Eric Roberts V: Close to You
Looking back at my first encounter with Eric I can't help but measure it in context to other experiences that followed. Not only with him, but the community of actors I worked or met socially in subsequent years. It's a unique, self-selecting profession - only those who cannot possibly do anything else in the world would put up with the struggle to be accepted, the immeasurable disappointments and blows to the ego with every failed audition, the uncertainty, ridicule, and even in success the handling, the dishonesty, the invasion, fawning and faux life that comes with the territory. It's a curse in my opinion, to be a star. A damn curse that not one struggling wannabe actor can see coming until it has it firmly in its clutches.
Having said that I do know a few nice people who make their living as successful actors, some who have even managed to live a fairly normal life despite the extraordinary circumstances of their fortunes. But they are rare, and special, and I salute them. I really do.
But to this memory, all is colored by those days spent in Eric's company, and the closeness to something I couldn't understand or quantify, but knew at once to be irresistible. It was that quality that made him and others like him different than the rest of us, for better or worse. As ingrained into the fabric of his being as the color of his hair and the shape of his intellect. These things were inseparable.
My first clear memory of time spent with the newly arrived star of Miss Lonelyhearts was a conversation we had walking down the halls of AFI. We were killing time so we just kept going back and forth from one end to the other. It was a warm afternoon and the sun had turned the dingy egg-tempera walls a deep gold color and he was easy in my presence. From the moment we met he had eyes only for me, and it was intoxicating. Perhaps he understood the lay of the land. I had been chosen for him and he took my hand, chattering non-stop between shy glances. I don't know how many people ever really have seen Eric this way, certainly events that followed may have been responsible for the loss of what innocence was left in this 26 year old but his sweet luminescence was like quicksilver, rare and fleeting. What made him all the more charming was something none of use expected: his pronounced stutter. Since this was something that disappeared when he was performing it caught all of us by surprise. Some reacted by looking away, others by trying to finish his sentences. I just let him be, find his voice, and perhaps that's why he took such a shine to me.
Ahh, the flawed prince, the hero with vulnerability. Though a celluloid mirage, he was no longer unattainable, and in the barrage of courting that followed in the next weeks, I was completely taken in. He hardly ever stopped talking when we were together, a jumbled mix of repeated consonants and bursts of inspired, articulate ideas.
"Would you like to come to my r,r-ranch?" he said not long after we first met. "Oh, I don't know," I replied with forced casualness. "I have h,horses," he went on, taking my hand. "We could ride all day and no-one w,would bother us." He watched me intently during these ministrations, watching for some kind of approval. "Eric" I would say, laughing, "you're crazy...you hardly know me!" And then he laugh and try to entice me with some other adventure we could take together.
We drove around the city a lot those first few days, Joe a silent presence in the front seat. He took it all in, eagerly asking me questions about places to eat and how far it was to the beach, and was there a place where we could go to dance.
"I can't drive yet," I said shyly, and he would always squeeze my hand. "I wouldn't drive here either," was his mantra. "But I want you to take me everywhere. I want to see this city, these people, through your eyes." We became inseparable, so much so that my work began to suffer and it was almost a relief when the first day of shooting arrived and our paths took a measured diversion.
I never kissed Eric, nor did we talk of feelings, other than to share an almost hourly exchange of fantastical journeys we could take together to discover the world. It was his escape from the pressure he was under and he sought me out at every opportunity. In those first heady weeks he asked my opinion on everything, listened intently, and sometimes would just gaze at me with such adoration that at first I took it to heart. But shooting began and gradually I was forced into another role, that of watcher in the dark to his spotlighted performance, and this disconnection began to wear on both of us. I was also required to be at the production office quite a bit and he began to resent the demands on my time.
I did what I needed to do. It is the world of a film shoot, to be divided into sets and subsets, depending on your value at any given time to the momentum of the whole. There are bursts of activity, followed by hours of waiting, small ministrations to the details that need attending to, quiet, thoughtful moments where the creative process is moving among the players as they envision, prepare, tweak, and dig deep into private spaces. And this is not just about the actors, the creative process is shared by almost everyone in the group, which is what makes working on a film so special. Without the ideas and inspiration of all the contributors the vivre just doesn't happen. It's all about the alchemy when everything is working well and you become part it, no matter how small your role. On Miss Lonelyhearts we had that alchemy, and Eric was at the heart of every great moment. He was so extraordinary in this role that I never had the feeling we were making a student movie. It was always the real, very real thing, and when he was immersed his character during a take, the set fell silent.
But when you are filming a dark story, one where the sense of doom pervades, it's hard to escape the energy that fills the space. Shot in black & white, the sets were purposely dingy and worn out to reflect the young columnists' lonely life, and the lighting effects were purposeful, washed into greyness, pooled by one small shaded lamp or filtered as moonlight through half-closed blinds for the classic film-noir atmosphere. It wasn't long before the entire sound stage began to take on an oppressive air as each scene brought us closer and closer to the desperation of lost loves, lonely housewives, and jealous husbands.
At the center of all this Eric was called upon again and again to gather the dark energy around him and make it come to life in all its shaded depth. The brooding silence between takes began to grow longer and he was beginning to fall inward into a place that seemed eerily like the character he was portraying. Like Alice, we'd all fallen into the rabbit hole and down, down, down into the unknown we went, not realizing just how far the bottom was going to be.
Next: A letter and my public humiliation
Having said that I do know a few nice people who make their living as successful actors, some who have even managed to live a fairly normal life despite the extraordinary circumstances of their fortunes. But they are rare, and special, and I salute them. I really do.
But to this memory, all is colored by those days spent in Eric's company, and the closeness to something I couldn't understand or quantify, but knew at once to be irresistible. It was that quality that made him and others like him different than the rest of us, for better or worse. As ingrained into the fabric of his being as the color of his hair and the shape of his intellect. These things were inseparable.
My first clear memory of time spent with the newly arrived star of Miss Lonelyhearts was a conversation we had walking down the halls of AFI. We were killing time so we just kept going back and forth from one end to the other. It was a warm afternoon and the sun had turned the dingy egg-tempera walls a deep gold color and he was easy in my presence. From the moment we met he had eyes only for me, and it was intoxicating. Perhaps he understood the lay of the land. I had been chosen for him and he took my hand, chattering non-stop between shy glances. I don't know how many people ever really have seen Eric this way, certainly events that followed may have been responsible for the loss of what innocence was left in this 26 year old but his sweet luminescence was like quicksilver, rare and fleeting. What made him all the more charming was something none of use expected: his pronounced stutter. Since this was something that disappeared when he was performing it caught all of us by surprise. Some reacted by looking away, others by trying to finish his sentences. I just let him be, find his voice, and perhaps that's why he took such a shine to me.
Ahh, the flawed prince, the hero with vulnerability. Though a celluloid mirage, he was no longer unattainable, and in the barrage of courting that followed in the next weeks, I was completely taken in. He hardly ever stopped talking when we were together, a jumbled mix of repeated consonants and bursts of inspired, articulate ideas.
"Would you like to come to my r,r-ranch?" he said not long after we first met. "Oh, I don't know," I replied with forced casualness. "I have h,horses," he went on, taking my hand. "We could ride all day and no-one w,would bother us." He watched me intently during these ministrations, watching for some kind of approval. "Eric" I would say, laughing, "you're crazy...you hardly know me!" And then he laugh and try to entice me with some other adventure we could take together.
We drove around the city a lot those first few days, Joe a silent presence in the front seat. He took it all in, eagerly asking me questions about places to eat and how far it was to the beach, and was there a place where we could go to dance.
"I can't drive yet," I said shyly, and he would always squeeze my hand. "I wouldn't drive here either," was his mantra. "But I want you to take me everywhere. I want to see this city, these people, through your eyes." We became inseparable, so much so that my work began to suffer and it was almost a relief when the first day of shooting arrived and our paths took a measured diversion.
I never kissed Eric, nor did we talk of feelings, other than to share an almost hourly exchange of fantastical journeys we could take together to discover the world. It was his escape from the pressure he was under and he sought me out at every opportunity. In those first heady weeks he asked my opinion on everything, listened intently, and sometimes would just gaze at me with such adoration that at first I took it to heart. But shooting began and gradually I was forced into another role, that of watcher in the dark to his spotlighted performance, and this disconnection began to wear on both of us. I was also required to be at the production office quite a bit and he began to resent the demands on my time.
I did what I needed to do. It is the world of a film shoot, to be divided into sets and subsets, depending on your value at any given time to the momentum of the whole. There are bursts of activity, followed by hours of waiting, small ministrations to the details that need attending to, quiet, thoughtful moments where the creative process is moving among the players as they envision, prepare, tweak, and dig deep into private spaces. And this is not just about the actors, the creative process is shared by almost everyone in the group, which is what makes working on a film so special. Without the ideas and inspiration of all the contributors the vivre just doesn't happen. It's all about the alchemy when everything is working well and you become part it, no matter how small your role. On Miss Lonelyhearts we had that alchemy, and Eric was at the heart of every great moment. He was so extraordinary in this role that I never had the feeling we were making a student movie. It was always the real, very real thing, and when he was immersed his character during a take, the set fell silent.
But when you are filming a dark story, one where the sense of doom pervades, it's hard to escape the energy that fills the space. Shot in black & white, the sets were purposely dingy and worn out to reflect the young columnists' lonely life, and the lighting effects were purposeful, washed into greyness, pooled by one small shaded lamp or filtered as moonlight through half-closed blinds for the classic film-noir atmosphere. It wasn't long before the entire sound stage began to take on an oppressive air as each scene brought us closer and closer to the desperation of lost loves, lonely housewives, and jealous husbands.
At the center of all this Eric was called upon again and again to gather the dark energy around him and make it come to life in all its shaded depth. The brooding silence between takes began to grow longer and he was beginning to fall inward into a place that seemed eerily like the character he was portraying. Like Alice, we'd all fallen into the rabbit hole and down, down, down into the unknown we went, not realizing just how far the bottom was going to be.
Next: A letter and my public humiliation
posted by vallie at 4:10 PM
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