Jessica Lange Regis Dialogue with Molly Haskell, 1997 Bruce Jenkins: Let me say that these dialogues have for the better part of this decade focused on that part of cinema devoted to narrative or dramatic filmmaking, and we've had evenings with actors, directors, cinematographers, and I would say really especially with those performers that we identify with the cutting edge of narrative filmmaking. In describing tonight's guest, Molly Haskell spoke of a creative artist who not only did a sizeable number of important projects but more importantly, did the projects that she herself wanted to see made. The same I think can be said about Molly Haskell. She began in the 1960s working in New York for the French Film Office at that point where the French New Wave needed a promoter and a writer and a translator. She eventually wrote the landmark book From Reverence to Rape on women in cinema from 1973 and republished in 1987, and did sizable stints as the film reviewer for Vogue magazine, The Village Voice, New York magazine, New York Observer, and more recently, for On the Issues. Her most recent book, Holding My Own in No Man's Land, contains her last two decades' worth of writing. I'm please to say it's in the Walker bookstore, as well. Our other guest tonight needs no introduction here in the Twin Cities nor in Cloquet, Minnesota, nor would I say anyplace in the world that motion pictures are watched and cherished. She's an internationally recognized star, but she's really a unique star. She's someone who never allowed that celebrityhood to mar her personal life, nor her extraordinary work as a film professional. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to welcome here to the Walker to conduct a dialogue on her two decades on screen and to interview her, Molly Haskell and Jessica Lange. Molly Haskell: It's the homecoming queen. Well, you hardly ever do these things, and I think obviously your destiny is to come to the Walker Art Center because you're from Minnesota and now you're back in Minnesota. So you can go home again, is that the moral? Jessica Lange: Well, it's been easy for me. I don't know. Molly Haskell: You were born not here, you grew up where in Minnesota? Jessica Lange: In northern Minnesota. Molly Haskell: Uh-huh. Was it country, or small town? Jessica Lange: Small town. Oct 3, 1997 1 Molly Haskell: Small town. We met 20 years ago, I didn't know if she would remember, but she did, at a little dinner party in New York, and she came in and she had just shot King Kong and it hadn't been released yet and she was with her then, was he husband or beau? Jessica Lange: Beau. Molly Haskell: Beau. Always beau. Jessica Lange: They've always been beaus. Molly Haskell: Mikhail Baryshnikov, and she was the loveliest thing I've ever seen and she hasn't changed, only she's gotten more interesting, I think. That was, what was that, about- Jessica Lange: It had to be '76, wasn't it? Molly Haskell: '76, and well, start back ... One of the things about your being, for a well-known person, relatively unknown, precisely because you haven't done things like this and nobody really knows that much, all the gossip columnists haven't gotten hold of you as much as they might've. Did you want to be an actress? Or was it dancing? Or what started you off? Jessica Lange: Actually, I started off at the University of Minnesota in the art department studying painting. Molly Haskell: Fine arts, uh-huh. Jessica Lange: Uh-huh, and photography, and ended up with a group of photographers from here and we traveled around Europe and ended up coming back to New York to live. This is a long story. In New York, I got involved with a modern dancer. She had just left the Merce Cunningham Company and was starting a modern dance company of her own and theater company in downtown, way downtown, before it was really SoHo- Molly Haskell: Hip. Jessica Lange: Yeah, and from there, we got interested in mime and discovered that Étienne Decroux, who was like the old master, was actually still alive and teaching in Paris. So I left for Paris to study with him and stayed there for two years and then decided there wasn't really that much I could do with it, so ... Besides that, he actually discouraged you from performing. He would fly into these fits of rage if he found out that you actually had- Oct 3, 1997 2 Molly Haskell: It was too vulgar to actually perform? Jessica Lange: Yes. Yes, it was. It was too pedestrian. So I decided to go back to New York, and the only kind of logical step from mime seemed to be acting. So went back to New York to study acting. Molly Haskell: Did you go to the Actor's Studio then? Jessica Lange: When I first got back, I studied with Herbert Berghof. Molly Haskell: Oh yeah. Jessica Lange: And then from there, with a couple other acting teachers, with Warren Robertson and Mira Rostova and then the Actor's Studio. Molly Haskell: So you did stage work first? Jessica Lange: Well, actually, I didn't do any stage work. I did a little bit of stage work in Paris before I came back to study in New York, but my very ... my very first audition that I ever went on was for King Kong. Molly Haskell: Really? Jessica Lange: Mm-hmm. Molly Haskell: That's amazing. Jessica Lange: And I got the job. It was like so- Molly Haskell: And you had no idea what you were getting in for, did you? Jessica Lange: No. Oct 3, 1997 3 Molly Haskell: Well, that was an ... What happened with that? Did people resent it because it was a remake of a film they loved? Or what do you think? Jessica Lange: I have no idea. I was so completely naïve. Molly Haskell: Naïve, you didn't know, yeah. Jessica Lange: Clueless as to what the situation really was. All I know is that it was a very long shooting schedule. I think we shot for something like nine months. Molly Haskell: And grueling, I'm sure. Jessica Lange: And it was ... I remember Chuck Grodin saying to me at some point, "This isn't what movies are really like." But I didn't know, because it was the very first thing I- Molly Haskell: So they might've all been like that as far as you were concerned. Jessica Lange: They could've all been that tedious. But yeah, I don't know. I have no idea really- Molly Haskell: Well, it's a much better ... You probably haven't even seen it again, or ever, maybe, but it's a much better film than its reputation would allow. Certainly you're better. I don't know if the film is, because it was really ... it was one of those things that's not repeatable. Jessica Lange: No. Molly Haskell: Did you ever see the original? I mean, it's just- Jessica Lange: Yes. Molly Haskell: And something about the black and white. But to play a screaming victim for two hours. Jessica Lange: Well, you had to be young and naïve to do it. Oct 3, 1997 4 Molly Haskell: You do, that's right. Jessica Lange: It had to have been- Molly Haskell: It has to be your first film, otherwise you wouldn't do it. Jessica Lange: It had to be your first film. Molly Haskell: So what came after that? Jessica Lange: Then I did that little goofy part in Fosse's film- Molly Haskell: Oh, All That Jazz. Jessica Lange: ... All That Jazz. Molly Haskell: Yeah. Jessica Lange: Mm-hmm. Molly Haskell: And then Postman Always Rings Twice? Jessica Lange: And then Postman. Molly Haskell: Well, we're going to show that in a second, and that was Bob ... How did you get that? Had Rafelson seen you in King Kong? Or ... By that time you were known, you were sort of making magazine covers and things like that. Jessica Lange: Well, yeah, I mean obviously, I guess he had. That was the only thing I'd done up until then. Molly Haskell: Well, that was a really challenging part. The original Postman Always Rings Twice with Lana Turner and John Garfield, which some of you may have seen, was from a James Cain novel, very steamy, but the earlier Oct 3, 1997 5 version, they couldn't do anything. All Lana Turner could do was wear a bathing suit so even though they were having this wild affair, it didn't come through. There was no electricity. But yours, I think this is one of the ... Well, I don't want to get into it too much, we'll talk about it afterwards, but one of the more erotic scenes, not only for that time but in the last 20 years. All right, so can we show that now? Jessica Lange: Well, that's a hell of a way to start. Molly Haskell: We start, we pack a wallop up front. Well, what's fantastic about that scene, I think, is that this of course is the ... She's married to this old Greek owner of the gas station and poverty stricken and just dying to get out of this place, and Jack Nicholson ..