Role Recall: Illeana Douglas Reveals Secrets of 'Cape Fear' and Explains Why 'Picture Perfect' Isn't a Chick Flick
Back in the ’90s, Illeana Douglas was one of Hollywood’s busiest character actresses, bouncing back and forth between well-received indies like Grace of My Heart and To Die For and such major studio movies as Goodfellas and Message in a Bottle. And while Douglas is still an industry fixture, these days she likes to think of her profession as both archivist and actress. “I love being in movies, but I also enjoy writing about movie experiences,” Douglas tells Yahoo Movies. “I write everything down [about my films], and interview other people about their movies.”
It’s worth noting that her interviews always go beyond the basic “what was it like to work with so-and-so” questions, delving into the nitty-gritty of the subject’s daily life on set. “People are always surprised when I ask them, ‘What did your dressing room look like?’” Douglas says, laughing. “I eat that stuff up with a spoon, because you get some real personal reflection. I always felt a certain responsibility to remember those stories. I think they’re important, because once a person is gone, all you have left is the movie.”
Douglas’s fascination with the personal histories behind popular films can be traced to her own family lineage; as the granddaughter of Oscar-winning ’30s movie star Melvyn Douglas, she has a direct link to the Golden Age of Hollywood with its vanished studio system and old-school glamour. Some of the stories she inherited from the elder Douglas are recounted in her 2015 memoir, I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories from a Life Lived in and Out of Movies. And she’s also been offering her archivist services to Turner Classic Movies as the host of the network’s Trailblazing Women series, which is returning for its second edition tonight.
Last year, Trailblazing Women focused on the work of groundbreaking female directors like Agnes Varda, Julie Dash and Kathryn Bigelow. The subject of the second series — airing on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout October — is “Actresses Who Made a Difference,” exploring both the famous films and social activism practiced by such female stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Dorothy Dandridge, and Jane Fonda. “What’s interesting to me is that we know that [contemporary] actresses are being marginalized from roles in films; there’s statistics to back that up. But they’re also being marginalized from being used for social causes, and that’s interesting to examine. Are actors and actresses maybe not thought as social ambassadors in the way they used to be?”
For her own part, Douglas is an established ambassador for ’90s cinema, with a font of stories from a period in the industry that feels like the distant past even though it was only two decades ago. We asked her to recount her memories of three key movies from that era, which illustrate some of the differences between then and now.
Cape Fear (1991)
Released 25 years ago this November, Martin Scorsese’s remake of the 1962 thriller remains one of his biggest box-office hits and most purely entertaining features. His penultimate collaboration with Robert De Niro — 1995’s Casino marks the last time they’ve worked together — transformed the actor into psycho killer Max Cady, a role originated by screen legend Robert Mitchum, who has a cameo as a police lieutenant. Douglas, who was in a relationship with Scorsese at the time, plays one of Cady’s victims.
That was such a great early opportunity to be part of a big studio movie, and see the mechanics of it. I wasn’t only an actor in the movie, but was able to develop and write my role a little bit behind the scenes. Marty is very collaborative in that way; every little thing has meaning for him. It was enlightening, but it also spoiled me, because after that, a lot of my roles were like, “We want you to just stand there and do your lines!”
Getting to work with Robert De Niro, one of the greatest living actors, was terrific. You go into the ring with someone, and you try to live up to what they deliver or you fold. He set the bar very high. And then meeting Robert Mitchum, who worked with my grandfather [in the 1951 film My Forbidden Past] was a highlight. I asked him what Ava Gardner was like, and he turned to me, squinted and said, “Addictive.” I was like, “Excuse me,” and then ran to my trailer and wrote that down in my journal! It was why I got into show business, for those moments.
Grace of My Heart (1996)
Douglas and director Allison Anders together conceived this rare star vehicle for the actress, casting her as Denise Waverly, a fictional musician who becomes a star during the famous Brill Building era of the recording industry. Made for $5 million by Universal and released by the studio’s now-defunct art house label, Gramercy Pictures, the film failed to cause a stir at the box office, but has cultivated a devoted following in the 20 years since its release.
When I met Allison, we were like two teenage girls in the ’60s sharing 45s and movies. We just became so simpatico; we loved old movies, and we wanted to make a melodrama with echoes of the films we loved from the 1970s, specifically by Paul Mazursky. It was a little bit easier [to find financing] in those days. We went in, pitched the script to Universal and, boom, we got to make a movie. I remember thinking, “Gee, making movies seems easy!”
Grace of My Heart was a complete labor of love. What we tried to do with the soundtrack and storyline was very innovative. Allison came up with this idea of creating a soundtrack by getting people like Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, and have them collaborate on a song that sounded as if it was from 1958. We touched on Brian Wilson’s story and Carol King’s story, people we just really admired. And I got to work with Bette Midler, who I idolized. She sang “God Give Me Strength,” and it was great fun to work with her. The hair and costumes alone were great. Just to be in a movie where you get to have 50 wardrobe changes and 50 hair changes! I threw in every homage that I could to a movie or performer that I loved. The only one I couldn’t sneak past Allison was the Barbra Streisand perm from A Star is Born. It took four hot curlers, but we did it and were so proud of ourselves. I came out of the trailer, and Allison was like “No, no! This is not a Barbra Streisand movie. It leans more towards Carly Simon.” So I went with Carly on that one.
It was four years later, around 2000, that things really started to change in the film business; the glory days of the independent film movement when a lot of female directors were around [and working] had stopped. It’s hard to get a hold of Grace of My Heart now. There’s only one print of it, which Marty owns and graciously lends out. We get a lot of requests to see it because, it’s become a cult movie. So we achieved that goal.
Picture Perfect (1997)
Thanks to hits like Sleepless in Seattle and While You Were Sleeping, romantic comedies were one Hollywood’s bread-and-butter genres during the ’90s, making newly minted movie stars of actresses like Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston, who chose Picture Perfect as her first big-screen role after Friends became a pop-culture sensation. But, as Douglas points out, those movies were eventually doomed by the “chick flick” designation that severely cut into their audience.
Something started to happen in the late ’90s when movies like Picture Perfect started to be called chick flicks. It happened to Grace of My Heart, too. It was sold as this sensitive female picture, even though it really wasn’t. It was the journey of a woman trying to find her voice, but it also starred Matt Dillon, John Turturro, and Eric Stoltz. So it was a really broad ensemble film, like Picture Perfect, which also starred Kevin Bacon and Jay Mohr.
I think that there was this backlash that happened where movies started to be made specifically for women or specifically for men. That was a mistake, because going back to the ’40s and ’50s you had movies starring actresses like Ginger Rogers that both men and women went to see. In the ’90s, I think we boxed ourselves into something with these romantic comedies where they went out of favor. Somehow a movie like Sleepless in Seattle convinced people that guys only like The Dirty Dozen and girls only like romantic comedies.
I don’t think we’ve quite recovered from that, but we are in this fantastic moment right now with television where you have all these three-dimensional female characters. It’s confusing why we can’t have that in movies. I’ve actually written a romantic comedy that I’m going to be directing, so maybe there can be a comeback for the genre if it’s done in the right way. You just have to argue that this is not a movie specifically for women. I know that I like the experience of going to a film with other people, and having a universal emotional experience. So I’ll still be out there stumping for romantic comedies!
