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  Kim, on the other hand, had plenty of nerve. We had just met, and I was already struck by how candid she was. Visibly flustered by Kim’s questions, Simon gave her a tense smile. Later on, one of the producers, surprised by Kim’s boldness, told me to keep in mind “what Simon was used to.” He went on, “Always try to remember what people are used to in this business. Simon is used to everyone laughing, then he gets a big check.” As we filed out of the table reading, Neil approached me and thanked me for doing the film. He was, in every respect, the perfect pro. I asked if the “notes” he had received troubled him. He smiled and said, “We’ve got lightning in a bottle with her. It’ll all be fine.” He had probably faced far worse in Hollywood and on Broadway. Putting a picture together is a lot of work. You don’t take it apart without a good reason. Eventually, Neil incorporated a few of Kim’s comments.

  Shooting The Marrying Man was difficult. At times, it was awful. There were some good scenes, the cast was great, and I thought the story of Harry Karl made for a good movie. But the production was overshadowed by the ongoing battle between Kim and Disney, as Kim attempted to exert yet more control over the movie than Disney was prepared to allow. One day, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was in charge of the studio at the time, asked me to come to his office. Once I was there, he wasted no time informing me that it was their studio, their money, and their movie. Actors were employees and expected to do their jobs and create as little trouble as possible. “I can get the guard at the gate to play your role. It makes no difference to me. The film itself is the star,” he exhorted.

  At the time, I was offended. Years later, I found his honesty refreshing. Less than a year after The Marrying Man (and Dick Tracy, as well), Katzenberg published his infamous memo shellacking pretty much the entire industry for their profligate spending and overall bad decision-making. That memo meant, among other things, that a lot of people in the town were overpaid and some of them unrealistically so. The reaction to that was, at best, somewhat mixed. Within a few years, however, Katzenberg’s memo was viewed as prescient. Eventually, Katzenberg offered me work voicing animated characters in films like Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Boss Baby, and I’ve enjoyed working with him again.

  During The Marrying Man, however, an article appeared in the movie magazine Premiere. The story, which painted Kim as an out-of-control brat, was largely fiction. It read as if Disney’s PR people had faxed it to Susan Lyne, the chilly editor of the magazine. I knew that the article’s oft-quoted anecdote about Kim insisting on only Evian water for washing her hair was false, but that lie would follow her for years. By this time, we were dating. Naturally, I tried to take up for Kim. My publicist at the time told me, “Who do you think Premiere is beholden to, a couple of actors who make a movie or two a year? Or to a major studio that releases twenty or twenty-five pictures every year?” The piece made us look like two spoiled, ridiculous children. I can only begin to imagine what was being said off the record to the media. An important die was cast during that film, as I began to think that defending Kim from any and all trouble was becoming my job.

  When the film ended and I was scheduled to pack up my rented house and go home to New York, Kim invited me to move in with her. As the Premiere magazine piece broke, Mace Neufeld, the producer of Red October, called me. Every inch the old guard Hollywood type, he offered little small talk before he got down to cases. “Get rid of her,” he said. I was standing in the living room of Kim’s house. Instinctively, I lowered my voice, for fear that she would hear me. I replied with something stupid like, “What do you mean, get rid of her?” Neufeld shared his views on my choice of girlfriends. “There are a lot of women out there for you,” Mace said. “When the timing is right, then of course you’ll want that. But this is a very important period of your life. You’ve got to get rid of her because she’s just gonna pull you down.” But like it would for any man who believed he was in love, that suggestion went in one ear and out the other. I thanked Mace and hung up.

  Years later, I realized that Mace had been telling me the cardinal rule of Hollywood stardom: that you must make it the most important part of your life, above all else. Take the example of Tom Cruise. I don’t know exactly what Scientology offers, but I have speculated from time to time about what its followers derive from their commitment. In Cruise’s case, I’ve asked myself, “What could Tom possibly want or need that he doesn’t already have?” He is talented, handsome, and rich. He is admired by everyone he works with. He is a cornerstone of latter-twentieth-century movie history. And to top it off, he seems genuinely happy. Does Scientology function as some kind of coach that not only gives permission to its flock to unabashedly pursue their dreams, but demands that you go for it, without apology, keeping your focus on yourself and your goals?

  I didn’t quite see my career that way. My obligations to my family and to a woman I had invested so much in prevented me from placing my work above everything. Also, Kim presented herself as a pure, uncompromising iconoclast. There were many things she might have done to advance her own career. Instead, she dismissed the many sexed-up roles, and a lot of money, that were thrust at her while she hoped for something better. She lived in a modest house in a modest neighborhood, abjuring a self-conscious lifestyle. As attractive as those qualities seemed, however, there were other things about her that I wish I had given more weight to when we first started dating, such as her reflexive reliance upon “advisers” who often wrongly urged her either toward or away from conflict in her life and work. (This would become abundantly clear down the line when divorce lawyers were involved, but at the time it rang only faint alarm bells.) However, as I was developing my own sense of cynicism about the industry, Kim’s lack of pretentiousness was like oxygen. She didn’t always go about her business in the smartest way, but Kim knew that Hollywood was full of shit and that, unless you were going to go all in, the less seriously you took it, the happier you’d be.

  In 1991, my mother developed breast cancer, a diagnosis that would eventually bring her as much joy and triumph as an advocate for victims of the disease as it initially brought her illness and fear. A lifelong believer in Western medicine, my mother never met a pill she didn’t like in her quest to combat her many aches and pains. She was falling apart and she was frightened and overwhelmed. Although my relationship with my mom had never been that deep, I had begun to take more of an interest in her health and well-being. On Saturday nights (I worked most Friday nights), as I was heading out for the evening in whatever city I was in, I felt a pang of sadness for her and would call and chat with her, knowing that her house was empty and that she was alone. A lifelong Jeopardy! watcher who wanted me to invite Alex Trebek over for dinner, she could always be found in bed in the evening, the TV blaring away. She’d watch Magnum, P.I. or Law & Order. Later, when NCIS was added to the rotation, she would ask why I wasn’t on that show. “I just love that Mark Harmon!” she would sigh. I imagined Alex Trebek, Mariska Hargitay, and Mark Harmon all at my mom’s dinner table. She’d be in heaven.

  In the summer of 1991, just returned from shooting the film version of Prelude, I came to Bob Rehme’s office on the Paramount lot to meet with him, Mace, and the director Phillip Noyce. Red October had been a success, so it was time to discuss the next installment of the Jack Ryan series. Rehme, an arid, patrician Southern Californian by way of Cincinnati, was Mace Neufeld’s partner and a man I’d had little to do with during the making of Hunt. I had sensed that something less than wonderful was brewing earlier when I learned that McTiernan would not be returning to direct the sequel. Mace had offered some explanation, but people at movie studios lie or obfuscate at least five times before breakfast, so I ignored him. McTiernan himself suggested to me something about his schedule or something in his deal. But now, in the room with the current “team,” Rehme glared at me like I was a communist at a HUAC hearing he was conducting.

  As I talked, measuredly, about what I thought of the current script, I felt as if no one in the room was really l
istening. When I suggested adding a scene in a pub where I thought we could see Ryan’s face on the front page of every newspaper on the heels of his heroic stunt, prompting a small, nondescript gaggle of British pubgoers to sing “God Save the Queen” in his honor and top off their tribute by handing him a pint, they all just stared at me. Unbeknownst to me, their nonresponsive looks, I would soon find out, were the first signal of my exit from the film series. They had trouble concealing the fact that they really didn’t want any notes from an actor who wasn’t going to be playing the part. But nothing was mentioned in that meeting. It was just odd and frosty.

  After the meeting, I flew through Chicago to Syracuse, which took all day. My mother and sister Beth had moved there a couple of years earlier. The next morning, I accompanied my mother to her consultation, during which she was told she needed to have a double mastectomy. I developed a deeper level of concern for her right there in that room. While I stood in a conference room at the hospital making calls, my office patched me through to Mace. The call brought to mind the classic film Sorry, Wrong Number, when an apoplectic Burt Lancaster must convince his invalid wife to go to the window and cry out for help or she’s going to be murdered. (Great movie, by the way.) My call with Mace wasn’t quite that high-stakes. Nonetheless, he asked where my deal was at and why it wasn’t closed. I told him that I was trying to schedule both the film and a chance to star in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway the following spring. “You’ve got to close this deal and get this done,” Neufeld said, his voice a tad strained. “The play, the dates, it will all take care of itself. But sign that deal.”

  I spent the next day or two with my mother while she recovered, then flew to Long Island for the weekend. When I got to my friend’s house in the evening, it was still early in LA, and I called the office of David Kirkpatrick, the very successful and very self-absorbed executive in charge of the sequel. On that call, Kirkpatrick told me he wanted me to sign a deal with neither a start date nor a stop date. The movie would start when it was ready and end whenever it ended. That meant the film had no schedule, which was untenable and absurd. I asked when that information would become available and he didn’t have an answer, suggesting that it wasn’t my concern. The premise that he had no real idea when the film would begin was ludicrous, since all studios have schedules linked to release dates. I had gone from costarring in the first film, which had done well at the box office, to the place where all of my suggestions, inquiries, and requests were now intrusions. Kirkpatrick said I had until Monday to make up my mind.

  The final piece of the puzzle came in a call from none other than the normally phlegmatic John McTiernan, who asked how my deal was progressing. After I filled him in, he took a long pause, sighed, and told me that Paramount was unethically negotiating with another actor, a big star, to take my place. He told me he was scheduled to shoot a film with this big star. The producer of that film called him to say that the big star was out because he was moving on to another project and “You’re not gonna believe which one.” McTiernan told me that Harrison Ford was going to replace me in the sequel.

  John told me he spoke with Ford and asked if he was aware that Paramount was in an active negotiation with me. Ford’s reply, according to John, was “Fuck him.” Ford wasn’t merely employing a different strategy from me in the same game. He was playing a different game entirely. In need of the next franchise to keep the flame of his stardom burning bright while earning him tens of millions more, what choice did he have? The carpenter who walked onto a set and then into movie history knew that these roles were his legacy.

  Ford is one of the most successful stars in movie history. He has abundant fame, wealth, and the adulation of an adoring public and everyone in the town. One thing he does not have is an Oscar, which must frustrate, if not burden him, after his long career. Ford’s lack of any serious accolades for his acting is somewhat odd. In a review in the LA Weekly of his performance in the Scott Turow drama Presumed Innocent, the critic wrote “watch Ford’s acting go from beige to taupe.” He certainly has had every advantage. He has worked with the best directors. One would assume that his projects have budgets for the best writers, designers, craftspeople, shooting schedules, and casting. They have lots of money for marketing and ad campaigns during awards season. Every single asset that Hollywood can bring to bear is rolled out on behalf of his films. And yet Ford is, Oscar-wise, empty-handed.

  Years later, when I met him in LA at a benefit reading of a play that his girlfriend was in, he smiled politely and muttered some greeting. I realized then that the movies really do enhance certain actors, making them seem like something they really aren’t at all. Ford, in person, is a little man, short, scrawny, and wiry, whose soft voice sounds as if it’s coming from behind a door.

  Earlier that year, while shooting Prelude in Jamaica, I had met with Phillip Noyce, who seemed to want to have a constructive conversation about the next Jack Ryan film. But Noyce is a studio director to the marrow. Given his marginal talent and the attendant insecurities, he wouldn’t dare tip me off as to what was going on, assuming that by then he knew the details. In fact, he probably wet himself at the thought of the eventual outcome.

  I considered whether I wanted to have the kind of career where you are, by and large, asked to do the same thing, over and over, like Ford or Bruce Willis or, eventually, Russell Crowe. Certainly there are ever-larger paychecks, but never any surprises. I suppose I could have said yes to Paramount’s unconscionable demands and held on to the role. But if that choice meant more time with David Kirkpatrick, Bob Rehme, Phillip Noyce, Don Granger, and all the other “gentlemen” I had washed up alongside in LA over the past five years, I wasn’t so sure. Then I thought of the decision-making that had led me to scuttle the Broadway production of Prelude in order to do The Marrying Man, and things became clearer in my life than they had been for some time. I told them I wanted to do both Streetcar and the film. They said, essentially, “Fuck you and good riddance.”

  The fact that Paramount was negotiating with two people at the same time was infuriating enough. I often wonder why people in those circumstances don’t simply call you into their office and tell you they don’t want to work with you anymore. I’m sure some settlement could have been reached. But as studios, networks, and talent agencies increasingly hire self-serving, rapacious types such as Kirkpatrick, it’s less likely. I could just see the Paramount group high-fiving each other for having engaged Ford while not having to pay me a dime. The most unpleasant part, though, was that Barry London, another cookie-cutter exec at the studio, took it upon himself to announce my departure to the press and blame it all on me. I had “overplayed my hand at the negotiating table” was how one report put it. I learned that when you’re not Harrison Ford, simply asking for the schedule may be “overplaying your hand.”

  Eventually, Patriot Games was made with Ford in the role of Jack Ryan, and it made less money than Hunt when adjusted for inflation.

  On a movie set, the cry is “Back to one!” to alert the cast and extras to reset to their original positions before the camera is rolled for the next take. Whenever I arrived at a place where the film business felt uncomfortable or downright unsafe for me, the place I often returned to was the theater. Onstage, we trust that the material works, we assume all of the actors are genuinely talented, and the work itself is the focus, unencumbered by the bullshit that often interferes with moviemaking. Back to one, indeed. It was time to go home. It was time to do a play. As far as I was concerned, it is the play.

  9

  What She Was Used To

  Standing on a footbridge in Chicago on an April evening in 1991, the freezing temperature at a degree only Chicagoans could comprehend, I spoke with Michael Gruskoff, the producer of the film version of Prelude to a Kiss. “When is this thing scheduled to come out?” I asked. “Hopefully, by December,” he replied. “Good,” I said. “Because we’re going to win everything. Best picture, actor, actress, direction, screenplay.” The
more seasoned Gruskoff managed a slight smile and said, “That would be nice.”

  Adapting Prelude to the screen had proved to be difficult. Finding a cast that satisfied Norman and Craig as well as the Fox executives who had bought the rights was the first challenge. During that process, however, my next opportunity to meet a truly great actor materialized when Norman called me to say that Sir Alec Guinness was interested in the film and, pending the meeting, inclined to do it. I thought I might faint. Before long, I found myself seated across from Guinness at the old Wyndham Hotel in New York.

  As had happened when I had met or worked with Pacino, De Niro, Tony Hopkins, Julie Andrews, George C. Scott, Meryl, Ava Gardner, McCartney, Gregory Peck, Tony Bennett, Brando, and the other artists whom I had admired, even worshipped, the sight and sound of Alec Guinness unleashed a torrent of his most famous cinematic accomplishments in my mind. Legendary movie moments began unspooling: The young Guinness in Great Expectations, admonishing John Mills not to “fill one’s mouth to its utmost capacity.” As Fagin in Oliver Twist (“What right have you to butcher me?”). His Academy Award–winning performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai. The Horse’s Mouth, Our Man in Havana, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Star Wars, and too many others to name. Alec Guinness, a totem in film acting, was now right before my eyes, making one simple request. “I’m afraid I must shoot the film in New York,” he stated quietly. “I must be able to Concorde back and forth to London to see my wife.” Norman had told me that Guinness’s wife was ill and that he needed to visit her periodically while shooting.