by David Michael
With Hollywood actors getting good exposure on TV series like Sex In The City and Spin City, actresses Naomi Watts and Laura Harring had pinned their hopes on similar success with David Lynch’s proposed series Mulholland Drive. But when ABC TV saw the pilot they didn’t know what the hell to make of it, complaining about everything thing from the size of dog turds on screen to the actress’s being too old. It was pulled - there was to be no repeat of Lynch’s Twin Peaks success. Two years later though, the project was resurrected as a film, providing the actresses the chance to head-up one of Lynch’s best films yet. David Michael caught up with Mulholland Drive's leading ladies at Cannes.
In terms of acting, Naomi Watts and Laura Harring have had their talents stunted by the films they’ve been in. For Watts the misfire of Tank Girl is symbolic of her career thus far. While the sassy Laura Ellen Harring, who born in Mexico became the first Latin Miss USA (1985), had been cast astray in TV films and frothy TV series like Sunset Beach. Mulholland Drive though, gave them the chance to play more range that most actresses do in a career.
In Mulholland Drive, after escaping a car crash, mysterious amnesiac Rita (Harring) comes across Betty (Watts), a naïve actress setting out in Hollywood - as wide eyed as Dorothy stepping foot in the Land of Oz. After that it’s all up to interpretation…their friendship turns to love, their characters transform – Betty becomes Diane and Rita becomes Camilla. In short, things get weird.
But things were kind of strange with the film right from the point both actresses received calls from Lynch regarding the TV series downfall, telling them: ‘Mulholland Drive is dead in the water girls. Nobodies ever going to see it.’
For Harring fate transpired. “I was destroyed, but I kept seeing posters of Rita Hayworth around everywhere and the name Rita, then I went to a spa and saw Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks) there. And I called David and said these are omens, something really weird is happening. So I said, ‘David, I don’t think this is over.’
After working with David Lynch -who is universally regarded in unison as both madman and genius - the actresses have different takes on the director. “It’s funny because everybody’s thinks he’s weird and strange - I don’t,” declares Harring. “To me he’s more normal than anybody else, maybe it’s because I’m strange too, but when you hear him talk and he says, ‘I’ll be ding-danged’, those little moments, that’s like old school vocabulary and they’re so cute. He’s just a normal guy.”
Naomi Watts is not convinced. “Everybody says he’s an ordinary guy, he’s just an all American bloke – HE’S NOT! He’s a very different guy and his movies and paintings show us that, he has an extraordinary mind. But that’s what’s great about him and I love that, he gets people, he knows the human condition - that we’re a complete mixture of contrasting emotions good and bad.”
One of the highlights of Mulholland Drive is a surreal and humorous audition scene, and there’s no surprise that both actress’s found their own Lynch auditions to be ‘different’.
For Harring it got spooky before she even got there. “I was so excited, I had a car accident on the way to see him! I hadn’t read the script, I had no idea what it was about and when I told the assistant, she said my character at the beginning of the movie has a car crash. I got Goosebumps.” Lynch soon gave her more Goosebumps. “When I went to see David, they told me to wear absolutely no make up. My look was really young. I walked into the room and he looked me straight in the eyes and just said, ‘Good’. Then he just kept slowly repeating, ‘good…good…good…’ It was the only time I was bedazzled, like ‘wow, this is a surreal experience!’”
For her co-star, it proved to be a more cathartic audition experience.
“It was so different,” states Watts. “I couldn’t believe this person who was looking to hire somebody was taking such an interest in me as a human being. It wasn’t sexual, but it did feel intense. He wants to find out who you are.
“I was one of those people who luckily had a good headshot or something in my eye that David was looking for,” continues the actress. “He sees that and gets you in, and if he likes you as a person and he can connect with you, his intuition will tell him ‘this is the girl’. When I got offered the role I was shocked I didn’t have to read the role or anything.”
After the film was realised out of the dumped TV series, the actresses were brought back to shoot additional scenes two years later, the most intense being their naked love scene. “I was very worried about the part where I had to take the towel off, I felt very vulnerable”, says Harring, who also gets to kiss Australia’s own Melissa George in the film. “I just tried to focus on the moment, if you’re worried about how you look - forget about it!”
The anticipation was difficult for Watts as well. “I went to David’s house, I just had to get the details of how he saw it. I was really nervous about being naked in front of the camera and a little bit emotional. He just sat and listened, and let me say what I was nervous about and he was just so empathetic.”
So how did their bodies shape up on the big screen?
“The first time I saw it I thought ‘Wow, not bad!’ Laughs Harring. “Then the second time I saw it, I saw it in a completely different light. I’ve always been extremely shy (yeah right, Miss USA), so I was happy that it didn’t come across that I was thinking about my body at all.”
“I don’t see it as so erotic,” says Watt. “Maybe it plays that way, but when I saw it I actually had tears in my eyes. I could see the connection between two people - I didn’t necessarily see it as two women - that are experiencing love in that moment, knowing that it’s going to go wrong, it sort of broke my heart a little bit.”
Stretching the actresses across their character’s multi-faceted personas, Lynch helped them to career best performances. And as Naomi Watts concludes, for both actresses working with Lynch has raised the stakes for the rest of their careers. “It’s going to be difficult from this point forward. I think I’ve been spoilt by his genius, and his way of thinking and humour. Just being around him is a really great experience. He brings out the best in you, and the best doesn’t have to be good, it can be the dark side too.”
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=516
originally posted: 02/17/02 17:24:21
last updated: 02/21/02 21:14:22
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