My First R-Rated Movie

MY FIRST R-RATED MOVIE OR…
HOW I BECAME THE 007 OF COVERT FORBIDDEN FILM VIEWING
By Alex Simon

For those of us who grew up in the suburbs in the pre-home video, pre-Internet and pre-cable TV 1970s and early ‘80s, there were few dangerous pleasures as heady as sneaking into an R-rated movie at the local multiplex. The multiplex cinema was a ‘70s phenomenon that made regulating children’s viewing habits infinitely more difficult than the old days of stand-alone, single screen theaters. Ironically, the new freedom that filmmakers enjoyed with the advent of the MPAA rating system in late 1968 was almost in perfect synch with the rise of multi-screen cinemas. Some things do happen for a reason.

You never forget your first...

My first R-rated film was during Thanksgiving of 1976. We were visiting my dad’s family in Birmingham, Alabama and the men adjourned after dinner to go see TWO MINUTE WARNING, a Charlton Heston-led, all-star splatter fest boasting an impressive cast (John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, and Martin Balsam, to name a few) about a psycho with a scoped .306 rifle picking off sports fans at an LA Rams game. Even at age nine, I knew the movie sucked, but I was quite thrilled to be watching bare breasts, geysers of spurting blood, and liberal use of the f-bomb, feeling the kind of euphoria that can only be found in nibbling on previously forbidden fruit. I also noticed something else: there was little, if any, usher presence regulating who went into the theater playing the R-rated film. On the screen next door was Martin Ritt and Woody Allen’s PG-rated (and far superior) offering THE FRONT. My 108 month-old synapses starting firing.

The following years found numerous R-rated fare that I yearned to see: MARATHON MAN, BLACK SUNDAY, TAXI DRIVER, WHICH WAY IS UP?, and most significantly Louis Malle’s PRETTY BABY, which ushered in my pre-adolescent Brooke Shields fixation. So determined was I to see this movie that I spent weeks devising a careful plan to gain admittance for myself and my more adventurous friends. Upon opening the Friday paper one afternoon, it seemed as though lady luck had smiled upon me: PRETTY BABY was in a double-bill with KING OF THE GYPSIES, my virtual girlfriend’s latest cinematic outing, playing newcomer Eric Roberts’ younger sister (if Brooke only knew what a coveted part that would become in reality years later). It was showing at the UA 5 Theater in Scottsdale. In those days, it was a safe bet that a film would play at least 2-3 weeks, so I convinced my parents to drop me and my best bud at the theater two weekends in a row, to cover all the PG fare and case the joint, to find the weak link into the Shangri-La showing on screen number three (for the curious, some of the unfortunate ‘70s fare we saw included SLOW DANCING IN THE BIG CITY, CARAVANS, and DEATH ON THE NILE. Contrary to popular belief, a lot of ‘70s movies sucked, kids).



After careful deliberation, my friend and I thought we’d discovered an opening: at around 3 PM every Saturday and Sunday, the two shaggy-haired ushers would disappear from the lobby for 15-20 minutes. There was a PRETTY BABY showing that began at 3:15, and a 3 PM show of the PG-rated A BRIDGE TOO FAR. Simple math, or so we thought…

The fateful Sunday came. My buddy’s mom dropped the two of us off at the UA 5, where we got our BRIDGE TOO FAR tickets for a whopping two bucks apiece. Upon entering the theater’s semi-circular lobby with the color-coded doors (red, yellow, green, blue and orange) we scanned the area and saw nary an usher in sight. Just to be safe, we got popcorn and Cokes, and then calmly walked the long mile to cinema 3, the blue door.

There were many thoughts and emotions running through my head as we walked, not to mention more intense physiological happenings occurring in the pit of my stomach, spreading like a wave through my body. My forehead broke out with beads of sweat, my mouth grew dry, my palms clammy. What really lay beyond that blue door? Would I find the secret that lay behind my nightly dreams of the lovely Miss Shields or perhaps something bigger? Maybe the answers to all the riddles of life lay not only in the movies, but more specifically in R-rated movies? Could it be…salvation? That was it. Salvation lay beyond that blue door, and my hand was now on its handle.


"Pretty baby/Ma petite ingénue."

“Hold it right there, scumbag!” the voice rang out. A hand clamped down on my shoulder. My buddy turned to me, face ashen. The other usher approached us, nodding to his friend. “What’s this?” His friend responded: “Caught ‘em trying to sneak into the R-rated movie.” “Whoa. Bad move, boys.” Sandwiched between the two hulking teens, I was overwhelmed by “a strong, sweet smell of incense” floating off them both like steam. Five years or so later when I was introduced to the giddy pleasures of cannabis, the question in my sense memory finally made sense but in early 1978, they just smelled funny, in addition to being total assholes.

We were not-so-gently ejected by these two 18 year-old virgins and told never to return.

My game, I’m happy to say, got much better after that humiliating maiden voyage. The Fall of 1978 brought my neighborhood a much-needed local theater that we kids could walk or bike to, happily taking our parents and their cars out of the equation. The Lakes 6 theater was one of AMC’s flagships, with a half-dozen screens shaped like bowling alleys housed in an equally oblong, rectangular building with its center section containing box office, concession stand and usher area. This made the Lakes 6 blissfully ripe for sneaking and hopping from R-rated gem to gem. It was such a cakewalk, in fact, that not only did my friends and I never once get caught, but the kids who manned the box office and ticket-tearing duties knew that trying to enforce the MPAA’s censorship dictates was absolutely useless given the building’s architecture.


"The Exorcist" left scars on my 11 year-old frontal lobe.


THE DEER HUNTER, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, APOCALYPSE NOW, THE BOYS IN COMPANY C, and RAGING BULL were just a smattering of the great films that rocked my pre-pubescent body and soul during these heady days, a highlight being the ’78 re-release of William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST, when my two Irish Catholic altar boy buddies and I (an agnostic half-Jew, which perhaps accounts for my initially-brave face) bought tickets for ROCKY II, but sidled into the hard-R horror classic next door instead. Our tough facades quickly melted as the movie progressed, with Tommy Kehoe running out of the theater during Linda Blair’s notorious intimate encounter with a Crucifix. No one saw Tommy for ten days after, and there is still speculation to this day as to where he disappeared to, although one hopes it wasn’t too far south of the material plane. My other friend (whose name is lost to time) and I bravely kept our game faces on for the rest of the movie, but didn’t speak a word to each other during the bike ride home, and never again spoke of the traumatic cinematic experience we shared. My fifth night or so of fitful sleep afterward, I began to think, for the first time, “Gee, maybe they’re onto something with this rating system. What the hell was I doing watching that movie?” Years later, when I interviewed William Friedkin and told him I’d snuck into both THE EXORCIST and CRUISING, he responded that I owed him six dollars. I replied that he owed me thousands from all the therapy I needed after recklessly exposing my delicate psyche to two pictures no kid should ever watch. Friedkin agreed to drop his claim if I would.

"Taxi Driver": Childhood's end.


When TAXI DRIVER came to Tempe’s venerable Valley Art Theater on Mill Avenue, one of two second-run/arthouse screens in Phoenix along with the long-gone and greatly missed landmark the Sombrero Playhouse, my dad took me for my 13th birthday. As I sat through Martin Scorsese’s visceral masterpiece without flinching and showed no signs of PTSD afterward, my parents’ selective censorship of R-rated fare suddenly disappeared, and from 1980 onward, they took me to pretty much any film I wanted to see. That, coupled with the fact that by freshman year in high school I’d grown to over six feet in height, I was able to buy my own damn R-rated tickets from then on, without ever getting carded. With that new-found freedom, however, much of the joy that came from viewing technically-forbidden fruit vanished. No longer when I entered a cinema showing an R-rated film did I get that giddy/frightened/euphoric burning that started in my gut and spread like a wave through every molecule in my body. I was going to the movies, so there was the joy and excitement that I feel to this day when the lights go down and I ready myself for one of the few communal experiences left in society, but that’s all it was. Going to the movies. Before I knew it, I stopped looking at what a movie’s rating was, and just went to the ones that sparked my interest. There was however, a final exception in 1983, when I was sixteen.

There is something you have to understand about Phoenix in the dark days before the Internet: it had something of a coolness embargo foisted upon it. In other words, a cutting edge film, piece of music, or even book release might hit the left and right coasts in the Fall of 1980, along with releases in major markets such as Chicago and Dallas, or high-end niche locales such as Ann-Arbor or Austin, but in Phoenix, you’d be lucky if that high-end item reached us by 1982 or ’83. Such was the case with Tinto Brass’ notorious CALIGULA. Correctly described by one critic as “A train wreck of a film that looks as if it were made by Cecil B. DeMille gone psycho,” CALIGULA was a multi-million dollar pornographic epic that purported to tell the true story of the debauched Roman emperor who was utterly insane. It also featured an A-list cast, including Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole and Helen Mirren. Rated X? Hell, it was so far beyond X or even XXX they couldn’t even come up with a rating for it, so it was one of the first releases to go out without an MPAA seal or rating on it. It was playing at the Valley Art for a week-long engagement. My buddies and I, with freshly-minted driver’s licenses, decided to go for it. That burning feeling in the pit of my stomach was back!

Above, The Valley Art, circa mid-1960s. Below, as it appears today.




The Valley Art was Arizona’s oldest continuously-operating theater, and in the early ‘80s was run by aging hippies who’d arrived on Tempe's Mill Avenue between 1968 and 1970, and hadn’t moved, either physically or temporally. They didn’t really give a shit who went to the movies there, so long as you paid your three bucks admission so they could keep buying cheap weed and some hot wings from Long Wong’s down the street. As we approached the box office, we saw an anomaly for the uber-liberal Valley Art: a hand-printed “Adults Only” sign in black, block letters, Scotch-taped to the inside of the box office window. We halted in our tracks. The groovy dude inside the glass booth saw our hesitation, smiled, and beckoned us forward. Looking us over, he inquired “You guys twenty-one?” The three of us exchanged hasty glances, gulped in synch, and replied “Yeah. Sure” (None of us were even shaving yet). The hippie dude smiled, looked us over once more and said “Right on. Enjoy gentlemen.” We got our tickets and went inside. The theater was packed. By the film’s mid-point, half the audience had walked, most in disgust, muttering to themselves. The week-long engagement ended two days later, after vigorous protests from pillars of the community. This was Arizona, remember, and then as now, “progressive” was not the dominant vibe.

Malcolm McDowell as "Caligula." End of the road.


After seeing our first, official (sort of) X-rated film in a theater, my friends and I made our way to the equally venerable Chuckbox burger factory, and mulled over the fact that our days of pushing the cinematic censorship envelope had officially come to an end, and with a regrettably crappy movie, to boot. And after years of sneaking into “verboten” cinematic fare, to paraphrase George Carlin, none of us were inflicted with rotting of the soul, curvature of the spine, or a sudden desire to overthrow the government. For God’s sake, they were just movies. What was the big deal, after all?

Indeed. Or not.

I did finally see PRETTY BABY, on VHS, around the same time I saw CALIGULA. I thought, and still think, it’s a brilliant film. And with each successive viewing as time has progressed, I find it more unsettling, and not the least bit titillating, which is how I’m sure Louis Malle intended it. By 1983, my attentions had moved onto real girls in my orbit, as opposed to the lovely, unattainable Brooke Shields. I wasn’t any more successful with most of them than I had been in sneaking in to see Brooke au naturale all those years ago. But just to show what little sponges we are at that age, I did have an opportunity to meet Miss Shields at a party years later, standing a mere few feet from her and making eye contact. I froze like a star-struck 11 year-old and couldn’t budge, while my friend chatted up Brooke and her gal pal, and got the gal pal’s number. Awkwardness dies hard.

I often wonder what became of those two spotty, stoned teenage ushers who threw my friend and I out of the UA 5 (another theater long-gone), who unwittingly whetted my appetite for R-rated covert action. I’ll quote a not-so-beloved slasher movie satire called STUDENT BODIES, which came out around 1981. In the middle of the not-so-hilarious high-jinks was this gem: a stern-looking gent in a gray suit, seated behind an impressive desk, suddenly appeared on-screen, with the following message: “Ladies and gentlemen, in order to achieve an "R" rating today, a motion picture must contain full frontal nudity, graphic violence, or an explicit reference to the sex act. Since this film has none of those, and since research has proven that R-rated films are by far the most popular with the moviegoing public, the producers of this motion picture have asked me to take this opportunity to say ‘Fuck you.’”

Indeed.

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Golden Globe Winner SALLY HAWKINS: The Hollywood Interview

Actress Sally Hawkins.


SALLY HAWKINS ON THE VIRTUES OF BEING HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
BY
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appeared in the November issue of Venice Magazine.

English actress Sally Hawkins got her first break in cinema from iconic director Mike Leigh in his film All or Nothing in 2002, and soon followed with work in Leigh’s acclaimed Vera Drake two years later. It was heady stuff for the young actress, who’d just graduated England’s revered drama school, The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a few years before. Born in London April 27, 1976, Sally made her screen debut on the British television hit Casualty in 1999, with work on the comedy smash Little Britain, as well as fine supporting work in Layer Cake (2004) with Daniel Craig, and The Painted Veil (2007) with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. She also appeared in Woody Allen’s final UK production, Cassandra’s Dream, opposite Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell.

Sally headlines social realist Mike Leigh’s latest kitchen sink slice of English life, Happy-Go-Lucky, playing Poppy, a free-spirited young Londoner who always manages to keep her chin up and smile, even during life’s most discouraging moments. Shot with Leigh’s signature fly-on-the-wall style, Happy-Go-Lucky marks another impressive entry into this unique filmmaker’s cinematic canon, and boasts a star-making turn from the charming and radiant Miss Hawkins, who took time to speak with us during a recent stopover on this side of the Pond. Here’s what was said…

Mike Leigh really gave you your first break.
Sally Hawkins: Yeah, without him, I don’t know where I’d be. I really mean that. He’s phenomenal. He doesn’t suffer fools, and he’s completely honest, and just a really lovely man. He has no fear, and just says what he feels. You so often in life have people who are afraid of hurting your feelings or sort of approach you from around the side. Mike is just straight-on. In this business especially, it’s so refreshing.

I think we need more blunt instruments like him in the film world, and in general.
Yes, he’s honest and his films reflect that, and there are fewer and fewer of those kinds of films, aren’t there?


Sally and Eddie Marsan take the most neurotic driving lesson in cinema history in Happy-Go-Lucky.

His process that creates that honesty is very interesting, combining rehearsal with improvisation. Tell us a bit about that.
We start out with nothing, no script, nothing. He gets a collection of actors together and they flesh out the story. With something like Topsy-Turvy or Vera Drake I think they were more set ideas, but with Happy Go Lucky and All or Nothing, we start with one-on-one work with Mike, where you’re sort of building up the character and—I don’t know how else to put this—but he’s sort of plugging into your brain and sucking out everything that he needs: very detailed notes. He sorts out what he wants and what he needs. Whether you’re aware of it or not as an actor, he knows vaguely where he wants you to go. I was aware very early on that he was looking for someone who was open and high energy and full of life, love and positivity, who had a sense of humor and naughtiness about them (laughs). And that was quite apparent from early on.

So there wasn’t even a seed of your character to begin with in his head.
No, I think he just knew he wanted to follow someone who had a certain kind of energy and put it up on the screen. And the character that he wanted me to explore, he wanted to have those traits.

Just being around you this briefly, you really radiate positive energy and happiness. Was there a lot of you in this character?
I think there is, yeah. Definitely when life is going well, and I’m sitting in the Los Angeles sun (laughs), I have that same kind of positivity! But early on, he establishes a strong line with you that there’s you, and then there’s your character, and there’s a danger that if you allow yourself to believe that they’re you, it can get into some shaky territory. So he always refers to the characters in the third person, for example, when he’s working with you, just to make sure that line is there. You’ll take with Mike alone, and he’ll ask what was going on with your character in that particular scene, and you’ll also refer to them in the third person. So that line is maintained throughout. Before and after (the scene) he’ll ask you to warm up into your character.

How do you do that?
It gets easier as you progress through rehearsal. Initially, it might take half an hour or an hour before you realize that they’re there and you get a handle on the character, but towards the end of rehearsal, you find that you get better at finding the character, perhaps it’s just down to finding a particular gesture. Then by the time you’re filming, the whole process takes thirty seconds, and you’re there.

How long do you actually rehearse before you shoot?
It’s a six month rehearsal period before Mike shoots. He creates these incredibly real, rich, complex characters. They’re as close to real people as possible. You create them from birth, really. Then Mike takes the time to refine them, build them, and write them basically.

Sally and director Mike Leigh relax on the set.

It sounds like a very complex process.
It is complex, but it makes sense when you’re doing it, and it’s a lot of work, but it’s the most exhilarating thing for an actor, and it’s the most secure feeling I’ve had as an actor, because every single thing, every beat has a root, it has a reason for being there. It’s just so tight by the time it gets to filming, because it comes from this organic process. It’s like a piece of tapestry where you know every single stitch and every beat. I’m just full of metaphors today! (laughs)

How long was the actual shoot?
Four months, we overran slightly. So the whole process is the better part of a year, really.

What’s so fascinating is that you’re describing an epic filmmaking process that Mike Leigh has, for what seem to be “kitchen sink” films that most people would guess are shot and rehearsed in about 3-4 weeks.
Yes exactly, it feels like an epic, even though the tiniest moment might be happening on the screen, there’s this really thick, meaty thing behind each beat of the story.

Leigh and Ken Loach are sort of the two leading social realist filmmakers who have documented Britain since the ‘60s, where you feel like a fly on the wall watching them. In the U.S. we had Robert Altman, John Cassavetes and we still have Sidney Lumet, but most filmmakers aren’t doing things like this anymore.
Mike’s a huge fan of Robert Altman and Cassavetes, It’s fascinating to hear Mike speak about that: his influences, and what he’s hung on to from them, and then how he’s taken their methods and sort of put them through his own filter, so to speak.

Let’s talk about your background. Your parents are children’s book authors and illustrators.
Yes, and it was wonderful growing up and watching them collaborate: my Mom might do the rough drawings, and then my Mom might do the final drawings, or vice-versa. Then they both work on the text together. My Dad wrote a lot of the books, because my Mom was always trying to run around and do everything else, like manage my older brother and me when we were growing up (laughs).

Is your brother artistically-inclined, as well?
Yes, he a phenomenal designer and illustrator, and designs web pages.

You studied at RADA. What was that like?
I knew I wanted to go there early on, and enrolled at quite a young age, so I took every course I could. I was like a sponge. It was a good decision, I think, to go there so early, because if I had gone to university first, I might not had been quite so keen and wide-eyed, and putting the tutors up on pedestals, which is where they should be. It was a fabulous introduction to all these different techniques: Stanislavski, and the Method, and all these phenomenal and unusual texts…it was a really tremendous experience.

It sounds like you knew you were an actor from an early age.
Yeah, although it sounds like a bit of a cliché, I was introduced to acting in primary school. It was either art or acting for me, and when I found I was really most interested in making my friends laugh, once I got to senior school, I was aware of RADA and realized I wanted to pursue that line, instead of university, which is what they were pushing, because it was a very rigorous academic school.

L to R: Sally, Ewan McGregor, Haley Atwell, and Colin Farrell in Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream.

You got to work with another icon of cinema recently: Woody Allen, in Cassandra’s Dream.
He was absolutely amazing, and in a completely different way from Mike. He’s a huge hero of mine, and was charming, disarming, and lovely, droll, bright and I’d do anything for him. The only way I can describe his process is working from the outside in, whereas with Mike it’s just the opposite. When Woody sees it, he knows when it’s right. It’s more about it happening and Woody capturing it, whereas with Mike, every moment is accounted for. Both do very few takes, interestingly enough.

I think the part of Happy Go Lucky that’s stuck with me the most is in the opening scene when your character’s bike is stolen, and instead of getting angry, she says “I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye.” It was such a great, non-exposition way to establish who she was.
I’m so glad you liked that. That was actually born out of a five minute improvisation before we shot that scene. That’s one of the lovely things about working with Mike: these bits of magic just pop out of nowhere because of all the work you’ve done beforehand.

Trailer for Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky.

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Rosemarie DeWitt: The Hollywood Interview

Actress Rosemarie DeWitt.

ALWAYS THE BRIDE:
ROSEMARIE DEWITT TIES THE KNOT IN RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the December/January issue of Venice Magazine.

After many years paying her dues in theatrical productions big and small, and in supporting roles on television and film, Rosemarie DeWitt gained major plaudits for her turn as Don Draper’s Greenwich Village lover in AMC’s hit Mad Men. As Midge, a beatnik who was mostly likely born with a silver spoon in her mouth, De Witt brought both cagey sexiness and striking vulnerability to the table, making her a stand-out in a series full of fellow travelers.

Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Rosemarie DeWitt attended Hofstra University and studied at New York’s Actors Center. She is also the granddaughter of legendary heavyweight boxing champ James Braddock, whose story was brought to the screen in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, in which Rosemarie appeared as one of the Braddock’s neighbors. DeWitt now finds herself living a Cinderella story of her own, having just nabbed an Independent Spirit nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Jonathan Demme’s arthouse hit Rachel Getting Married, playing the eponymous character, who must deal with her dysfunctional and self-destructive sister (Anne Hathaway)’s return from rehab to attend her nuptials at the family homestead.

Rosemarie DeWitt sat down with us recently for a chat. Here’s what transpired:

Congrats on your nomination.
Rosemarie DeWitt: Thanks! I was really excited that the film got lots of nominations, that made it extra sweet. We were working on making it really honest, and getting out of our own way.

In many ways you had the toughest role because you’re constantly reacting to everything that others are doing, so it would have been easy for your character to be less three-dimensional than you made her.
But being surrounded by those actors really made it easy for me. You’re only as good as the people around you, and we had an amazing cast, so I didn’t really have a choice but to do what I did. (laughs) It was tough in the sense that Rachel is in a constant state of stress and anxiety about what’s happening and I won’t lie: I got a little drunk at the wrap party, and felt a tremendous sense of release when I could let her go, and kept saying to Jonathan (Demme) ‘I’m not Rachel! I’m not Rachel!’ (laughs) And I did this little dance to sort of shower it all off.

Rosemarie DeWitt (R) and Anne Hathaway (L) in Rachel Getting Married.

How long was the shoot?
Six or seven weeks, not that long to make a movie, but a long time to be in that mind-set constantly. Jonathan was very relaxed on the set. We’d shoot twelve pages and be done by two in the afternoon. He knew exactly what he wanted, which made it a lot easier.

The film is an interesting litmus test. The friend I saw it with completely empathized with Anne Hathaway, whereas I was with you and Debra Winger.
Isn’t that interesting? It captures such a classic family dynamic that we’ve all experienced that it only takes about five minutes before you just plug in and figure out who you are in the story. And you can see how easy it would be to become Debra’s character. (Screenwriter) Jenny Lumet said something really cool in a Q & A recently after a screening. Someone asked her how she got the idea for the movie. She said “I just had this image of two women looking at themselves in a mirror. One was in a wedding dress, and the other comes in and creates the moment, and at the same time, shatters it.” It was interesting to see how one character, one person, could have that much power over a family, but it happens, more often than not, I think.

DeWitt and Hathaway in the film's iconic image.

With Obama being elected and the concept of race in country, hopefully, changing, one thing I loved about the movie was that it showed an inner-racial marriage happening, but the fact that it was inner-racial was never mentioned.
I love that, too. It’s one of my favorite elements of the movie. What’s even more wonderful is that it wasn’t really a conscious decision on anyone’s part. Neda Armian, our producer, tells a great story about how she got all these submissions for actors for the roles in the film, and she wrote a note back saying “Would you please submit some additional actors: all these actors are white.” And there was no racial specification in the script, so I think she was like “Okay, let’s start over and hit ‘reset.’” Then Jonathan fell in love with Tunde (Adebimpe), because he’d just finished working on a Hurricane Katrina documentary, where he’d met a lot of the people he wound up casting in this film. He thought it would give them a chance to get out of New Orleans for a while, to give them a leg up. The fact that a lot of the people in the film aren’t actors I think also gives it a feeling of authenticity. That’s the thing about Jonathan, he just loves people, not just actors. I think this could have been a very different movie had he not directed it. Because he’s such a people person, he really allows his actors to sort of peel back the layers of the onion, so to speak.

Even going back to his early exploitation films, he did that. It’s one reason most of his films really hold up.
Yeah, exactly. They’re all very human stories.

Since we mentioned Jonathan’s early days, I saw that Roger Corman had his regular cameo, wielding a cheap video camera no less!
(laughs) Yeah, that was cool. I heard him say something really funny: “On their way up, or on their way down, sooner or later, everybody works for me.”

What was Demme’s process like?
That’s a tough one to answer. I just read an article where an actor who’d worked with Robert Altman was talking about how it always felt like Altman was giving you total freedom, when in fact, he was pulling all the strings. It might be similar with Jonathan. He felt kind of like a kid on a playground just watching other kids play in the sandbox, then every once in a while he’d chime in and say “Yeah, that was good. Now throw more sand.” It didn’t feel heavily orchestrated and he was kind of thrilled with everything. He never came over and said something wasn’t working. The only real note he ever gave me was “Be you, be you, be you,” and then he’d just drift back behind the camera. But before we started he said “Feel free to call me anytime, I’d like to hash this out before we get on-set, because once we’re on the set, I don’t like to talk a lot. That said, I’d encourage you not to talk to Jenny Lumet too much about your character. Just know that I cast you for a reason and just take responsibility for your character.

Sure, because after a point, nobody knows more about your character than you, not even the writer.
Yeah, and a lot of directors say that, but they don’t all mean it. Jonathan did, and really let us know.

It’s interesting that you mentioned Robert Altman, because this is a very Altman-esque film. Did you ever see his film A Wedding?
Oh yeah, of course. And Rachel has a lot of similarities, in the best possible way. It’s funny, because I did a reading with Altman shortly before he died. He was working on an Arthur Miller play in London, I forget the title, but it was one of his later works, but it was very bizarre, fragmented and deconstructed, like a lot of his later work. So Altman had already cast it, but didn’t know technically what he wanted to do with it, so he got a bunch of New York actors to read it. None of us knew what we were doing, but Mr. Altman put us all at ease when he said “Don’t worry about doing anything right. Whatever you bring to it is exactly what I want to hear.” And you knew he meant it. So even though I only got to spend two hours with him, it made a real impression.

The other great thing about Altman and Demme is that you don’t notice how well directed their films are until the second or third time you see them. They’re invisible.
Completely! I could watch any film of theirs a hundred times. I was watching Popeye the other night, which Bill Irwin (who plays the father in Rachel) was in, ironically enough. Rachel was that way for me, too. The second and third times I saw it, I liked it even more.

A lot of actors I know dislike watching themselves on-screen. Are you one of those?
Usually, but not in this case. Jonathan is one of those people that just always seems to find the best takes. They’re not always the most explosive or performative, because you don’t want it to get “too good.” Jonathan would say “Remember how real it seemed this morning before you knew your lines completely? Let’s do it that way.” It’s almost like in John Cassavetes’ movies, where he’d use the take where the boom mike was in the frame, and he didn’t care, because that was the best take.

I pray at the temple of Cassavetes.
Me too! A Woman Under the Influence is one of the great movies, and Gena Rowlands, God, she was just so fierce! She’s another one where I’d be happy to just sit in the background of a scene, just so I could watch her work.

Did you have a bit of that with Debra Winger?
Yeah, you know what’s funny is that she’s so good I forgot who I was sitting with. We had only one scene where it was just the two of us. It was raining and we decided to incorporate that into the scene, and at one point I turn around and I look at her and she smiled at me, and I realized ‘Oh my God, that’s Debra Winger!’ (laughs) And I got so nervous because she has that amazing, radiant smile. I had to talk myself down and think ‘Don’t panic, she’s your mom. She’s your mom.” (laughs) I wish they could find a Frozen River for Debra Winger so we could see her in every frame of the movie.

Speaking of family, do you have any siblings?
Yeah, my dad was married before, so I have eight, much older, half-brothers and sisters. It’s a testament to how well Jenny got the relationships right, because a friend of mine saw the film and told me “God, you were such the older sister, the way you just dropped everything and came to your younger sister’s aid.” And in reality, I was the baby, so I was never in that position. It’s just a testament to how much was there on the page, so I could play that moment.

You have quite a pedigree with your granddad.
Yeah, that’s pretty cool, isn’t it? (laughs)

And also cool that you got to be in Cinderella Man.
And I would’ve been thrilled to just walk by, much less have a really nice supporting role. I think that Ron Howard thought ‘Who is this girl?’ and as a courtesy, let me read, before casting me. I’ll say that before Rachel Getting Married that was the best job I ever had. Talk about a story that you believe in with all your heart.

DeWitt (with baby) in Cinderella Man, the story of her grandfather, boxer James Braddock.

I know your grandfather died shortly after you were born. What did your mother tell you about him?
Not much. I learned more about my grandparents during the shooting of the movie than I did from my mother growing up, ironically enough. My parents grew up together, and then my dad joined the Marines at 17, and soon after got married to his first wife. When they split, my dad moved back to his home town and reconnected with my mom again. My dad had fought in The Golden Gloves, so he really idolized my grandfather. He was the one hanging all the pictures and boxing trunks and putting the trophies up. My mom was sort of like “Oh, stop.” So the “legend” wasn’t always around. Ron Howard called me during the shoot and asked if I had any stories or anecdotes we could share about my grandparents and their love story. My mother isn’t alive anymore, but we found around twenty love letters between my grandparents when he was on the road when he was taking fights just to feed the family. So we learned how much they really loved each other through that.

Did you feel the movie captured him accurately?
I do. It’s in the movie that he paid back all the welfare he received. He was just a very quiet, gentle giant. My grandmother was the spitfire. They watered her character down a bit for the movie, since they needed him to be the hero. But she really wore the pants in the family. I got to know my grandmother. She passed away when I was in middle school. So it was a great experience being a part of that movie, and the fact that they made it at all, all those years later.

Did both your parents work when you were growing up?
My dad was a pilot in the Marine Corps, then was an executive in the aviation business. He traveled all the time, which suited his personality. He was the guy that needed to be on the run, living out of suitcases, although not anymore. He’s mellowed with the passing years. (laughs) My mom was pretty much stay-at-home. They were older when they had me, so it was pretty traditional, very old-school.

Where does your artistic side come from?
I have no idea! My family is really just one generation removed from being laborers. My grandfather didn’t go past the eighth grade, I don’t think, and prior to me, I don’t think anyone in my family could afford to be creative. They had to get jobs. My dad had to join the Marines at 17 in order to get an education, and he stayed in the Marines for 30 years. My generation was the lucky one that got to go to college and choose what we wanted for our lives.

Regarding “old school,” we have to talk about your stint on Mad Men.
I think a big part of what makes it powerful is that it makes very relevant statements about the present, as it does the past: how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, where maybe we never should have gone in the first place. I loved that experience. I love it even when I’m not on it! (laughs) It was such a lucky break, getting that. They were at the end of casting, and hadn’t found the right Midge yet. Originally they had a scene where she opens the door wearing a red kimono, and I remember thinking ‘I’m not that,’ so I wasn’t sure I was right for the part. Maybe the fact that I wasn’t this “vamp” is what made Matt Weiner give me a shot. Watching the show takes me back to growing up with my parents and their peers. I remember riding in the car with my dad, sitting on the arm rest with no seat belt. Everybody would be smoking in the car. My uncles, when they’d be talking about a drive they took, someone would ask “How long did it take you to get there?” “Oh, about six beers.” (laughs) They thought nothing of drinking while they were driving. I love that it’s not P.C., and they don’t shy away from any of it.

DeWitt as Midge with Jon Hamm's Don Draper in Mad Men.

What I loved about Midge is that she epitomized the girl on the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” that new kind of Greenwich Village girl who wore no make-up, dressed down, but was still sexy as hell. She was the archetype of a new kind of woman: radiant and self-aware, which didn’t really exist prior to the ‘60s, at least as a cultural archetype.
Yeah, exactly. Matt had me read this book called “Memoirs of a Beatnik,” which was written in the ‘50s, and it was the first piece of feminist beatnik literature, so there were women like that, absolutely. At the same time, I think Midge is a bit hypocritical: there was one part of her that was toying with the old-school “good life,” which is what drew her to Don. I don’t know if we’ll see anymore of her in season three, but I’d be curious to know what became of Midge circa 1967.

I think she’s married to an ACLU lawyer, but they live in Scarsdale.
(laughs) Yes! Perfect.

I think she came from a privileged background: grew up in Connecticut, went to Sarah Lawrence or Radcliffe…
Which is how she can afford to maintain that existence: with her trust fund.

Right. And Don Draper represents her father, that ideal that she was raised to seek out.
I completely agree. One of my favorite moments in the “Midge episodes” is when, during the last time they’re together, everyone is in her apartment smoking pot, and one of the guys looks out the window and sees that the cops are outside. Don is about to leave and the guy says “You can’t go out there.” And Don just looks back at him and says “No. You can’t.” And then he just walks out the door. I’m so happy for everyone on the show, especially Jon Hamm. He’s so reminiscent of the old-time Hollywood stars like Cary Grant, but at the same time, he’s so simple and unadorned in that role.

That’s the goal of every good actor, don’t you think?
Yeah, I think after a while you really want to not only disappear into the role, but the simplicity that you try to bring to it allows the audience to see you. Not because you want everybody to acknowledge you, or know you, or love you, but because you want to illuminate the story, and the only thing you have is yourself.

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