william goldman: “misery,” part 2

More from Goldman’s Which Lie Did I Tell? Scroll down for Part 1.

Casting Kathy Bates

“I’m going to write the part for Kathy Bates.”

“Oh, good. She’s great. We’ll use her.”

I was the first speaker, Rob Reiner the second. And lives changed.

I had seen Kathy Bates for many years on stage. We had never met but I felt then what I do now: she is simply one of the major actresses of our time. I’d seen her good-heartedness in Vanities, where she played a Texas cheerleader. I’d seen the madness when she played the suicidal daughter in ‘Night, Mother. I had no sure sense that the talent would translate — a lot of great stage performers are less than great on film; Gielgud, Julie Harris, Kim Stanley will do as examples — but there is an old boxing expression that goes like this: Bury me with a puncher. And it was a moment in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune that made me know she was the lady I had to be buried with. She plays a waitress who has a fling with a cook and at one point she is wearing a robe and he wants to see her body.

The scene was staged so that he saw her naked body and the audience saw her face, and there was such panic in her eyes and at the same time, this wondrous hope. (Casting note: when Michelle Pfeiffer, who I think is a brilliant character actress, played the same part in the movie, the same moment was there, but it didn’t work for me because Pfeiffer is so loved by the camera that all I kept thinking was, Why was she worrying when the worst that could happen would be a pubic hair maybe out of place?)

Anyway, Kathy got the part.

It was really almost that simple because Reiner had seen her on Broadway and thought she was as gifted as I did. We could have had almost any actress in the world. Obviously, it’s a decent part — Kathy won the Oscar for it — but the main reason so many women were interested is there is almost nothing for women out there nowadays. Sad but true. Rob had lunch with Bette Midler, who would have been fine and would have helped open the picture. But she did not want to play someone so ugly, and Rob realized she would be wrong for the part. All stars would be wrong for the part, he decided. Annie is the unknown creature who appears alone out of a storm. We know nothing about her. Stars bring history with them, and I believe, in this case, that would have been damaging.

Example: there is a scene where Annie asks Paul to burn his most recent book in manuscript. It is the last thing on earth he wants to do and he says no. They argue but he is firm.

Fine, Annie says, I love you and I would never dream of asking you to do anything you didn’t want to do. Forget it. I never asked. But —

— big but —

— while she is saying forget I ever asked, what she is doing is walking around his bed, flicking lighter fluid onto the sheets. She is threatening, in Annie’s sweet, shy way, to fry him.

Rob and Andy and I talked so much about that scene. Was it enough? Did she have to do more? We decided to go with it. But my feeling is that even with as brilliant a performer as Streep in the part, it would not have worked, because sitting out there in the dark, some part of us would have known that Meryl Streep wasn’t really going to incinerate Jimmy Caan.

But no one knew who Kathy Bates was. And because of that, not to mention her skill, the scene held. One of the advantages to working with an independent — which Castle Rock was in those days — is that they have more freedom in casting. No way Mr. Disney or the Brothers Warner would have us go with an unknown in the lead of what they hope would be a hit movie. And you know what? If I had been the head of a large studio, I wouldn’t have cast her either ….

Next up, Part 3: Casting Jimmy Caan