The Toronto Star
08-18-1998
By Sid Adilman
Impressive actor Eric Stoltz just keeps trying to do what interests him most
Freckle-faced Eric Stoltz, now 37, flashes his trademark boyish grin and admits he ``certainly would have a much different career if I put more cunning thought into what I did.''
Impressing audiences first in 1982's Fast Times At Ridgemont High and then in Peter Bogdanovich's The Mask in 1985, he has deliberately chosen wildly different roles that mark him as resolutely independent. His career straddles bloated Hollywood movies like Anaconda and Rob Roy and statement-making non-studio features such as Kicking And Screaming, plus Broadway plays and a role in TV's Chicago Hope's new season this fall.
His agent goes along, Stoltz says, but not kicking and screaming. ``He doesn't make much money off much of what I do (neither does Stoltz). If he had his way, I'd only do the big Anaconda kind of movies. But they don't interest me all the time. I'm trying to do what interests me.''
What interests Stoltz most is a movie like Mr. Jealousy, a spoof about 30-something neurotics in love and in therapy that opens in Toronto Friday. He is its star and executive producer.
His character loses his thrust for love at age 15 when he jealously sees his date kissing another youth. Now grown, he meets a woman with whom he might find love. But they casually encounter her ex boyfriend and his new love. Jealous still, Stoltz's character pretends to be his best friend and joins the therapy group the ex boyfriend belongs to, to discover more about the former relationship. They become friends. Disaster flares when his best friend, who's about to be married, joins the therapy group under his real name.
``I think it's only in the past 20 or 30 years that we've been able to label behaviour as neurotic and to be able to speak openly about it because of therapy, which really hit its stride in the 1940s and '50s. Classic screwball comedies by Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks had the same issues, but weren't able to articulate them. It wasn't in vogue to label them neuroses and get to therapy.''
For Mr. Jealousy, Stoltz teamed with director-scriptwriter Noah Baumbach, with whom he made Kicking And Screaming, and producer Joel Castleberg, with whom he made Sleep With Me and Bodies, Rest & Motion. They raised the money (``won't say how much'') via pre-sales with distributors in Europe ``on the basis of my name and Annabella Sciorra's.'' She plays his intended lover.
Infra-dig references abound: Bogdanovich plays the psychiatrist and Bridget Fonda (his former girlfriend) has a cameo role. Stoltz insists both were Baumbach's idea. But he agrees, ``I helped facilitate (Fonda's participation).''
At the same time he filmed and managed executive producer chores, Stoltz also appeared in Chekhov's Three Sisters on Broadway.
``I would get up at 5 a.m., take the subway to Brooklyn, film until 7 p.m., take the subway back to Times Square, do the play until 11:30 and go to bed. That was a bit foolish. I certainly won't do two jobs at the same time again, but I enjoyed them both. I was just tired all the time.''
Being an executive producer, he says, ``probably comes from a over-stimulated ego from years of acting. ``I've produced a few films, was a production assistant on three others and worked with a lot of great producers, including David Putnam and Martin Scorsese.''
He calls Mr. Jealousy ``an oft-told tale: You fall in love, behave like a complete idiot, try to save face and move on past your ridiculousness. But the fact that we set it around group therapy sessions, I think, is what's new. We certainly play them for comic relief, but there are nuggets of real therapy. And the Chris Eigeman character (the ex boyfriend) tells my character, `Maybe it's something you need to go through.'''
And Stoltz adds, ``It's probably a very good date film. It can lead to all kinds of interesting discussions. ''