Illeana Douglas’ Woolworth Touch

A stalwart of the "Sundance Generation," actor-writer-director Illeana Douglas talks about what keeps her constantly inspired. But all she really wants is to be the next Elaine May.

by David Fear | Published October 9, 2003

Illeana Douglas may be blessed with one of the film industry’s most distinctive faces, but “ I always get the ‘Did we go to school together?’ question,” she laughs.

Even on a film set full of extras, production assistants and flocks of people wearing tool belts and yelling into cell phones, it’s not hard to pick Illeana Douglas out of the crowd. First off, there’s the fact that she’s been blessed with one of the most distinctive faces of any working actress today—a beautifully Cubist combination of angular cheekbones, a yard-wide smile and large, heavy-lidded eyes. Then, there’s her many memorable turns in the kind of character roles that stick with moviegoers. There’s Robert De Niro’s unlucky (but apparently tasty) date in Cape Fear (1991), the ice-skating murderess of Gus Van Sant’s To Die For (1994), the lovesick teacher of Mark Illsley’s Happy, Texas (1999) and the inner-child art teacher of Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2000), to name a few. Whether she’s stealing scenes by the dozen or just standing quietly off in a corner preparing for one, Douglas has the kind of presence that draws your attention.

Yet, somehow, people seem to have a hard time placing just where they’ve seen her before. “I always get the ‘Did we go to school together?’ question,” Douglas laughs. “But as an actress, really, that’s what you want. I have a pretty good idea of what people see in me, which is the role of translating what they are feeling about the film, even while I’m up there on the screen. I seem to be the person up there that they relate to the most, in some odd way. The writer Norman Krasna used to say he had the ‘Woolworth’s touch,’ which meant he was in touch with the common people. I always thought I had that quality going for me.”

Descended from royal Hollywood stock (she’s the granddaughter of ’30s movie star Melvyn Douglas), this self-described “common person” has slowly managed to become a Sundance generation icon with an impressive body of work and, in her spare time, continues to hone her chops behind the camera as well. In addition to gracing films both big and small, Douglas has directed a documentary on the no-budget world of early ’90s independent film entitled Everybody Just Stay Calm (1994) and made a series of shorts that will show collectively under the banner of “Illeanarama” on the Sundance Channel this fall. She’s also got Dummy, the story of an aimless young man (played by Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody) who finds love, meaning and happiness through ventriloquism. “I play Adrien’s sister, who has just been dumped by her fiancé… which doesn’t exactly help her career as a wedding planner.” Douglas is also working on a screenplay and she’s about to wrap production on Jonathan Parker’s The Californians, a satirical update of Henry James’ novel The Bostonians, set in Marin County and co-starring Noah Wyle, Keith Carradine and Cloris Leachman.

Somehow, she still managed to spare a few minutes to discuss her career and the state of independent moviemaking with us.

David Fear (MM): What were your first few acting jobs like? I heard you had a stint working in dinner theater.

Illeana Douglas (ID): Ha! I did some dinner theater, yeah, as a kid… I did everything—local theater, background kid parts, whatever I could do. So, yes, I did do some dinner theater. I learned a lot of great secrets from that… like you gotta hold that audience, ’cuz they’re hungry! (laughs). You tend to pick up a lot of ham tendencies there. I also learned to sing through that. I could really belt it out.

So, yeah, I did a lot of regional theater in Mass­achusetts, then moved to New York when I was 10 and started going to school there.

MM: Where at?

“Whenever a director like Terry Zwigoff sends you a script, you know it’s too good to pass up, says Douglas, here in Zwigoff’s Ghost World.

ID: The Neighborhood Playhouse… it’s where Sanford Meisner taught. So I graduated from there, got a few roles and I’ve been working ever since.

MM: How did your association with Martin Scorsese begin?

ID: I met Marty when I was working for a publicist a few offices down from him. He needed someone to dub a scream for The Last Temptation of Christ, which he was working on at the time. Someone knew I was an actress and suggested I do it, and he liked my scream! I ended up dubbing a few voices for background characters. Then he suggested I read for a small part in New York Stories and I got that. He later mentioned he thought he might have a part for me in this thing he was putting together called Cape Fear.

MM: Your part is one of the most brutal scenes of the film. Everybody always mentions it.

ID: Film acting is very much about creating a moment, and we really wanted to make that moment memorable and very chilling. Otherwise, it would have just been another tawdry scene in a horror film. I think it helped, too, that I was the character the viewer relates to… you have this movie with Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange and then, ‘Oh, who’s this poor girl?’ (laughs)

“…[The money people] now think ‘Hey, if I’m investing in this, I’m going to have an opinion!’ It didn’t used to be like that. ------ They used to respect the fact that you were an artist and they gave you a certain amount of leeway in order to get your vision on the screen. I miss that.”

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve managed to pull off a few of those moments that people seem to remember. I hear the same thing about To Die For. “Oh, when you skate over her body! It’s great!” Years later, people still bring that up! On the film that I’m working on now, my character is afraid of public speaking, and she has to give a speech at one point. After we shot the scene, the other actors kept saying, “Oh, you should have seen what you were doing!” Hopefully, it’s another good moment.

MM: You were lucky enough to come along right when modern American independent film was really hitting its stride. Having been part of the heyday, what do you think of independent film now?

ID: There are still amazing films that continue to pop out, like Boys Don’t Cry, for example. What I miss about when I started was that it was a little more freewheeling back then… The first “indie” film I did was this little low-budget movie called Grief, which we shot in 10 days. And three of those days were re-shoots! (laughing) We made it for $17,000, and that’s what took me to Sundance, where I ended up meeting Nancy Savoca and, later, Allison Anders. It really started me on this whole journey of doing independent films, where it was a very hands-on experience.

Basically, with films I was helping to develop, you did everything you could to get it made and got very little interference. I mean, something like Search & Destroy was just absolutely fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. The backers said, “If you can get us Chris Walken and John Turturro, we’ll give you $1 million.” We got them; they gave us the money and left us alone so we could make the film.

Grace of My Heart was a similar experience. Allison and I had originally set out to do a film about the poet Anne Sexton. That fell through, but she said “How about we do a film about girl groups?” Which was perfect! I’d been dying to do that story for years, plus I’d worked in the old Brill Building, so it seemed natural. The people with the cash said “Get us this person and this person, and we’ll give you the funding.” Luckily, she knew Eric Stoltz and I had just worked with Matt Dillon, who we’d written those parts for. So we both put it together and they gave us $5 million dollars to make it. Again, very little interference… all we got from them was a few notes, but that was it.

I look back on that now and that just doesn’t happen anymore. Now, the people who are giving the cash have, unfortunately, wised up! (laughs) They think, “Hey, if I’m investing in this, I’m going to have an opinion!” It didn’t used to be like that. They used to give you the money, but they respected the fact that you were an artist and gave you a certain amount of leeway in order to get your vision on the screen. I miss that.

MM: Did you make Everybody Just Stay Calm to document that period?

ID: Yeah. I think I’d done about five independent features in one year, and the experience of it was really quite funny with everybody rushing around, trying to get these things made come hell or high water. I had seen all these “glamorous” documentaries, with stars in their trailers and all that, and I wanted to do a counterpoint. Somebody needed to do an oral history of that moment in time, too.

In Dummy, Douglas plays ventriloquist Adrien Brody’s sister, a wedding planner who has just been dumped by her own fiancé.

MM: You mentioned before that you had worked for a publicist. Was that what inspired your short film, Devil Talk?

ID: Exactly! The short is about the devil hiring a publicist to change his image. I worked for this publicist who was a real character. She was great; this real strong woman who many people thought could have been the devil’s publicist! (laughs) Mostly, though, it was something [actor] Michael Panes and I thought up.

We were both in this sketch comedy troupe called Manhattan Punchline at different times… We share the same sense of humor and the same love of comedians like Albert Brooks and Nichols and May. Elaine May is my hero, and the short films Brooks used to do for SNL were a big inspiration. So we did Devil Talk, and we just did another short together entitled Super Market. And, coincidentally, while we were shooting at the market, Albert Brooks showed up to do some grocery shopping! It was like a weird blessing.

MM: How did “Illeanarama” come about?

ID: I’ve been making these little films for years, and I showed Devil Talk at Sundance, which they liked quite a bit. So they asked me if I would put together an hour’s worth of my shorts and shoot some new stuff. We’re almost finished editing everything together; it’ll show around November. Plus I’m planning on adapting Devil Talk into a feature. I’m trying to finish the screenplay now.

Douglas and Cloris Leachman in Jonathan Parker’s The Californians.

MM: Does directing satisfy something in you that acting does not?

ID: Mostly it’s the chance to do this Nichols and May style of comedy—very cerebral, yet very broad. I really love that, but don’t see it much anymore. The filmmaking is an outlet for that, definitely. But I love acting. Whenever a director like Terry Zwigoff sends you a script, you know it’s just too good to pass up. I could tell as I was reading Ghost World that there was a lot I could do with the part, which is really all I look for in roles.

MM: Like the role in Dummy, for example?

ID: The moment I read Greg Pritikin’s script, I fell in love with it. I really wanted to do a repressive Jewish family story, as well. I’ve been in plenty of repressive Italian families in the movies, but never a repressive Jewish one! (laughs) Plus, I’d admired Adrien Brody’s work for a while, and had met him in New York. We both mentioned wanting to work together, then two weeks later this amazing script gets delivered to me and it turns out he’s already signed on! Things like that keep me doing this. Luckily for me, it happens often enough to keep me constantly inspired. MM

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