Tomei, D'Onofrio create their own 'Happy Accidents'
By Jamie Allen
January 26, 2000
CNN Interactive Senior Writer
PARK CITY, Utah (CNN) -- Vincent D'Onofrio is sitting before reporters in an upstairs room of Café Terigo on Main Street, talking about movies he invested his heart and soul in but that turned out to be lesser works than originally imagined.
"You can't trust anybody," the 40-year-old actor says. "And it doesn't break my heart anymore when they don't accomplish the job they promised, whether they're the director or writer or the actor you're working with -- I used to get my heart broken so much."
Marisa Tomei, the actress D'Onofrio most recently worked with in the new Brad Anderson film "Happy Accidents," is talking to reporters at another table when she hears D'Onofrio's "heart broken" comment.
"Shut up," she says.
"It's true," D'Onofrio says. "We were just talking about that last night."
"I just said that," Tomei says.
Confusion fills the moment.
"Heart broken?" D'Onofrio says.
"I just said that, heart broken," she says, "and I thought that's why you said it."
"No, no, no," says D'Onofrio.
Call it another happy accident.
Tomei and D'Onofrio's film is screening as a World Premiere at Sundance. "Happy Accidents," set in modern-day New York, tells the story of recovering co-dependent Ruby (Tomei), who can't seem to find a good guy. Then she meets Sam Deed (D'Onofrio), an American original from Dubuque, Iowa, who has just recently arrived in New York.
The two fall hard for each other. Then Ruby finds out the truth about Sam: He thinks he's from the future -- the year 2470 to be exact.
"What drew me into this story," says Anderson, who also wrote the screenplay, "was Ruby's bafflement at this guy, and trying to figure him out as he drops more and more of these revelations into her lap -- but realizing in some sort of perverse way (that) the more she tries to figure him out, the more she's drawn to him, and the more she gets caught up in his shtick.
"There's that whole thing about Ruby being an enabler," says Anderson, "being drawn to people with problems. And Sam represents the ultimate problem. He could be a lunatic. So it's like it's her ultimate challenge to figure this guy out."
"I found it very frustrating to play her, actually," says Tomei. "There was a lot of confusion, questioning him, questioning myself, and then personally not really understanding the story -- I was like, 'Wouldn't she just lose it sooner, or just be like, "Who the hell are you?"' But Brad kept assuring me that it really happens in real life."
In the movie, Ruby sends Sam to her therapist. Tomei had a similar experience when a boyfriend needed help.
"He was in a troubled time of his life, and regular therapy wasn't working. So there was this spiritual psychiatrist that I took him to, and afterwards I said, 'Can I ask her? Can I talk to her?' So I said to her, 'Well, what do you think?' She said, 'Well, you know, he thinks he's an alien,'" Tomei says, laughing.
Unlike her character, though, Tomei didn't stick around. "I've had some strange ones in my day," she says.
"It's about taking a leap of faith," says D'Onofrio of the film's theme, "and hoping it turns out all right."
A 'beautiful Zen kind of thing'
The reaction to the film has been better than all right. At a screening Monday night, more than 1,000 people packed Eccles Theater, then gave the director and actors warm applause as the credits rolled.
It's surprising, then, that the film has yet to find a distributor, particularly with the past record of the cast and crew: Tomei is an Oscar winner for "My Cousin Vinny," D'Onofrio is one of the leading character actors of his generation, and Anderson's previous work, 1998's "Next Stop Wonderland," was picked up by Miramax at Sundance.
"I think for whatever reason, the three films I've done have been broadly categorized as romantic comedies," says Anderson, whose first feature, "The Darien Gap," was in competition at Sundance in 1996. "But I like to think they take that genre and twist it a bit, add elements that aren't typical. Certainly in this movie, it has dramatic elements and there's a lot of plot twists that are unconventional and keep it out of the realm of being another run-of-the-mill romantic comedy."
One thing is certain: The actors and director are proud of the project.
D'Onofrio describes how he felt when he first read the script:
"I had to read it again because I wasn't sure if it made the kind of sense I thought it did," he says. "I said, 'This is funny and well-structured. I wonder if I'm missing the point. This is actually good. I wonder if it's good.'
"Then I thought maybe this guy (Anderson) kind of lucked out and is really just some idiot who's going to direct it like some broad comedy or something," D'Onofrio says. "Then I talked to Brad on the phone and he's thinking the same with me."
Tomei also liked Anderson's attitude.
"A big factor that influences me," says Tomei, "is the integrity level of the person at the helm, who's going to be the director."
On D'Onofrio, she says: "What was great about working with Vincent, he says it from the beginning: 'It's hard what we do.' For example, Vince said to the crew, 'Please stay with me,' because we had to do a lot of takes. We really weren't getting the scene right and we could've moved on and a lot of times that's what happens.
"You feel a lot of pressure because there are a lot people around and the clock is running. But he had the courage to stand up for the craft. It's not about himself. It is a very hard thing to do, to do it well, and it looks easy, and that's the beautiful Zen kind of thing that all actors go for. But the trick (to good acting) ... hurts us, because people think it's really easy, but it's hard. Vincent said to the crew, 'Please, I want to get this right, and I know you all want it to be great too.'"
This time around, D'Onofrio didn't get his heart broken.