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Tough Gal Faye Dunaway Keeps Going with Arizona Dream
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Replies Dunaway, “I have two, no three words to answer your question: Art and commerce. Never the twain shall meet sometimes, right?”
That seemed to be the point concerning the distribution log jam of Arizona Dream, which co-stars Johnny Depp, Lili Taylor and Jerry Lewis. The commercial success in Europe for 18 months notwithstanding, Arizona Dream has been Warner’s nightmare as they struggle to figure out where its audience might be found.
“You know, I don’t like to point fingers—this isn’t the format, and it’s too complicated—but we are in a popular art,” remarks Dunaway. “We don’t have patrons. We’re in this place where people say, ‘How much money can I make?’ And that’s it. It’s fun, it’s risky and it’s just the world we live in. The studio always felt this movie was was too long. We had delays anyway during the movie, and then Warner kept insisting that it be shorter…I just think it’s very different for a large studio; for the system to embrace, understand and nourish independent pictures.”
Directed by Emir Kusturica (who also directed When Father Was Away On Business and Time of the Gypsies), Arizona Dream is at the least a coming-of-age story, as well as a love story and a visual flight of fancy. Kusturica traditionally works in a unique way, redefining his vision as he shoots, seamlessly interweaving surreal material. It was this method of filming which so troubled the studio and was so loyally supported by Dunaway.
“If we don’t have people making these idiosyncratic, sometimes flawed but interesting views and characters…I mean my character is fantastic!” the actress exclaims. “Sometimes you just glean a part. Get into the swim of it; into the river of it. And she is very childlike. She doesn’t think about tomorrow. She’s very intent on the moment…I’ve never played a more deep character, I don’t think. Maybe Chinatown.”
Filmed on location in Arizona, at a house Kusturica found in a picture book, Arizona Dream was an ensemble experience with a very tight company. When the studio started to ask Kusturica to cut scenes in order to shorten the movie—scenes he didn’t feel comfortable cutting because he hadn’t finished the film yet, and these were important sequences evolving as he got to know his cast—the entire cast and crew simply stopped production for a few months.
“What I liked is we were very connected to the director,” explains Dunaway. “An ensemble cast is so much better. The star thing is not what people are interested in. They’re really interested in how people interconnect with each other. I think Arizona Dream is nutty, it’s almost a farce. There are scenes American audiences will never have seen the like of before. That dinner scene; it’s unbelievable. You don’t imagine that people behave that way. And yet real people behave with incredible idiosyncrasies. I think the audience may see some of themselves on screen. There is that great freedom among normal people to not be like the people on screen.”
Dunaway is a very generous interview; sitting close, those constantly moving hands seemingly pull you into her confidence. I remark on her beauty and wonder out loud if she’s able to watch herself on screen. She smiles. “I like to watch with an audience, actually. I need to watch rushes; so I get used to myself.”
She speaks with sincere respect for Johnny Depp—“He’s good, every time he works he gets better,”—and reverently calls Marlon Brando (her co-star in her latest film Don Juan DeMarco) an “icon.” Yet it’s when Faye Dunaway, film star and Oscar winner, attempts to define Arizona Dream that you get a sense she’s only sharing half the story. That famous smile grows wider. “It’s fresh—it’s extreme and eccentric. It’s funny, touching and poignant much of the time.”
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- Comment by العاب on 5/31/11 at 7:52 pm
Thanks for providing such a العاب تلبيس بنات تلبيس مكياج حلوة وجديدة تحميل العاب تلبيس
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This story was published in the November 1994 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Tough Gal Faye Dunaway Keeps Going with Arizona Dream / Despite her status as a film legend, American studios still seems reluctant to release Dunaway's finely crafted and low-profile "art" films.
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