I'll Scream Later (No Series) Read online

  Kiss my ass, Rex!

  The next youngest was Janet Gaynor, at twenty-two years and 222 days, when she won hers, the first year the Academy Awards were held. Most of the rest of the younger winners were in their midtwenties, and among my contemporaries I’m pleased to be counted with Hilary Swank, who was twenty-five when she won for Boys Don’t Cry, and Jodie Foster, who was twenty-six when she was recognized for The Accused.

  I also remain the only Deaf person to have won an acting Oscar. In the more than twenty years since I won my Oscar, with so many talented Deaf actors, I had hoped other Deaf actors would have joined that league. The talent is there, the opportunity should be.

  When you’re standing up there in the lights, heart pounding, Oscar in hand, there’s always someone you fail to mention. I think it’s just the nature of these awards shows. Everyone has their story; mine is Jack.

  Although we met after Children of a Lesser God had wrapped, by then we’d been working together closely for more than a year. He was a great, steady presence in my life and in my work, but I didn’t think to mention him that night. His father, who until then had pretty much adored me, was deeply hurt that I had overlooked his son. It would be a couple of years before he completely got over it. Thankfully Jack didn’t expect it. He was completely focused on being a part of the Oscars, his voice playing to an audience of millions; he was having a blast.

  Meanwhile, despite incredibly tight security, somehow my entire family managed to talk their way into one of the pressrooms backstage. My publicist at the time, Alan Burry, looked at all these milling Matlins and said, “What is this? Ma and Pa Kettle go to the Oscars?” Hey, I loved having them there. Their love and support has always been important to me, but on this night it meant the world.

  BACKSTAGE I WAS also waiting for word on who would win Best Actor. Bill was nominated, as well as Paul Newman for The Color of Money, Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa, James Woods in Salvador, and Dexter Gordon in Round Midnight. I know, looking back now, that Bill’s chances of winning back-to-back Oscars in the same category were small. As many had predicted, the Oscar went to Paul Newman. I don’t think he was there that night, and I’m sad that I never had a chance to meet him.

  Oscar night is always a long night for winners. There are the mass interview sessions, where you face a huge, hungry pack of reporters asking questions. There are hundreds of photographers—so many bulbs flashing that you can literally feel the heat they generate as you get close to the room. Then you hit the television press. There’s the Governor’s Ball and the round of parties after. All in all it’s exhausting, but in a terrific, this-really-rocks kind of way.

  The interviews and Governor’s Ball over, I slipped into the back of our limo, kicked off my shoes, laid the Oscar by my side, and finally relaxed, letting it all sink in. Though it was late, we were headed to Spago’s on the Sunset Strip to catch the tail end of Swifty Lazar’s annual Oscar bash. Bill got in and sat across from me, and what happened next will forever be etched into my memory.

  “Well, you’ve got that little man beside you,” he said, nodding at the Oscar.

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you think you deserve it? There are hundreds of actors who have worked for years for the recognition you just got handed to you. Think about that.”

  My face just fell. I was stung, crushed, hurt. A churn of emotions was running through me.

  I had hoped for better from Bill, that he would have had enough love and empathy on that day to allow himself to be happy for me, just this once. When Jack got in the limo, Bill turned to him and asked him to start looking into getting me enrolled in core classes at NYU right away. This was crazy. My head was absolutely spinning. I didn’t have the energy to analyze what that implied.

  I got little sleep that night. I had an early interview poolside at the Bel-Air with Good Morning America. When we’d wrapped that, my mother arrived, purse in one hand and toting my Oscar like a dumbbell in the other.

  “What do you want me to do with this, Marlee?” she said just as she walked past Kathleen Turner. I cringed, figuring Kathleen would probably have a suggestion or two about what she could do with it….

  The next day, Bill headed back to the East Coast, while my family and the Oscar headed back to Chicago. Gloria, seven-year-old Zach, and Jack all stayed over an extra day, and we celebrated by going to Disneyland. We checked out of the Bel-Air Hotel that morning and stayed in a Howard Johnson motel that night.

  At Disneyland, I think we rode all the rides at least once, screamed on the Matterhorn, giggled through Pirates of the Caribbean, ate junk food until we were ready to explode, waited in line with everyone else, and laughed all day long. It was one of the best days ever. I’d highly recommend it to any Oscar winner postceremony; it plants your feet right back down on the ground.

  27

  IN 1987, HOLLYWOOD wrapped me in its embrace. On January 30, the day before the Golden Globes, Paramount Pictures and Life magazine came together to do a photo shoot celebrating the studio’s seventy-fifth anniversary. More than sixty of the studio’s stars of film and television came to participate, and I was invited to be a part of it. I was thrilled. I headed to JFK Airport for the flight to L.A.

  There’s always time to kill in an airport, and while Jack and I were waiting, I noticed a girl about my age with her head buried in a book, and a stack of more books beside her. She was striking—with a mass of dark curls, a fantastic leather jacket, and jeans. I looked harder. “Oh my gosh, Jack, it’s Jennifer Beals from Flashdance. I’ve got to meet her.”

  She was going to Yale at the time, and I didn’t know what she was majoring in, but I knew she was a photographer and the book she was studying was about photography. I was hesitant to disturb her, but I wasn’t going to pass up this chance.

  I walked up and said, “Hi, I’m Marlee Matlin.” She looked up, smiled, and said. “Nice to meet you,” then went back to studying. After we boarded the plane, she slept most of the flight.

  I was starstruck, really starstruck.

  When we saw each other again at the big bash for Paramount, somehow we connected like old girlfriends, as if we’d known each other for years and years. She’s from Chicago, too—I think if you have those Chicago roots, there’s just something about the city that binds you together. Although Jennifer will razz me that she’s really from Chicago, I’m just from the burbs.

  The stars that Paramount assembled that day were unbelievable, from Robin Williams to older stars such as Fred MacMurray, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, and Elizabeth Taylor. It was crazy. Robert De Niro, Danny De Vito, Al Pacino, and Gregory Peck were milling around. And of course, Henry was there. He’d just about grown up on the Paramount lot for years along with the rest of the Happy Days cast.

  There I was, one moment talking to Olivia Newton-John, and John Travolta walks up, and I thought, Wow Grease and Saturday Night Fever! Right here, talking to me.

  “Don’t I know you?” John asked.

  “No,” I said, knowing that was something I would have remembered.

  “Are you sure we don’t know each other?”

  “Yes, I’m sure!”

  Then Olivia stepped in, playfully telling John to get over it, accept it, we had never met!

  Life magazine was doing lots of smaller setup shots, and they took a photo of me and Buddy Rogers, who had starred in the 1927 film Wings, the first Best Picture winner ever. He could finger-spell and told me about a friend of his from back home who had attended the Kansas school for the Deaf. I saw Karl Malden from Streets of San Francisco and thought about how my dad and I used to watch it when I was growing up.

  It was so high wattage when it came to Hollywood royalty in the room that everybody was meeting someone he or she was awestruck by, so I didn’t feel alone. Robin Williams and Tom Cruise were talking and teasing each other up on a podium and motioned to me to come on up. I was trying to breathe, thinking, My goodness, Tom Cruise! My goodness, Robin Williams! In front of everybody they as
ked me to teach them a few cuss words in sign language.

  So what’s a girl to do? I showed them how to sign a couple of the juicier ones, and they just broke up laughing, and of course Robin immediately began trying to use them in a dirty joke. And me, I was on cloud nine—I mean, I’m this girl from Chicago, I was nobody, I was one of the people who paid money to see these people work, and now here I was standing in between them. It was unbelievable.

  When it was time for the big photo of everyone, we were each given a number, and I think it was random. I got number fifty-three and I went to check out my chair and found I was in the front row! Jennifer came up and said, “Oh my God, we’re almost next to each other.”

  She was number fifty-five. We had no idea who was sitting in between us, so she sat down next to me and we were like girls in high school gossiping about everyone. “Oh, look at them. Oh, he’s so cute. Oh, he’s not so cute. She’s so nice, but she’s not so nice….”

  Then we looked up and there was Harrison Ford, holding his number in his hand, staring down on us. “I’m number fifty-four.”

  Jennifer just smiled and said, “Oh, you know what, we wanted to sit next to each other. Do you mind if we just switch seats?”

  He looked at us and said again, “I’m fifty-four.”

  We just looked at each other, then back at him, and said, “But we really want to sit together.”

  He just kept standing there, staring at us, and said again, “I’m number fifty-four,” completely calm, but not budging.

  Then Danny DeVito, who was sitting on the other side of me, chimed in and said, “Oh, let the girls sit together.”

  So in the photo that Life ran in its big Hollywood issue in April 1987, on one side of the front row you’ll see Danny DeVito, then me, Jennifer, and finally Harrison Ford, all smiling.

  Tom Cruise was great to me that day and has always been so every time we’ve seen each other. He takes the time to make sure I understand him word for word when he speaks. I went up to him years later at the Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar, which is a popular space for events. He was there with his family and his two kids, and I was there for a birthday party. I wanted to say hello, but I didn’t want to intrude on his family time.

  Finally, after much debate, I walked over with my husband, Kevin, and said, “I just wanted to say hi, I’m Marlee.” He gave me one of those big Tom Cruise smiles, said, “Hey!” and hugged me. He immediately turned around and introduced me to his mother and his kids. He’s always been genuine. I’ve never seen him as the “big movie star,” just decent and kind and absolutely focused on whomever he’s talking to.

  APRIL WAS A whirlwind month. I flew to Chicago to make an appearance at the Center on Deafness and the Arts. What a great reunion that was, and I loved talking to the kids about their hopes and dreams. If I could give even one of them the kind of encouragement Henry gave me all those years ago, I wanted to do so.

  Things were looking up on the career front. A number of projects were being sent my way to consider, and I had already signed on to join the cast of Walker, starring Ed Harris. At the end of the month I was headed to Nicaragua, where production was getting under way.

  Before leaving, I was part of ABC’s Happy Birthday Hollywood extravaganza, a massive show celebrating the industry’s first hundred years, with movie clips and dozens of huge Broadway-style production numbers. Hundreds of stars from over the years were featured, so many that it dwarfed the Paramount party, and many of them were performing set pieces that were seeded throughout the show.

  I was asked to be a part of the segment they did on Hollywood heroines through the years. We were all dressed in these Victorian-style, white, floor-length dresses, posed in and around an old-fashioned gazebo. Ally Sheedy introduced the group, and after everyone had been highlighted, she walked center stage and said, “And now I want to introduce the latest addition, Marlee Matlin, this year’s Academy Award winner.”

  I took a deep breath and I spoke as I signed, “There’s one actress who’s a heroine to all of us…Miss Katharine Hepburn.”

  I was so nervous about how I sounded, but I know from friends who’ve watched the show that I sounded pretty much like anyone else. When you’re a Deaf person speaking aloud, that’s exactly what you’re going for—normal, ordinary, anything but different.

  28

  NICARAGUA—SO MUCH BEAUTY, so much poverty, and a war was going strong in 1987 when I landed there for Walker.

  Sandinistas, teenagers really, with AK-47s casually slung over their shoulders, were always around. Kids and dogs, equally skinny, roamed the streets. Remnants of houses and buildings, half-crumbled by the 1977 earthquake, were still visible in the city and the countryside.

  I hadn’t really realized until then how much we take for granted in America. Children were living on the street, begging for money. The people were so impoverished. So much sadness was there, but a lot of pride, too.

  We stayed in Managua at the Intercontinental Hotel, and buses and taxis shuttled us back and forth each day to Granada, a little town of about four thousand where director Alex Cox had chosen to shoot the film. The route was so choked with traffic that a horse pulling a cart, women carrying baskets, men crowded on a flatbed truck, were not uncommon sights. The road was a nightmare, pitted by potholes that looked like craters. It usually took more than an hour to make the drive there with our driver dodging the holes and the people like an NFL running back.

  The country was still suffering under a U.S. embargo, with ongoing skirmishes between the Sandinista and U.S.-backed contra rebels, mostly to the north of us. Two of the production’s drivers lost sons to the fighting while the film was being shot.

  In a bizarre way it was the perfect setting to film the story of William Walker, a renegade American who was a bit crazy, who’d invaded the Central American country around 1855. He ultimately declared himself president and ran the country for a couple of years before being kicked out. After two failed attempts to return to the country, he was finally executed in Honduras.

  I had been intrigued by the idea of working with Alex Cox; his film Sid and Nancy was one of my favorites. Walker was a smaller independent film with a $6 million budget, but in addition to the appeal of Alex, Ed Harris was starring, and he was on my short list of actors I really wanted to have a chance to work with.

  Alex and I first met in New York to talk about the movie when he was still casting the film. I should say, we tried to meet.

  He walked into the hotel lobby, all coiled intensity, glanced at me, but then started running around, searching for this mystery actress he was supposed to meet. It was before Children of a Lesser God had come out, so I was a long way from recognizable.

  He’d spotted someone who looked about the right age and remembered thinking to himself, That can’t be her, she seems to be talking on the phone, but I wish it were. The woman is just so tremendously sprightly and interesting and beautiful.

  What he didn’t see, at least initially, was that I was on the phone with a little help from Jack.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect either. I noticed a tall, skinny guy with long red hair and a droopy handlebar mustache. He was running around the lobby, wearing an old T-shirt, a bandanna, and a floppy hat. I thought, That cannot be him.

  But then we locked glances and it clicked for both of us at exactly the same time—Oh, you’re Marlee! Oh, you’re Alex!—and we both started laughing.

  I immediately felt comfortable with him. Alex was so passionate about the project, but also very much an actor’s director—despite all that intensity—patient, working from something deep inside him. I knew I could trust him. As for the running around, well, I would see a lot more of that on set.

  Alex has more energy than I’ve ever seen. No wonder he stays thin, he would race around the set talking to this person, checking on that shot. One of my favorite memories is when he was really pleased with a take, his face would just light up and he’d tell us, “Brilliant, now that was b
rilliant!” You couldn’t help but catch that enthusiasm.

  My character was based on Walker’s fiancée, Ellen Martin, who had actually been Deaf. Ed and I would be signing during my scenes, but unlike in Children of a Lesser God, where Bill’s character essentially served as the translator, putting words to my signing, Alex planned to use subtitles. I liked that idea.

  He had gotten the backing of the Nicaraguan government—some of its high-level officials had read and approved the script. That backing made just about anything possible. When Alex asked if the telephone and power lines could come down for the duration of the production so that the town would look much as it did a hundred years ago—down they came. Many of the streets were still unpaved, but a layer of dirt was trucked in to cover the central square.

  Just about everything for the production had to come from outside the country, and because of the embargo, nothing could be shipped directly from or through the United States. The guns the soldiers carried in the film came from London via Russia. Even things as basic as toilet paper and the nails used to construct the sets, including a huge one that replicated San Francisco Bay on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, where Granada was nestled, were shipped in.

  The days were long and hot, and the costumes were authentic—that translated into heavy wool. Some days I thought I would melt into nothing by the end of the day. The production was long, but my role as Walker’s fiancée was small—she dies unexpectedly in a cholera epidemic. So in the end, I would spend less than a month there.

  The character as written is feisty and significant to the story. She is Walker’s moral compass, the one adviser he truly trusts. I liked that she was strong, smart, and outspoken with Walker. Her death becomes a turning point in his life and triggers his spiral toward obsession. The script was one part historical drama and one part black comedy—I hoped we could pull it off.