Table Talk

moderated by Nancy Griffin
Premiere, Women in Hollywood Special Issue 1993

PREMIERE: Do actresses in Hollywood ever get together and talk about women's issues?
SALLY FIELD: When I was invited to be part of this, I was very excited, because I've been trying to get a group of women together to do this. Actresses and other women in the industry need to have contact with each other. Not to tell sob stories, but to kick each other in the butt creatively. At social gatherings, we end up in a corner saying, "How did you behave in this situation?" and "Did anyone ever do this to you?"
DEMI MOORE: Yes, last weeek, three of us — Nicole Kidman and Sally and I — were talking about how to deal with certain men who have a problem with strong women.

How to do you deal with it?
MOORE: You're just smarter. [Laughter] You are. And you just size up a situation and take an alternate route. It's not just with men, but it so happens that some men are uncomfortable with women who are very fortright.
FIELD: Well, it's also that actors are second-class citizens. The feeling still exists in the industry and always will, because they need us and they hate us for it, you know?
JODIE FOSTER: Part of it is about directors being parents and actors being children. You are there to dance and sing when somebody says, "Action!" And the directors are there to analyze and dissect and move things around — and to guide and protect you. And there are good parents and bad parents. Most actors spend the first twoo weeks of a shoot figuring out what they can get away witth — can they get the car keys? I become blindly devotional. It's important for me to say, "Absolutely, yes sir. Stand on my head? Yeah!"
FIELD: Being an actor is a very, very psychologically strange things to do.
FOSTER: There are a lot of people who become directors, men and women, so they can push you around, make you cry. Then they say, "Oh, it's okay." You know, there's a lot of sickness in that.
MOORE: I've seen some very dysfunctional sets! [Laughter]
FOSTER: But sometimes that particular neurotic agenda is really about being progressive and about being good. Somebody like Jonathan Demme, for example. I really believe that he became a director so he could make people feel better about themselves.
FIELD: It's fascinating that every year some of the biggest-grossing films are 'women's films,' meaning that the central characters are women. I guess that constitutes a woman's film. What is a woman's film?
FOSTER: Well, women are going to the movies more. And women bring guys.

Will the fact that Sherry Lansing has taken over at Paramount have an impact on women's movies?
FIELD: Just because Sherry is the head of a studio does not mean she needs to do more films about women. I feel strongly about this. She should only be looking for films that she thinks work. She cannot lean toward wwomen, because she will fail — and we need her not to fail. The only way there are going to be more films about women is if they get successful.
FOSTER: Everybody also says, "You know, a woman director would be great for this." Well, what does "a woman director" mean? Does it mean Kathryn Bigelow or flowers or small relationship movies that don't have really sttrong structures? You don't want to perpetuate that myth by thinking that if you put a bunch of women at the head of studios, you're going to have a gentler and kinder studio system.

Do those small relationship movies have to be unsuccessful? Can the studios deal with them?
FOSTER: It's not the answer at all to your prayers to have a small movie at a big studio, because chances are they'll want to turn it into Home Alone. Of course, if you have Home Alone, great.
MOORE: I got caught in that. I did a very little movie [Moral Thoughts]; it was made for ten cents. And when I did the junket for A Few Good Men, everyone commented that it didn't do well. I said, "It made its money back three times over, and it did very well internationally." But there was a certain perception that because I was in it and Bruce [Willis] was in it, and because it didn't make $100 million, it was a failure. And for me it was a complete success.

Let's put aside box office for a minute and talk about sexuality in the movies.
FIELD: This country has a very adolescent attitude toward sexuality.
MOORE: That's for sure.
FIELD: [American men] are like fifteen-year-old boys with a hard-on 24 hours a day, and they just either want to rub up against a wall or, you know, have these posters hanging in their basements. Europe is much more grown-up about it. It can come in all shapes and sizes — it can be a very young woman or a very old woman. And because I am 46, I am fighting for the first time not just Hollywood but our society, which Hollywood only reflects in its films.
MOORE: You see Sean Connery with a woman of 20 to 30, but if you were to put a woman in her 60s with a young man, then the story has to be about that. Rob Reiner did me such a great service in A Few Good Men because there's no romantic relationship with Tom [Cruise}. We don't have a kiss — nothing. When this project was at TriStar in the previous administration, they read the script and te first notes back to [screenwriter] Aaron Sorkin were, "Why is Jo female? She doesn't take her clothes off, and there's no love scene."
FIELD: What?!
FOSTER: And you know what? That's why you have Rob Reiner. That's why Thelma and Louise is what it is. Because when they said to Ridley Scott, who can make $45 million movies, "Listen, two women over 30 on the road together — who wants to see it?" he said, "Too bad. I'm making it for $17 million, and I'm making it the way I want." So there is a moral responsibility for people who can greenlight pictures, and who can be quote-unquote big elements in a film, to either cut their price, for example, or stick to their guns with casting. Because 95 percent of the people will always try to maintain the status quo. It's the other 5 percent that move the art form further.

Do the women-from-hell thrillers — Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Basic Instinct — benefit women in any way?
FIELD: You can't group all those pictures together. I personally think that Fatal Attraction is a wonderful movie.
ALL: Me too.
FIELD: It was a valid look at a complicated, tortured, damaged character. Hand That Rocks the Cradle was just sort of harmless. But Basic Instinct...
FOSTER:...Everybody — members of any union, people who are married — should picket the movie.
MOORE: But was it a help or a hindrance? I believe relating sex with violence in any sense is wrong. Making rape romantic on any level is the biggest crime that exists in film. And perpetuating the image of a woman who is just a conniving bitch is not helpful.

The filmmakers have argued that the woman has all the power in Basic Instinct.
FOSTER: Thanks anyway.
FIELD: You can take the power and run with it, babe.
FOSTER: The movie is so ill-informed about human behavior that it's almost insulting to bring it into a conversation about women. It doesn't mean it didn't appeal to the consciousness, and it doesn't mean it shouldn't have been made. Criticism and discussion of movies like that is very important. In terms of women, I mean, it's catastrophic, but it's so laughable that it's almost not to be taken seriously.
FIELD: Yeah, except for all those millions of people who crowded into the theater to see Sharon Stone cross and uncross her legs.
FOSTER: You know, male fantasy is interesting terrain. Look at the Louis Malle movie Damage. That's fascinating, when you really look at what male fantasy is. Fatal Attraction is another example. Nobody is saying, "Don't make movies about male fantasy,' or "Don't make movies about women who are complex and evil." The thing to stress is that you want to create characters that are real.

Why do you think movie sex is often so bad?
FIELD: Movie sex? Why is sex often so bad? [Laughter]
MOORE: I don't know, it's funny. I had love scenes in Indecent Proposal — many of them. And it's very, very difficult.

First things first: how does Robert Redford look without his clothes on? [Laughter]
MOORE: Everyone seems very interested to know how he kisses, how he does everything. I absolutely remove myself from those moments where I actually do them. I find that showing the act of sex isn't, you know, sensuous. I mean, when I watch it, I get embarrassed. As an audience member, I found those scenes in Basic Instinct particularly boring. I mean, seven minutes — come on!
FIELD: Is there a more difficult part of our lives than our sexuality? Filmmakers are probably not even sure what they feel about it.
MOORE: People got so crazy because I was pregnant and nude on Vanitary Fair's cover, to the point of saying that it was pornographic. I don't know how they want to imagine that you get pregnant! [Laughter]
FOSTER: In terms of image, it's a progressive step. People tend to stick women into two categories: either you're sexual or you're a mother, and the twain shall never meet.
FIELD: So thank you, Demi!
MOORE: My pleasure.

What movies in the past few years have been positive for women?
MOORE: The Silence of the Lambs. Thelma and Louise. I think Rambling Rose also was really positive. And I think you, Jodie, doing Little Man Tate was a major plus for all of us; it really made a huge difference in how the rest of us are perceived as we go in now and present our ideas. I feel like what you've done, Sally, you and Goldie [Hawn] — the two of you were way ahead, out there taking a stand and developing material and producing projects. You just made it that much easier for our generation to go in and try to make our way with this. You came up against many more closed doors than we have.
FIELD: Thank you, but I find that the doors that were closed to me were my own. And Jodie opens my doors. Because I was brought up in a different generation. Being an actor — it's such a female thing to do, whether you're male or female. You sit by the phone: will they call? And you wait. And when I got handed power, I kept saying, "What do I want with it?" And after producing three films and faking my way — then I realized everybody thinks they're faking. [Laughter]
FOSTER: Growing up, I got a lot of messages about not becoming an actor. Even though they were subtle, everybody kept saying, "So you want to be a lawyer? You want to be a doctor?" The idea was, certainly you don't want to be an actress, because by the time you're 40 — you're gone.
FIELD: Women my age grew up watching me; we grew up together. I want them to be able to go to the movies and still see pieces of themselves. I don't want them to be left out, and every other generation of film leaves women out at this point. Claudette Colbert left town at this age. Stopped! Gone. And they kept trying to make Doris Day look like she was 20 when she was 40. Let ther be 40, for God's sake!
MOORE: We need those role models desperately.
FOSTER: It's always catch-22. When you're a woman and you're down, people tell you, "Cash it in now, because it's neer going to work out." Well, you know, men have always been able to say, "I'll get back on top."
FIELD: When I started, I did television for a long time. And when I decided I was trading away my dreams...and I had two children at the time, and it was really terrifying...this was in the early '70s, and the only women working in film were the tall, blond cover girls in James Bond movies. I went to my agent and said, "I'm not doing any more television," And he said, "You can't do that. Women don't make any money in film — and you're not pretty enough." It was devastating. I said, "You're fired."
FOSTER: But there were a lot of women who didn't say that, and you have to realize that for every choice you made that was a choice of confidence, there's a whole long history of women who got sloughed off. What's different about us is we identify with the underdog, so we spend a lot of time thinking about who's left out. When you sit around a a table like this with a bunch of guys, they spend a lot of time thinking about who's on top. It's something I'm really proud of, and I think it's informed all of our choices. And it's starting to be something that makes us successful, so why lose that?

What advice would you give young actresses breaking into the movie business?
MOORE: Don't look at me! [Laughter]
FIELD: That you'd better be very sure why you're going into this business. You'd better love it more than you love anything. Because if you're in it for money, for fame, for galmour — none of that exists. Has anyone ever seen any glamour? [Laughter] It's hearbreaking, it's relentless, it has very little reward for how much it can torture you — if, at the bottom, you don't just love it.wanted to do it. Half the time, I was waiting for someone to say to me, "Wait a second, you can't do this." I would have said, "Oh shit, I knew it. I knew it!" That's why I never took acting classes, because I was terrified if I went in there and got up and did something, they would say, "Oh, no, no, no. You're not good, really — go find something else." And I would have probably said, "You're right, I'm going to go and pursue — whatever, archaeology.
FIELD: I have no idea where I'm going, because nobody has gone before me. I don't have anybody to look at and say, "That was a very good idea." I have absolutely no information about what happens when you're 46 years old —' what do you do now?
MOORE: Look at Katharine Hepburn, though. She had a very long career.
FIELD: She did not. She'd come back periodically as a character actor and do wonderful things — Lion in Winter — and you'd be blown away. But she stopped being a productive actress in her middle 40s. Even my friend Joanne Woodward, who is a wonderful actress, took herself away — and rightfully so. She was sort of left out: "That's it for you, Joanne." So she began to concentrate on the stage, just do a little thing here and a little thing there. I don't want to do that.
FOSTER: The thing about prodigies is that you're necessarily all by yourself, because you're changing things. A lot of powerful women are feeling that, and certainly older actresses, because they have to stand outside of the system and say, "I'm standing on this ground, and I'm moving forward." You're the herald of a new age.
MOORE: Sally, I feel excited because I want you to do it — because I want to do it!
FIELD: I'll save you, girls. Just help me build a ship, and I'll row it ashore.