Watch Me_A Memoir by Anjelica Huston

Author:Anjelica Huston [Huston, Anjelica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2014-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

Woody Allen wrote me a letter in October 1989. He didn’t tell me the name of the movie he was going to be making, but suggested that I might respond to the character of Dolores, the needy flight attendant whose constant demands force Marty Landau’s character, Judah Rosenthal, a happily married and successful ophthalmologist, to murder her. I agreed immediately.

I thought it might be a good idea to meet Woody, as I happened to be in New York. I called his office and asked if I could speak with him. They said they would give him the message. A few hours later, the phone rang. It was Woody.

“I heard you wanted to speak with me?” he asked haltingly.

“Yes,” I said. “I thought that perhaps since we have never met, and since I’ll be working with you in a few weeks, that maybe we could have a drink, or tea, or something.”

There was a long pause. I wondered, was it boredom or anxiety? “Why?” he asked.

“Well, I thought it might be a good idea,” I said.

“I’m sick,” he said. “I’ve got a cold. When did you want to have this tea—this drink?”

“Well, perhaps on Thursday,” I suggested, casting it out like a fly on a dry river.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll have a drink on Thursday.” There followed a long pause and an intake of breath. “What if I’m sick on Thursday, too?” he asked.

“Well, I guess we won’t get to have the drink,” I replied.

Needless to say, the drink never happened.

When I returned to New York two weeks later, I went straight into fittings with the costume designer, Jeffrey Kurland, for Crimes and Misdemeanors. Among other options, he had chosen a seriously ugly argyle sweater for Dolores, and although I felt it was a deeply unflattering shape and pattern, I kept my mouth shut. I had heard that Woody had fired a famous actress when she refused to wear a jacket of his choice, so I was determined to love my wardrobe. But in truth, Jeffrey’s choices were perfect for the cloying, overbearing woman I was playing, argyle included.

Woody’s hair-and-makeup department was run by two wonderful women, Fern Buchner and Romaine Greene. Woody called them the “Salad Sisters.” Both ladies of a certain age, they were adorable and comforting to be around, as well as professionally trained in the old-fashioned sense. Fern became my makeup artist for many years, inventing, among other looks, my makeup for Morticia Addams, which was considerably more complex than it seemed.

It was not necessarily Woody’s habit to give the entire script to the supporting actors—just the scenes they would be shooting. So I had still not read the script and didn’t get to meet Woody until the first scene, in “Del’s apartment.” It was a humid, rainy day, and we were shooting in a nondescript glass high-rise in the East Thirties in Manhattan, as Dolores threatens and cajoles Judah and tosses down tranquilizers with alcohol. I had walked upstairs from my trailer into the bright

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