far too well to think something as simplistic as “Oh, it’s just fun.” You know their secrets. I mean, it was everything. It was truly—it’s a cliché to say we were family, but we really were. Especially those of us from the States, who were over in England all that time, and away from home. It was wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. I love Dick Donner with my heart and soul, and I always will. It was a whole big hunk of life, for all of us. And we grew up, and I went through a divorce. And Chris had his first baby. You know, we shared a lot of stuff, all of us. So not only did we end up with a hit movie, which surprised the heck out of me, but it was—I don’t know how to describe it—a big turning point for a lot of us. When you finally end something like that and then find yourself world-famous, it’s pretty weird, lemme tell ya. Fame is weird, is what it really is. It’s the weirdest thing in the world.
AVC: Doing a shoot that long and intense, it’s almost like you’re fighting in a war, and you have that kind of a bond with the people around you.
MK: Yeah! And it was! We were fighting the producers, and Donner was exhausted. But we shared birthdays and marriages and divorces and Mother’s Day and Christmas. You know, it was big stuff.
AVC: Wasn’t it filmed at the same time, or back to back, with Superman II?
MK: Well, it went Superman, then Star Wars would move into the studio, then Superman II would come in, then Star Wars II would come in. Umm… it was… wow. And it was London, which in those days was extraordinary and fun and lively. It was—I don’t know, it was kind of everything. It was our lives for a long time.
Superman II (1980)—“Lois Lane”
MK: Well, that wasn’t a bit—the parts we went back and shot with Richard Lester weren’t as much fun, because we were all pissed off that Donner had been fired. You can see it in our faces, where the tension is just… [Loud, emphatic disgusted sound.] Did you see Donner’s version of Superman II? Go see it. It’s so much better. It’s breathtaking. It’s so good. We would have finished it, except for a couple of scenes. I mean, it’s a far superior movie. So them firing Donner was such a betrayal to this family we’d constructed, to the script, to the notion of how it was being filmed, which was with great love and verisimilitude. We all really believed in it. And then Richard Lester, who’s a wonderful director and a very witty, delightful, charming guy, did it all kind of tongue-in-cheek and making fun of it as he did it, because I think he was slightly embarrassed to be making—Brits! He’s a Brit, you know—to be making a movie of an American cartoon character. So it was snide. Also, the producers wanted it done cheaply and fast, so it was done cheaply and fast. Three cameras at once. So all the love kind of went out, and thus all the air out of the balloon. So we were not very happy campers. And boy, did you ever see it in our faces. And you can tell which scenes in that were shot by Donner, and which weren’t. But they just released, a couple years ago, Donner’s version, which is so superior, it’s breathtaking. Go look at it. Oh, I’m so wonderful, too. God, I was heartbreaking. I thought, “Fuck, Kidder, you could have had an Oscar nomination.” I’m so good in Donner’s version, and I’m so bad in Lester’s.
AVC: Is that because the tone was so different?
MK: I think we were all in a different space. The tone is different. And Lester’s known for being clever and hip, and Donner was being, not reverential really, but really true to his vision.
AVC: There’s definitely an element of American mythology to Donner’s Superman.
MK: Yeah. So why would you hire a British director? Hel-LO!
Superman III (1983)—“Lois Lane”
MK: Well, I wasn’t in that one, of course, except for 12 lines, because I said the producers were beneath contempt as human beings to Time Out magazine. So they cut me.
AVC: Which has to be incredibly frustrating.
MK: Ehh. You know, it wasn’t a very good movie. I was having my fourth go at romance with Richard Pryor on that one. So that was okay. I got to hang out with Rich in London and drink a lot of Cristal champagne.
AVC: The year before, you had been in Some Kind Of Hero with Pryor.
MK: I fell in love with him in two seconds flat.
AVC: What about him appealed—
MK: About Richard? Oh, I defy any woman in those days—in fact, I just watched him last night. Oh, what the heck’s it on? You know Henry Heinsberg, Hesiman, the guy who writes for The New Yorker? Heisberg? [Hendrik Hertzberg. —ed.] There’s a thing on the New Yorker blog where you can click on Richard in 1977 in a sketch about the first black president. It’s wonderful. I just watched him this morning, dear Richie. He was smart and funny and sexy, and you wanted to take care of him. He was wonderful. Oh gosh. [Whispers.] This is why we’re calling the book I Slept With Everyone On Television. He was just—Richard was irresistible.
AVC: He had a vulnerability—
MK: Yeah, to say the least. I remember when we were doing the love scene in Some Kind Of Hero, we got in bed nervously. Then he looked up, and it was very genuine, and he went, “[Gasps.] Richard Pryor’s in bed with Lois Lane!” And it was so cute! [Laughs.] He was really adorable. He was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man. Much underrated as a human being. I mean, he was really generous and kind and thoughtful, and I think the best actor I’d worked with, in the sense of when you were in a scene with him, it was like doing a dance. He didn’t miss an eyelash-flicker. He was so in the present. And I remember saying to him, “God, you’re really a good actor. Why does everybody insist you be funny all the time?” And he said, “Yeah, I know my craft.” I mean, he was really a good actor, but everybody wanted him to be funny, and that didn’t work. Halfway through, the powers that be at Paramount decided he had to make [Some Kind Of Hero] funnier. And he was heartbroken about it.
AVC: He was a great dramatic actor, but he got so few chances.
MK: Nobody would let him. And most directors didn’t direct him, they just let him go, thinking suddenly he could turn in a brilliant performance just by—I don’t know what they thought. They were a little intimidated by him. I remember visiting him on The Toy, and my dear Donner was directing it, and Richard was really frustrated, because Donner wasn’t directing him. Donner had directed me so meticulously, I don’t think I could have failed with Donner. But I think he, too, was a little flummoxed as to how to approach Richard. So they didn’t get along, which broke my heart.
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987)—“Lois Lane”
MK: Oh, God! [Laughs.] What a dreadful piece of shit.
AVC: You must have been a little relieved that the Salkinds weren’t in charge anymore, and Golan-Globus had taken over the franchise.
MK: I was, and I actually loved Menahem Golan, who was outrageous! I don’t even know if he’s still alive. Is he? A wild, outrageous human being, who’s sort of irresistible. [Laughs.] I think he’s probably a crook. I mean, he’s all sorts of things. But he was just bigger than life. But the movie was not good, and Chris [Reeve] was really full of himself because he’d written part of it, and thought it was going to be a hit. So Chris and I were really bickering on that one. I was yelling things like, “Don’t tell me how to act!”
AVC: I guess the idea was, to get Reeve back, they had to give him a bigger role behind the scenes.
MK: Yeah but once it was a flop, Chris pretended he hadn’t written it.
AVC: It had a very heavy-handed sort of anti—
MK: It certainly did. It was a bad one.
AVC: Quest For Peace was so much cheaper than the other movies. At what point did you realize, “Okay, this isn’t what I signed up for”?
MK: Well you realized it when you read that dreadful script, for starters. So you got paid, and you went and did it. I don’t regret it. I usually have fun in bad situations, because things make me laugh that don’t make other people laugh. I’m a little bit sick. So it was probably another one—you know, you were in London. You were getting paid enormous sums of money. What’s to complain about?
AVC: Golan’s kind of a fascinating figure. He—
MK: He’s outrageous! He is really outrageous. I did a version, a very bad version, of Crime And Punishment that he directed in Russia, with Vanessa Redgrave and John Neville and John Hurt and Crispin Glover. Now, he was not a good director, but again, you had this humongous personality. [Laughs.] Just this humongous, humongous personality, who took it upon himself to rewrite Dostoyevsky, and got very flustered whenever Crispin Glover would point out that the script was betraying the book. At one point, I remember he screamed my favorite line in movie history, when we were arguing about a scene. I had this great death, initially, where I died in great sobbing heaps on a bridge, and I go mad and die of tuberculosis, blood spurting out of my mouth and lungs. Every actor’s dream. And we got there, and there was some demonstration and then a counter-demonstration by the communists that day, and it was really exciting coming to Russia. And I’ve always loved Russia, and Russian history. So I was kind of, again, having a really good time. But I remember getting to the set, and Menahem said, “I’ve cut the death. We can’t do it anymore, because the communists are demonstrating,” or something. And so Crispin said “Cut the death? You can’t cut the death, it says right here in the book—” and he brings out this dog-eared copy of Crime And Punishment and Menahem says “This book, I’m sick of hearing about this book. I wrote the script!” Which was just my favorite thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, it was just fabulous.
And then he tried to cheat people, as Menahem will do. There was some lawsuit going on where he’d taken some American ship that he’d rented, shot it full of holes for a movie, returned it full of holes, and said it had been shot up in one of the many Palestinian-Israeli skirmishes. I mean, he’s one of those characters that would only be in movies, and who is delicious. And I don’t have a clue what he’s doing now. I’m living in a little town in the Rocky Mountains, so all this is very, very, very far from my immediate life.
AVC: But he always had a bit of con-man—
MK: Well, in a cheerful way! Remember when The Producers first came out, Zero Mostel? There’s a bit of that. I mean he’s just—yeah, sure, he’s a con man. But he’s so much bigger than life that you just laugh. You kind of can’t resist him, even when he’s conning you. [Laughs.] I don’t think I got paid for that, and everybody’s checks bounced. And he told me I should have been honored to be working with Vanessa Redgrave, and that was true, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have to pay me.
