Arts & Entertainment
Defying Hollywood Conventions, Sarandon Celebrates ‘Survival’
After 40 years of making movies, the actress says her greatest achievement is continuing to have fun and find happiness in her work.
As an actress known for her strong, cerebral screen presence and activist endeavors, Susan Sarandon comes across as unexpectedly light-hearted in person.
Over 1,000 people got to form their own impressions of the New York-based star during BAM’s retrospective of Sarandon’s 40-year film career last week. Between Thursday and Sunday, the Oscar-winning actress participated in two post-screening Q&A sessions as well as a conversation with director Bob Balaban, the climax of “” in the Howard Gilman Opera House.
“I do a lot of things because I think they will be fun, or because they scare me,” Sarandon said in an intimate Q&A with writer/director Paul Shrader following a screening of his film, “Light Sleeper.” That film, in which Sarandon plays a sophisticated Manhattan drug dealer, appealed to her because it “did both.”
“This was the last film I did in high heels,” she quipped.
BAM’s series was replete with cinematic privileges, such as the fact that the print of “Light Sleeper” that screened was Shrader’s own.
Sarandon’s conversations with directors – she also took part in a Q&A with John Turturro, who directed her in “Romance and Cigarettes” – gave insights into the director-actor relationship, and how directors might extract the effective performances from their stars.
The best directors, Sarandon said, know where they’re leading you without necessarily revealing the end goal, enabling an actor’s trust and creativity. With Sarandon specifically, they also have to tolerate a lot of questions.
“If you’re embarrassed about [something], don’t just sit there and be embarrassed – talk about it,” she said, recalling preparations for sexual scenes in “White Palace.”
The retrospective was also peppered with abundant behind-the-scenes anecdotes. During filming of “Thelma & Louise,” the actors’ improvisations altered numerous elements of the original screenplay. By contrast, while filming “The Front Page,” directed by Billy Wilder, “You couldn’t change a ‘the’,” Sarandon said.
For “The Witches of Eastwick,” Sarandon had signed on to play the meatier part of Alex, but was edged out of that role by Cher and had to learn to play the cello – or, at least, mime it convincingly – for the lackluster part of Jane at the last minute.
Being tied into the production, she couldn’t back out – but then she realized the upside of her situation: She had the freedom to experiment creatively and devise her own motivation for the character.
“I decided my character was going to be the one who loved Jack Nicholson the most,” Sarandon said, and from that point on, she surmounted the production’s difficulties. Those included not only having to make way for Cher, but donning Cher’s cast-off wardrobe and the wig from Cher’s television show, too.
That story typifies Sarandon’s approach, Balaban said: “You take something ordinary and turn it into something great.”
Sarandon’s career has spanned major shifts in the film industry, particularly technological innovations that have dramatically changed the way movies are made.
The “corporatization of all those little movie theaters,” she said, makes it much harder than previously to screen non-studio films. Digital technology might have made it easier to make films in the first place, but finding the money for marketing and distribution now poses a daunting hurdle.
Also, with the advent of the internet and the popularity of short clips viewed on iPhones or You Tube, “attention spans have changed,” she said. “People need something to happen every second” in films now, rather than allowing a story to unfold at a different pace.
The mechanics of moviemaking may have evolved since Sarandon started working in the late 1960s, but core Hollywood values have not.
“The only thing they can’t stand is you getting old and fat,” she said.
