Combustible Celluloid - Eric Mendelsohn Interview

ERIC MENDELSOHN
"What Difference Does It Make If I Try?"

by Jeffrey M. Anderson

Eric Mendelsohn is one of the nicest fellows I have ever met. And I'm not talking just film people. Mendelsohn is a truly warm, wonderful guy. He was pleased as punch that I, respected journalist that I am, would take time out of my busy schedule to come to the Prescot hotel to speak to a lowly filmmaker whose first film, "Judy Berlin", stars Edie Falco and Madeline Kahn and who had Woody Allen as a guardian angel. When I got there, the ice in the water glasses on the table had melted, leaving a little puddle in the bottom. Mendelsohn refused to let me drink out of them, and got fresh glasses from the hotel room's cabinet.

Mendelsohn grew up with Falco in New York. When they went back to shoot their film in Long Island, they found it a strange experience. "It's a funny and it's eccentric place. When we were shooting, people got lawn chairs and barbecues and would sit on the street and eat and watch us shooting. It really was like live theater. And they would all come up to me and say, (Long Island accent) 'My daughter Cheryl Weisner went to school with your brother's Sadie Hawkins date' or whatever."

Mendelsohn and Falco attended State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase art school in Manhattan and found themselves with good timing. "A lot of people are talking about [our school] now but when we went there it was for losers. Edie Falco, Wesley Snipes, and all these people came out of there but when we were there, it was like, 'well, we don't have SAT scores and we couldn't get in anywhere else.'" Mendelsohn quickly gravitated away from art and toward filmmaking. "I was jealous of all the filmmakers at the school I was going to. I just kept thinking they were having more fun than I was having, so I started working with them." Before long he found a job as assistant to the costume designer for Woody Allen's pictures, starting with "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989) and ending with "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994). Mendelsohn says of costuming, "It was really just a front. I can do it and it's easy. What I like about it is that you get to talk to the actors about the characters."

Mendelsohn learned other things from Allen, one of them being how to handle oneself on a set. "Woody's sets are quiet, but what that translates into is protection for the actors. None of the actors on a Woody Allen film feel anything but buffered and secure from time limits and financial constraints. It's all about the work. That's how actors can do their best work." Moreover, Mendelsohn had the privilege of using Woody Allen's private editing bay. "It's the flatbed that he cut every one of the films that Ralph Rosenblum edited, which are "Bananas" (1971), "Take the Money and Run" (1969), and "Annie Hall" (1977), and all of them. So there was a lot of history in that machine. It was sort of terrifying. It was through Woody's generosity, otherwise we would have had to rent something."

Mendelsohn has had to learn a great deal about celebrities very quickly. His best friend Edie Falco, whom he wrote "Judy Berlin" for, has gained a good deal of fame and success from HBO's "The Sopranos". "When I would bring [the script] around to people, I would say, this is written for Edie Falco, and it's not going to any other actress. And they would say, 'who?'" Now it's different. "It's very strange. We went to do a TV show about "Judy Berlin", and I was walking through the hallways as she was having her makeup put on and I saw all the grips and the wardrobe women standing around and they were discussing some famous person who was in the makeup room. And I suddenly realized, it dawned on me, they were talking about Edie! She's obviously a little more used to it than I am. But we can't have breakfast on the street like we used to. And we can't sit in the window of a place and have coffee in Manhattan because people toot the horns of their trucks and say, 'Hey Carmella!'"

"Judy Berlin" also has the historical footnote of being the last movie of talented comedienne Madeline Kahn (1974's "Young Frankenstein"). "One of the last things she said to me was, 'didn't we have good timing?' And I said, 'I don't know what you mean...' And she said, 'I didn't know I was ill.' And that's the thing about ovarian cancer is that by the time they find out it's usually much too far gone to do anything about. People like her, for whatever reason, are my heroes in life. First of all, she's a very fragile, defended kind of person. The only way that they can find relief and release is to be public. I don't know if anyone else responds to Madeline the way I do. Watching her as a kid, I just felt like I had my first sexual experience. She is outrageous. The fact that she decided to be in my first movie, God Almighty! Way into production when things were falling apart and we were scrambling to hold the production together, I would return to the moment when she said, 'Yes, I would love to be in this movie.' And it would inspire me all over again. I am just in awe of people like her. They just make life on Earth so much more pleasurable. The fact that we have her performances on record is like stealing money from the bank."

Big celebrities aside, "Judy Berlin" is Mendelsohn's movie all the way. The main question, of course, is how autobiographical is the movie? "It's seven main characters. They all are pieces of things that I understand about being a human being on the face of the Earth. I think Judy and David together make one very successful human being. And I think, more so than the other characters, they make up a good percentage of what goes on inside my head every day. Which is something akin to: 'well it's time to get out of bed! Let's go! Let's go for it! Let's eat your Wheaties and begin the day!' And the other part of me is: 'Oh God, I can't! Oh, the pain! There's no use. It's all ridiculous. What difference does it make if I try?'"

But Mendelsohn did try and snagged himself the Best Director award at the Sundance film festival. "It was nice winning the award. I'll tell you some other nice things that completely blow that out of the water. Madeline Kahn is in my movie. Barbara Barrie delivers what is clearly an Oscar-worthy performance in this movie. That makes me happy. William Hurt came up to me and said, 'this movie broke me apart.' That is a great compliment from someone who is as rigorous and talented an actor as he." Mendelsohn does have nice things to say about the Sundance lab, where he developed his movie. "Lots of people talk about giving support to artists and do not know what that means. What they like is finished work. What they like is the idea of saying 'I supported so-and-so and now he's famous.' What Sundance understands--and I hate using this because it's the most tired thing you can say--is process. They encourage you to fail and make mistakes and experiment. You can't get anything better than that. Imagine if all our parents had done that, said, 'here, you're safe. Here you try and never fail. No matter what you attempt, it is a success because you attempted it.' I was able to experiment the way you do when you're little and you're in the basement and you're drawing or doing whatever it is you want to do when you grow up. And you bring it up to your mother and say, 'how's this?' And she says, 'it's amazing!' And she hangs it up on the refrigerator. That's a wonderful confidence that you can instill in someone."

The best thing about Mendelsohn is that he admits to being completely naive about the movie business. He just wants to make movies his own way and not worry about contracts and deals and such. "When I'm writing something, I feel like I'm a Roman senator getting up in front of that marble amphitheater. And I say, 'well here's the idea.' And right away someone will raise their hand and say, 'I don't like that idea.' And someone in the left corner says, 'I think there's a good reason we should debate it, however.' The problem with this year, the problem with learning about the business, about film festivals being so totally immersed in business is that my amphitheater is filled with strangers now. And I have to get some bodyguards and have them removed, because I do not want the distributor from Norway raising his hand while I'm trying to write, saying, 'excuse me Mr. Mendelsohn, but my country will not understand that aspect. Can you change that?' And then I do not want the Miramax team sitting down front in my amphitheater saying, 'I don't know if that's going to sell. Can you make it more sexy?'"

"If a movie's good, it's as if the audience is sitting there with police sketch artist pads in their hands, and when the movie's over, you can probably draw a picture of the maker of the movie. And so many films nowadays, if you had to turn around that pad and show what you've drawn, it would be a smiling team of Miramax people. I'd rather see some mental patient's idea of what a movie should be. I'd rather see some half-assed crackpot trying to make a movie. And if he's an interesting, compelling, complex person, that can't help but reveal itself in the actual work. I really believe that."

As I leave Mendelsohn's hotel room, he drops a final nugget of wisdom, "let's face facts. We know we're not Mozart, but we can still continue on doing whatever it is we want to do."

February 9, 2000