Actress Susan Sarandon knew most of the stories behind the headlines of Doris Duke's fascinating life, but that wasn't what attracted her to playing the late billionaire in the HBO movie "Bernard and Doris."
"We weren't interested in doing a biopic - in fact, this was sort of an anti-biopic," Sarandon, who had significant creative input on the film, said in an interview last month to promote "Bernard and Doris," airing Saturday night on the Movie Network/Movie Central.
The captivating film tells the story of the curious relationship between the feisty and eccentric Duke, at one point dubbed the richest woman in the world, and her butler, Bernard Lafferty, a repressed homosexual alcoholic who came from humble Irish roots and ended up the sole executor of her estate upon her death in 1993.
"This we were charting as a love story - how did they earn each other's trust, ultimately? We were telling the story of two people with trust issues, two people who were not very successful in relationships having the courage to reach out to each other and become friends and in a very deep way, love each other."
The 61-year-old Sarandon gleefully portrays Duke as a shrewd judge of character who's always suspicious that the people in her life are trying to take advantage of her, including servants whom she treats with disdain. Sarandon's Duke is also a heavy boozer with a voracious sexual appetite and a particular penchant for younger men, even well into her 70s.
When Lafferty, broke and just out of rehab after stints working for Peggy Lee and Elizabeth Taylor, arrives at Duke's estate looking for work in the 1980s, he soon becomes devoted to her. The pair are quickly swapping gardening and fashion tips, sipping cocktails and getting to know one another; the film charts their mutual affection deepening over the years as Lafferty becomes fiercely protective of his boss and best friend.
Sarandon's performance in the film has already earned rave reviews, with some even suggesting it could be the role of her long and varied acting career.
"As Duke, she dances from self-involvement to longing to rage to sweetness with such flexibility that, if we hadn't seen such agility from her before, we might consider this the performance of a lifetime," Heather Havrilesky wrote on Salon.com earlier this week.
Sarandon was modest about the praise as she promoted the movie, saying she was simply delighted "Bernard and Doris" got made. Directed by an old friend of Sarandon's, longtime filmmaker and occasional actor Bob Balaban, the film was shot on a shoestring budget of US$500,000.
It was only gussied up after HBO came on board and infused some cash, Sarandon said.
"There were a lot of mikes hanging in frames and cables lying on the floor and so HBO spent a lot of money cleaning it up," she said. "But while we were shooting it, people were lending us clothes and jewelry and houses; we really didn't have a lot of money to work with."
She's delighted with the final result - not just the look of "Bernard and Doris," but how the film, in fact, is a sweet and unconventional love story between two very different people.
"They definitely were a funny-foot-needs-a-funny-shoe kind of unlikely couple," she said. "I was eager to tell the story of their mutual caring, not just that he was obsessed with her. It was clear what he gave her; he took care of her. But we wanted to explore what she gave him. And I think the movie really succeeds on that level."
Hosted by Google.
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hD8IsL6tpIIP2zmnFD8E1av4Uj6w
No comments:
Post a Comment