| Once upon a time there were three little girls | ||||
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Who are these women walking through the streets of a downtown Los Angeles film studio, heading for the lunch wagon on a perfect spring day? Is that Drew Barrymore? Cameron Diaz? Lucy Liu? Or is it that gorgeous brilliant and ultra-capable team of “Angels” Charlie now has working for him? Liu, dressed in a tight red silk kimono that just covers her butt - clearly a costume designed to ensnare some amorous villain - looks like the latter. But would an angel stumble on the way back to her trailer, clutching a plate piled high with greasy Mexican food, nearly becoming what Drew Barrymore calls "Taco Geisha"? Diaz, walking slightly ahead in rubber flip tops and a white tank top, her sky coloured eyes hidden by shades, has that certain Angel confidence, but would an angel have her bra straps showing? And what about Barrymore, in baggy sweats, old boots, flat hair and no make-up, looking like she has just finished her 100th day of doing double duty (acting and producing) on this mega film? Her plate is so full she has to carry it like a tray. What kind of sexy Angel disguise is that? Techies in shorts - wearing their tool belts like gun holsters- stand quietly to the side, eyes down, while these women (and two of their dogs) stride past. The techies know who these women are: they are the three actresses who survived the making of Charlie’s Angels. As Diaz puts it, "What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger." The film has just opened in Australia but when I visited the set in the final throes of production, there was almost a collective sigh of relief that this big budget, high profile, updated remake of the popular 70’s television show would actually make it to the screen. The rumours had been horrendous: 30 revisions and hordes of writers, they say, attempted to fix the script, right up to the final weeks of shooting; the three young female stars were constantly at one another’s throats; and Barrymore forced Liu to wear turtlenecks. And then there was the highly publicized story about a blow-up between Liu and Bill Murray (who plays Bosley). According to some reports, Liu slapped Murray, while others claim he stormed off. Whatever happened, most insiders agree that the set had to be shut down for the rest of the day until things cooled off. But when I meet them, the three actresses have another story to tell about the eight months they spent playing Charlie’s Angels. One wonders if Barrymore, Diaz and Liu would have become as close and protective as they have if it hadn’t been for the chaos that characterized the Charlie’s Angels shoot. It appears that it was a sense of wanting to "take the higher road"-when there was every opportunity to do otherwise - that sealed the bond, at least between Barrymore and Diaz. Early on, long before shooting even began, Barrymore and Diaz were asked to do a promo for the film, one that would appear on television. Barrymore, as a producer, understood what a great opportunity the promo was, so she was startled when just before taping, Diaz said she wouldn’t do it. It was too early, Diaz said, the script wasn’t finished, there was no plot to speak of and she didn’t know her character. Diaz said that getting dressed up as some half developed character she would most likely never play and going on television put her in a vulnerable position. And, just as important, she added, it would be dishonest to show such a promo to innocent audiences. "I just looked at her," says Barrymore,"and I was like, ‘Got it’. I completely understood." She smiles lovingly at Diaz, sitting across from her at a table in Liu’s trailer, which is covered in sloppy plates. Diaz tilts her head and says to Barrymore, not without some edge, "Awwwwww." "No," Barrymore continues,"I’ve got to tell this story because it’s so deep." "Lights up," she says in her best stage managers voice, "cascading landscape, Cameron’s talking." Barrymore sings some operatic notes and both girls crack up, but then they stop, because the moment Barrymore is describing was pivotal for both of them. "And I saw her in this whole new light: it was like, ‘Got it’." Barrymore points at Diaz. "And I got you, too." Thus the unique sisterhood between Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz began. Barrymore and Diaz, who spent months together every day in five-hour story meetings trying to come up with plot lines and characterizations that they could not only live with, but that might even be good, didn’t want to have to choose a third Angel. They didn’t want to have to reject and they didn’t want to subject the wrong woman to what they knew was going to be a hellish shoot. Barrymore and Diaz had already begun training with a Kung-Fu master and his team of nine from Hong Kong, and the actresses often dragged themselves to work in real pain. The two woman had grown so close by this time that not only were they rarely apart, but you would have been hard-pressed to find a moment when they weren’t holding hands, standing with their arms around each other, twirling each other’s hair, or even (on particularly playful occasions) dry-humping each other in public. It must have been hard to imagine how a third person would fit in. But they have it on videotape, the exact moment when Barrymore and Diaz "clicked" with Liu. In her audition, Liu stood calmly talking to the person behind the camera as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on, while Barrymore stood on one side of her and Diaz on the other, smoothing out her long, dark hair between their fingers and bouncing the ends against their faces (a habit that Barrymore introduced Diaz to months before). "We all have the same sense of humour," Diaz says, describing why the three Angels began to feel like sisters on the day of Liu’s audition. "We all have the same twistedness about us." The woman cant seem to remember why, for instance, they call Liu "Pussy Lu", or Barrymore "Poo", or Diaz "Puups". And the three of them seem to take great pleasure in one another’s most private body parts. In fact, on the subject of Barrymore forcing Liu to wear turtlenecks, Barrymore says, "If they only knew." She reaches across the table and adjusts Liu’s neckline so that it now sits even lower than before. "Tape it up!" says Liu, smiling at Barrymore. "We just want to be hands on with one another, you know?" Diaz cracks, and they all laugh hard. When these three women laugh together, its always very, very loud - booming cannonballs of sound coming from deep inside. "Ill come in and be like, ‘I need more lift in my boobs’ and she’ll help me," Barrymore says, pointing to Diaz "She’s a very good boob wrangler." You can feel the women stirring in their seats, warming to this subject. The new Angels, apparently are 21st-century post-feminists -not just proud of being women, but in love with their own bodies and with one another’s. Barrymore: "Like the other day when we did the racetrack scene" All three in unison: "Cock it to the right!" (Apparantly, in a racetrack scene, Barrymore’s character wears a disguise that makes her resemble Seka, a porn queen.) Liu: "Cameron’s always helping me walk, saying ‘You should walk right, because you look like you’ve just got off a horse’." Diaz looks at Liu like she’s out of her mind. Liu: "Well, she never said that, but." Another explosion of laughter. Diaz (shouting): "What movie do you think this is?!" Liu (in a Marlene Dietrich voice): It’s Pussy Cat theatre." After awhile, they quieten down a bit. Liu: "What were doing is trying to make ourselves look good as a unit." Barrymore: "We’ve always got each others backs." Diaz: "Even if it means we’re grabbing each other’s arses." All three: "That’s right!" Again falling into each other, their mouths wide with laughter. According to Barrymore and Diaz, it was the film’s director- McG, a 30-year-old commercial and music video producer- who helped them survive eight months of intense collaboration on a script that for long time had a questionable plot and no ending. Though McG had never directed a film before, he got the job because of his presentation to both Barrymore and the executives at Sony. "I got to Sony," says McG, a friendly energetic redhead from Newport Beach, California, "and I took my jacket off and rolled up my sleeves and started circling the table. Then I jumped up on a chair and started telling them the minutiae of what I wanted to do with every single scene, and here I am." "There has never been one day that his energy has dropped," Diaz says of McG. "And it just drives all of us, pushes all of us, keeps us all present and involved." The other two girls nod their heads in instantaneous agreement. "All day he rallies people," Barrymore explains. "He keeps then going. He screams, ‘This is my favourite scene!’ and you know he’s been screaming that all week long, but you cant help getting excited anyway." "Like the first week we did this driving stunt," Barrymore continues. "We’re all in the car and I was driving and taking it sort of safely, and he’s like, ‘Come on-Balls out!" Diaz yells, finishing Barrymore’s sentence. "He always gives weird references," Barrymore says, and she and Diaz smile mischievously. "Yeah, you know, like ‘Grab your sack and drive the car’." The girls giggle and beam. "He makes you feel good, you know?" Barrymore says. "About everything." But it wasn’t all fun and frivolity. As one of the film’s producers Leonard Goldberg (from the original Charlie’s Angels television series) points out, he loves his family, but he gets mad at them sometimes. So it’s not surprising that on the set of this film - a relatively small kitchen considering the number of cooks - people have occasionally exploded. There was the Liu-Murray incident, for instance. According to Nancy Juvonen, Barrymore’s producing partner, Bill Murray came into production late with all kinds of ideas about how to save it. Liu didn’t agree with some of Murray’s ideas and told him so rather forcefully. They argued. But, Juvonen insists, production didn’t shut down. "The opportunity to give your opinion lies at every corner of this production", Juvonen says. "And people take it. In this case it was just like remodeling a house - he wants the piano here and she wants it over there." Diaz broke down one day, too, and had what she calls a "childish fit". She’d done a lot of her solo scenes for the film earlier on and then worked on action scenes with the other actresses for months. At one point, she found herself having to say a line, and realizing she’d forgotten how to act. "It took me back like seven movies," she says. "You know, you’re having such a great time and then all of a sudden you have to remind yourself, ‘Oh, yeah, I have to act now. Oh my God. How do I do this?'" Embarrassed by her own outburst, Diaz apologized to McG, who told her "We’re just here to have a good time, I mean, it’s Charlie’s Angels." But to Diaz and the other two actresses, it has never been quite as simple as that. Becoming the Angel’s - women who are capable of tapping into computers, redirecting missiles, racing cars and speed boats, being sexy and falling in love, all without engaging in male-bashing or alienating other women - has turned into a profound experience. Diaz: "We all worked really fucking hard. We don’t just stroll through this movie. We put our hearts into it." Barrymore: "Unlike on other films, we’re collaborating with our director. We didn’t phone anything in. We came here thinking, ‘What can we do to make our characters more consistant?'" Liu: "How can we make it better, more real, more fun?" Barrymore: "We became the Angels." The girls sit in silence for a minute, then crack up. Diaz: "We just want people to have a good time." Liu: "Anyway, its just a movie." Barrymore and Diaz look at her. Diaz (huffily): "Well, if you can say it’s just a movie." Liu (undefensively): "I mean, do the naysayers have to make it so dramatic? I mean, it’s just a film - I mean it like that." Barrymore: "I don’t think it’s just a movie, our experience. But when people get caught up in the bullshit of it, then you realize, ‘Why are you investing so much negative energy?’ That’s when I think it’s just a movie. An earthquake could come and swallow us all up and then where’s your big Hollywood bullshit machine going to be? Nowhere. But once you narrow it down to your own small world and the satellite (Barrymore starts making beeping noises, using her hand as the eye of the satellite, getting closer and closer to the little world that is, at the moment, Liu’s trailer) we’re here every day. Of course it’s not just a movie to us! We’re obsessed! We’re narrow minded it’s all we do!" The hard truth though, is that this is the final day of shooting Charlie’s Angels and soon the actresses will move onto other projects, other co-stars. Barrymore announces that she is checking herself into a hotel for three days to sleep before taking a quick vacation with her boyfriend (Tom Green), before relocating to New York for Penny Marshall’s new film, Riding In Cars With Boys. Liu has a few weeks off before starting a new season of Ally McBeal. It’s only Diaz, who has no plans, who will soon be able to listen to the phone messages she stopped checking weeks ago and go to lunch with her mum or boyfriend (actor Jared Leto) instead of with the other Angels. "I don’t want to think about it," Barrymore says glumly. Diaz, sitting quietly suddenly starts talking about the past weekend, when she went for a drive to the beach. She found herself speeding along , top down, awestruck by the families with children, and by the couples. "And then I saw the ocean and how there is no end to it," she says. "And I thought how amazing it would be just to be afloat in the ocean with nothing - no responsibilities - just being out there, surviving." "In short," Liu says to no one in particular, "she had the day off." The wrap party, everyone agrees, was the best party they had ever been to. A thousand people showed up at Barrymore’s house, where there were canvases and paints laid out, four bars and a game room where old Charlie’s Angel’s episodes played continuously on a loop. Barrymore: "I’ve had parties before where I’ve tried to screen stuff. And people at parties just don’t have the attention span." Diaz: "But here, people went and sat through..." Barrymore and Diaz in unison: "Whole episodes!" The two women laugh hard in each other’s faces. Barrymore: "We walked in and said, ‘You guys, it’s a comedy’." Barrymore catches Diaz’s eye. Barrymore and Diaz (shouting): "Get over it!" |
Story: By Trish Deitch Rohrer Transcribed by Esther of DrewDevotion.
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