Movieline Magazine: Excerpts From 1995

Movieline Feb 1995 - Leonardo DiCaprio

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been flashing back to 1995.  So I dug out some of the old Movieline magazines from that year and started looking for some hidden gems.  There was some great stuff which is fun to read 20 years later.  I selected some excerpts which help paint a picture of what was going on in Hollywood at the time.  In fact, I found so much good stuff, I’m going to break it up into installments.  This first part covers the Jan-March issues.

Here’s what you can look forward to:

  • Lauren Holly on being sexy and dating Jim Carrey
  • Susan Sarandon on being nude and working with Kevin Costner
  • Kelly Lynch on John Travolta’s eating habits and being nude with Patrick Swayze
  • David Arquette on losing a role to Leonardo DiCaprio and dating Ellen Barkin
  • Alicia Silverstone on beating John Malcovich, being asked for autographs and turning down Beverly Hills 90210
  • An extremely bitchy article on the low quality of actresses in the mid-nineties
  • Kevin Smith on the future of his career.

Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly - 1995 MTV Movie Awards
Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly – 1995 MTV Movie Awards

“I’ve always been the girl-next-door, the good friend or the tomboy, and all of a sudden that trend is changing.” In the past, Holly’s been best known for portraying a policewoman on TV’s “Picket Fences,” but since making waves as Bruce Lee’s kung fu wife in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, she’s been considered for love-interest roles. How does it feel to finally be thought of as sexy? “I’m adoring it right now, are you kidding?”

Holly will next be playing the cat’s meow to Jim Carrey (her offscreen flame) and Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber. Did sparks fly when she met Carrey? “We met over a year ago when I was offered Courteney Cox’s role in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, which I turned down,” she says. “We didn’t start dating until we filmed Dumb and Dumber.” Meaning, I guess, that it wasn’t a case of “animal” attraction at first.

Susan Sarandon - 1995 Oscars
Susan Sarandon – 1995 Oscars

MARTHA FRANKEL: First things first. Pronounce your last name for us, since I’ve heard it pronounced quite a few different ways.

SUSAN SARANDON: It’s Sarandon, like abandon.

Q: You’ve been with Tim Robbins since making Bull Durham in 1988. Are you two getting married? That’s what all the papers in America are saying.

A: I can’t believe they’re interested. I can understand why people are interested in Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie, but why would they care about me and Tim?  First of all, I would never give a great party when I had to chase around a two year old. So I would wait until everyone could have a good time. That’s my answer.

Q: Why is it that people cannot deal with actresses when they get older, and they feel they have to write them off as mothers or…

A: Maybe it’s because we’re such a young country that we haven’t resolved the issue of our mothers, and so many men trade in their women for younger versions. It seems to be all right to have sex with very young women, but not with someone you own age. Of course, the minute that a woman’s with somebody younger …

Q: Like you and Tim?

A: Yes. which I don’t even think about. It only exists in the United States. Because here, in Italy, they saw White Palace as a movie about class, not age. In other countries they allow women to be so many more things, and motherhood doesn’t suddenly end it for you.

Q: When you first started making films, it seems like you were always photographed naked or making love…

A: Not true. If you look back on it, my first love scene was with Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger. In Atlantic City, there are those scenes where I’m rubbing lemons on my breasts, but that’s just a voyeuristic thing. And in Pretty Baby, I don’t have a love scene and I’m not completely naked. I just show my breasts.

Q: Didn’t Playboy say something like you had the best tits in the movies?

A: “The celebrity breasts of the summer.” Which made me wonder what was coming in the fall! There are people who have taken off their clothes and done a lot more. In White Palace, there was an incredibly sexual scene which I was very nervous about,..

Q: The blow job scene?

A: [Laughing] Yes. What happened in that scene was a complete diagram of what the rest of the movie was about. Every beat of that scene was very clearly designated. I think it’s very hard to be naked in a scene and not be upstaged by your nipples. People don’t even hear what you’re saying for the first 30 seconds if you’re standing there nude, so it has to be for some very specific reason. And you have to know what the scene is about. I remember when we did that scene in White Palace, I was always saying things like, “But how could I be doing that because, really, where are my hands now?”

Q: Don’t get me started on this. I go crazy when I watch sex scenes, because they don’t have to worry about straining their necks or choking or…

A: Exactly. Thank God Jimmy Spader was such a great person to work with. All these actors who don’t mind being unsympathetic are, to me, really the best in the business. Whether it’s Jimmy Spader or Chris Walken or Tim Robbins or Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro or Harvey Keitel, these are the guys who have some depth. The ones that are afraid to have a bad side are just boring.

Q: What about The Witches of Eastwick? You had originally been offered the rote that eventually went to Cher…

A: Yes, in hindsight I’m proud of myself that I took an absolutely humiliating experience and turned it into a fairly decent performance. I was given my role very shortly before we began shooting.

Geena Davis -Thelma and Louise - 1991
Geena Davis -Thelma and Louise – 1991

Q: I interviewed Geena Davis right after Thelma & Louise, and she was completely floored over all the backlash that was hitting the film.

A: Clearly it had nothing to do with the reasons that people talked about, because it is not male-bashing. The body count is nothing compared with movies where people are killed for much less reason. All I can say is that I never anticipated any of it, either the positive or the negative response. I never expected it to be so strong. I’ve gotten mail from men who were so moved and I know that it is a film that went over really well in, for instance, black neighborhoods. They knew exactly what was coming down, they were two steps ahead, and they didn’t seem to be threatened.

Q: You mentioned testing movies in the Valley–what do you think of test-screening films?

A: Sometimes they test things and they don’t trust the audience. Two people in a test group say, “Was he related to her or what was happening there?” And they go, uh-oh, gotta put in a voice-over, because they always want to appeal to the lowest common denominator to get those extra bucks. Does that mean that [the actor is then] beholden to have sex with animals if they decide that they should put it in afterwards? I don’t know legally what the test of that is.

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daffystardust
Editor
9 years ago

Gee whiz, who wrote that bilious excrement pretending to be serious criticism on the last two pages? Is he criticizing the casting directors or the actresses? Or young women of the 90s in general? As it turns out, Mary-Louise Parker is a significantly more intelligent person than whoever stole Movieline’s money by convincing them that was writing. See how easy it is to be nasty? What a noxious bore (not boor – bore) that guy is. Seriously, Lebeau, don’t we owe it to ourselves and the readers to put a name on that tripe? You can’t have anybody making the… Read more »

daffystardust
Editor
9 years ago
Reply to  lebeau

I guess I would think it was funny if it was coming out of the mouth of a fictional character who we were supposed to know was a smarmy jerk, but this guy?

yeech!

daffystardust
Editor
9 years ago
Reply to  lebeau

I really can’t bring myself to read it again, but my impression was that Michael Atkinson thought that the number one responsibility of an actress is to be attractive to him personally. Maybe he’s actually Robert Evans writing under a pseudonym?

RB
RB
9 years ago

There were laughs in the article, but it was more me laughing at a couple of his jokes than taking him seriously. Where I think he has a point, or, could have had a point, is the very limited nature of a lot of feminine roles. This was certainly true in 1995 and you can’t say that it doesn’t exist today. For every Shirley MacLaine who broke down the barriers and opened up a wider landscape of roles, you still have about 50,000 ingenues or Hollywood “IT” girls. Where the writer really loses me is complaining about women actually getting… Read more »

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