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SUSAN SARANDON INTERVIEWED BY GAVIN SMITH
a Film Comment online exclusive
In playing the part in Lorenzo's Oil, where in yourself did you identify your own strength to make an association with Michaela's?
There are moments in everybody's life where they have to choose. There have been moments where I have had to embrace a painful truth and act accordingly.... I was in a ski resort around the time of the Gulf War, and I had my baby in my arms, and I was by myself, and a man came up to me and called me a Commie cunt and then walked into a bar. I was really shaken because of the extremity of his hatred. I followed him into the bar. He basically just kept laughing at me, he identified himself as a Marine - as if that explained things; I mean, I can't believe Marines are that cowardly, and if he felt that strongly I don't know why he wasn't in the Gulf to begin with, which I pointed out. I didn't say anything particularly astute; it wasn't a satisfying confrontation. He was smug and sitting on his barstool making fun of me and I was standing there shaking with a kid in my arms.
Why did you follow him into the bar?
Because it was important for me to understand that, to not let him be anonymous.
That's what distinguishes a creative person from a noncreative person - curiosity.
I really think people divide in two classes, people who want to know and people who don't want to know [laughs]. We're in a culture where we're told not to know. Everything tells you don't ask questions. Every moment that you live you're preparing for death in a way, so that right there is creative. You create this entire life, you buy property, you have children - things that would seem to suggest some kind of permanence and control over your life - and in fact you have absolutely none. I guess because death is so frightening, it certainly is for me, you do spend a lot of your time allowing yourself to be lulled into some kind of complacency, and if you try to stay awake, that is a lifetime experience - to stay awake, and see things and not take things for granted.
Whereas complacency kills the artistic impulse.
Yes. And people who for one reason or another are very angry have an advantage.
One of the things I liked about your performance in Lorenzo's Oil was that within the character's heroism you embraced her unsympathetic side unapologetically.
[Laughing.] Read David Denby! He definitely thought it was unsympathetic! That is the challenge. My choice was to not temper it and fight as hard as possible. If your child were in that situation, you'd lose your social graces pretty quickly. I just see her as becoming primal in her clarity in protecting and watching over Lorenzo. One of the things that so worried me about George Miller was that he always talked about these people as Joseph Campbell myth figures and I kept saying, "George, you cannot play a Joseph Campbell hero. Heroism is in hindsight."
How do you see the difference in approach between the mother and the father?
Michaela is so uncompromising and so pure, the depth of her energy is just astounding. And Augusto had a larger picture and view. They've eliminated a couple of scenes where she has some scientific breakthroughs too, but he was more conceptual. He also was the one who not only maintained his social graces but used them; he's much more politically astute. Not that she can't be, because she was the one writing up all the papers, including his stuff. She's got a mind like a trap. She's so articulate, she's a word warrior; and also, English is not his language.
She was a linguist in real life.
Yeah, and a writer. He's much more abstract.
Why doesn't she resist when he stops her from getting angry with others?
Because she was smart enough to recognize that her way, though it possibly was the most honest, most direct, most pure, is not always the most productive. I must say that Nick and I were well suited in that respect, because I do tend to just talk off the top of my head and get passionately involved in things and I'm very uncompromising; Nick is equally passionate, but he definitely is able to be more manipulative - he can withhold things. On the set people were much more frightened of him than of me, I think [laughs], because they never knew quite what was going on with him, and with me you always know exactly what's happening. It was a good match.
What sense did you have of the Odones' marriage before the illness?
Here was this Catholic woman who had an affair with a married man for ten years and waited for him all that time. There were scenes that were cut, where they talk about when they first met and they were arguing over which Italian poet was the most brilliant. It was a meeting of the minds, a mutual respect.
So both you and Nolte directly based your performances on the Odones?
Oh yeah. Absolutely.
How did you deal with her religion? She seems to lose her faith.
She loses her faith through fury, not because she's so stupid to say, "Why me?" There was a scene that I still regret was cut, where we have a big fight before the birthday party about whether or not I feel guilty, and about God. We used her actual words; she said, "Every day I woke up and I thanked God for Lorenzo because he was so perfect and so brilliant, and to think God was standing in wait like a schoolyard bully, waiting to pounce on a five-year-old child-I don't feel guilty, I'm outraged:' She was just furious at God.
The three-hour film was extraordinary. You saw them become estranged. At one point she said to him, "Well of course you've got two other children, you can leave - I can't." For me it was important to understand about her religion and how they dealt with that; it would have made their coming together that much more important later.
There was another scene where you realize Lorenzo is going blind, because he's got the picture of Omouri and he can't see it and you see her look away. That scene was extraordinary because just when you expect there to be some sentimental moment - Nick comes and you expect her to be all upset - she turns it right away into action and says, "I've been thinking, the only way we found out about that was because I happened upon it by chance. What we have to do is organize a symposium." It was a very short, tiny scene, and I thought, That's a shame, why don't we cut out one of the screaming scenes and have the scene about how she deals with the realization that he's losing his sight? For George, the most important thing was the whodunit of the medicine.
Do you feel you could not have played this part as well as you did had you not been a mother?
Well, for me personally it was an advantage. I don't know if someone else who hasn't had a child would have maybe drawn upon something else. But for me it was a nightmare come true. On one hand, it made it more difficult, because I have never ever done a part where I've had a child in jeopardy, just because I never wanted that to be anywhere near me. On the other hand, it wasn't much of a stretch to find those moments. I would hope that I would respond completely as she did if one of my children were in jeopardy.
In the scene where the doctor diagnoses Lorenzo's condition, Miller keeps you and Nolte together in a two-shot, which must have been much more demanding on a performance level than if he had just shot separate singles.
I liked that. It required concentration, definitely. We did a few takes, but not a lot.
How do you approach something like that?
Listen and believe. That's all. Trying to listen and trying not to give into it - rather than trying to go for something [emotionally] specific. As he was speaking, I was just trying to find an out. Trying to find a way that this wasn't what he was saying. It would be important to believe that the person that he's talking about is somebody who has some emotional resonance for you. What worked for me was to keep trying to find hope - which made me feel more and more desperate. It built on its own.
Do you create some sort of private inner reality for a scene like that?
I just try to be there and be open and not push too much to have something happen that's not really happening. It helps when you have another actor who's giving you what you need. And then it's just praying that something will happen.
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© 2003 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
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