Forever Lulu – Press Kit
Production Notes
CREDITS
Written, Produced and Directed by – AMOS KOLLEK
Executive Producer – MICHAEL STEINHARDT
Director of Photography – LISA RINZLER
Editor – JAY FREUND
Production Designer – STEPHEN McCABE
Casting – MARCIA SHULMAN
Assistant to Producer/Director – JULIA ROBINSON
Editing Consultant – RALPH ROSENBLUM
Production Manager – SARAH GREEN
1st Assistant Director – GARY MARCUS
Costume Designer – CANDACE CLEMENTS
Location/Unit Manager – DIANA POKORNY
1st Assistant Camera – ZACHARY WINESTINE
Assistant Production Manager – TRUDY ELINS
Gaffer – WILLIAM M. FARBER
Key Grip – RANDY TAMBLING
Sound Mixer – FELIPE BORRERO
Script Supervisor – JEANNE TALBOT
P.O.C. – CILISTA E. TURNER
Supervising Sound Editor – SANDY RACKOW
Sound Editor – KEVIN LEE
Assistant Editor – CHRISTINE P. WILLIAMS
Wardrobe Supervisor – CANDIS HEILAND
Hair & Makeup – JOANNA ROBINSON
Publicist – MYRNAPOST ASSOCIATES
2nd Assistant Director – HOWARD McMASTER
Assistant Location Manager – SHARON HOYT
Boom – TOMMIE LOUIE
Re-Recording Mixer – PETER WAGGONER
Asst. Production Designer – JOCELYNE BEAUDOIN
2nd Asst. Camera – JAMIE ROSENBERG
2nd Electric – LYNN BRESCHELL
3rd Electric – NICK CUPKOVIC
2nd Grip – STEVE NITZBERG
3rd Grip – MIKE BLONDELL
Steadicam Operators – JIM MURO, JOHN CORSO
Inside Prop – DAVID ALLEN
Set Decorator – VICTOR ZOLFO
Prop Assistants – SUSAN LEVINE, CYD ADAMS, JACQUI ARNOT
Carpenters – DREW BURGESS, JAIRO BOTERO
Assistant Sound Editor – JEAN STANDISH
Asst. Hair & Make Up – ANGELA NOGARO
Special Effects – Willie Caban
Key P.A. – JONATHAN STARCH
Wardrobe Assistant – Judi Barr
Asst. to Costume Designer – JOLIE GORCHOV
Synching Editor – JULIET WEBER
Assistant P.O.C. – MEREDITH JACOBSON
Editing Apprentice – DAVID VANTAYLOR
Stills – BOB MARSHAK
Independent Accountants – MANN JUDD LANDAU, FRANCIS NEUWIRTH
Auditor – TAMARA BALLY
Teamster – TOMMY LEVY
Driver/Grip/Electrician – GREG NORTON
P.A./Drivers – MEL CANNON, ROBERT MAZZE, DAN COLLINS
Set P.A. – ILENE LANDRESS
Art P.A. – GINA FONTANA
Office P.A. – DARESHA KYI
P.A.’S – ALISON RESENZWEIG, AMY HERZIG
Craft Services – NIKKI ABBADESSA
Interns – ANDRE CARACO, MICHAEL COSTANZA, GREG JACOBS, LINDA PAULES, KAREN RAIT, TAMI REIKER, AMELIA VILLERO
Additional P.A.’s – MARTI WILKERSON, JAKE JACOBSON, JEANNE McGETTIGAN, NELSON TORRES, MICHELLE JAFFE, MAGGIE FRIEDE, MATT COREY, RICHARD DAVIS, JEFF LEVINE, KEVIN DAVIDSON, JENNIFER KELLY
Extra Grips – CHRIS MARZULE, CHRIS ROGERS, GABE SENINO, JONATHAN EDELMAN, HOWARD KRUPA, MARK CHAMBERLAIN
Extra Electric – LIZ DELUNA, MIKE DOOLEY, PAT CROOKS, STEVE KASMIRSKY
Additional Costuming Styling for Ms. Schygulla by – BARBARA WEISS
Hanna Schygulla’s Wardrobe by – LESLEIGH
Furs by – BEN KAHN
Special Thanks To:
MARY JANE CAHILL
THE MAYOR’S OFFICE FOR FILM, THEATRE, AND BROADCASTING, NEW YORK CITY
TRANS WORLD AIRLINES
THE RHINELANDER FLORIST
THE UNITED NATIONS PLAZA HOTEL
IN WEAR
OSCAR DE LA RENTA SWIMWEAR
GENERAL CAMERA
JUDITH B. WARRICK
PUROLATOR COURIER
UNIQUE PRODUCT PLACEMENT
THE PLEASURE CHEST
MANIC PANIC
Additional Still Photography by BART EVERLY with ROBERT PHILLIPE BECKER for BAEDER 7 BEAUTY
Titles and Optical Effects by EFX Unlimited
Copyright MCMLXXXVI THE LULU COMPANY
This motion picture is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America and other countries. Any unauthorized duplication, copying or use of all or part of this motion picture will result in civil liabilities and/or criminal prosecution in accordance with applicable laws.
A TRI-STAR RELEASE (Logo)
THE CAST
Elaine – HANNA SCHYGULLA
Lulu – DEBORAH HARRY
Buck – ALEC BALDWIN
Diana – ANNIE GOLDEN
Roberts – PAUL GLEASON
Herself – DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER
Alphonse – RAYMOND SERRA
Pepe – GEORGE KYLE
Archie – HAROLD GUSKIN
Blackmailer – BILL CORSAIR
Don – JONATHAN FREEMAN
Larry – AMOS KOLLEK
Harvey – CHARLES LUDLAM
Lisa – CATHY GATI
Fortune Teller – BEATRICE PONS
Martha – SALLY JANE HEIT
Landlady – HELEN LLOYD BREED
Judith Cabot – JUSTINE JOHNSON
Jackie Coles – SUSAN BLOMMAERT
Detective Calhoun – KENNY MARINO
Donna – JOANNE CARLO
Stevie – WAYNE KNIGHT
Hooker – JENNIFER LEIGH WARREN
Delores – YVETTE EDELHART
Clara – ANTONIA REY
Blind Man – CHARLES PRIOR
Crazy Cabbie – ANDREW CRAIG
Waiter – EVERETT QUINTON
Political Activist – CHRISTINE JENSEN
Bebino – ANTHONY POWERS
Kelly – DENNIS GREEN
Mary Anne Zlutnik – PATTI ASTOR
Charley – JUDITH COHEN
Mugger 1 – EARNEST ABUBA
Mugger 2 – SYDNEY D. SHERIFF, JR.
Ticket Taker – MICHAEL STEINHARDT
Goon 1 – FELIX MINTZ
Goon 2 – LAZAR MINTZ
Girl in Strip Club – ADRIANE LENOX
Fat Man – R. L. RYAN
Police Commissioner – MIKE HODGE
Hiroshi – CLIFFORD ARASHI
Barman – RON RYAN
Reporter 1 – SASSY GEARHARDT
Reporter 2 – BILL MASTERS
Newscaster – JAMES LANGRALL
Cop – JOE LISSI
Benny – BERNIE FRIEDMAN
Bar Patron 1 – MARTINA FERENCZY
Bar Patron 2 – SAMANTHA LOUCA
Street Walker – JULIA ROBINSON
Ms. Schygulla’s Stand-In – JUDITH ZIMMER
Stunt Coordinator – ERIK KONIGER
FOREVER, LULU
Production Information
“I always felt like an outsider. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to conquer the world. I wanted to have everything.”
…Elaine Hines
Not since “Desperately Seeking Susan” and “After Hours” has a filmmaker so successfully captured the surreal quality of the streets of New York. Director Amos Kollek’s blackly comic New York vision tells the story of Elaine Hines, a modern-day Cinderella, who works by day as a temp at a toilet-seat manufacturing company and by night as a would-be novelist forced to write porno scripts to stave off eviction and feed her cats.
German-born Elaine has emigrated to New York for only one reason – to pursue her dreams of becoming a best-selling author. Instead, she’s slipped into the basement of human existence, with a depressing apartment the size of a closet on the Lower East Side; a wardrobe that surely was marked down – at a thrift shop; and a failed romance with a married man who promised a future of togetherness and delivered only heartbreak.
If faith alone guaranteed success, Elaine’s fortunes would have multiplied years ago. Meanwhile, she worships at the altar of tabloid astrologers and waits for even the minutest break.
Elaine’s luck gets continually worse until penniless, on the brink of suicide, and stranded in a torrential rain storm, Elaine mistakenly holds up a wealthy couple and finds herself on the trail of a mysterious woman called Lulu, who changes her fate forever.
Hanna Schygulla stars as flaxen-haired Elaine Hines, the shapely would-be novelist barely surviving as an underpaid receptionist. Proclaimed “one of the great European film actresses of our era” by New York Times film critic Vincent Canby, Schygulla also appears in her first American feature film with FOREVER, LULU.
Deborah Harry, Alec Baldwin, Paul Gleason, Dr. Ruth Westheimer as Herself and Annie Golden as Diana also star in the screenplay by Amos Kollek, who produced and directed the Tri-Star Pictures release. Michael Steinhardt was the executive producer. Lisa Rinzler was the director of photography. The film was edited by Jay Freund and the production was designed by Stephen McCabe. Casting was by Marcia Shulman.
“She has a sense of humor and she’s extraordinarily intelligent. I’m not saying this to sound nice. She really is,” says director/writer Amos Kollek of his star, Hanna Schygulla.
Schygulla (pronounced Shee-goo-lah) makes her long over-due comedy debut with FOREVER, LULU. After a career which has spanned 15 years, all made with world-class directors, it is a career move based on the conviction that “I don’t want any more stress. I want things easier, lighter, more playful,” she said during filming. “Amos asked me just at the point when I realized that I was only being serious in my films, and that was boring me.”
Kollek met Schygulla on a lark in Israel several years ago. Schygulla was there briefly promoting a film. “I read in the paper that she was in Israel for a day. I had no idea where she was staying but I decided to try and meet her. She had always fascinated me.
“I made a few phone calls and finally located her Israeli press agent. He said she couldn’t be reached because she was having lunch with Rachel Dayan (Moshe Dayan’s widow) in a fish restaurant, somewhere on the shore of Old Jaffa. I got in my car and drove down to Jaffa and, sure enough, there they were. I went over and introduced myself, and somehow I ended up taking her to Jerusalem, driving her around a little.
“But it was fairly impersonal. And then when I wrote the script, I didn’t think of her initially. But at some point, in the middle of this process, I thought of her. And all of a sudden I got very intrigued.”
The thing that intrigued Kollek about casting Schygulla as Elaine Hines was the fact she had never done a comedy. It would be like casting against type. But was he sure she could actually do it? “I was concerned about everything, but I was intrigued. I feel sometimes that with certain actors, you know what you will get in certain roles. But if you put these actors in roles which they are not particularly identified with, then maybe you’ll flop, but on the other hand, maybe you’ll get something more interesting. And it’s worth taking a chance.”
He sent the script to her agent, “and we got a very quick response which was positive. They asked me to call her but I wasn’t aware if she knew she was talking to the same person she had met in Jerusalem a year earlier. “And then after it became more firm that she really wanted to do the movie, I said, ‘You know, by the way, we met.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re the one that drove me around Jerusalem.'”
In the past, Schygulla, a legend, has worked with directors who were also legends. Did Kollek have any reservations about working with someone who’s been subjected to the best? “I was intimidated not only because of that, but because I had this image of her from movies I’d seen that she was very austere. She always played hard women. And, when we met the first few times here in New York, it was quite tense. But as we got to be friendly, she was great to work with. She’s a very straightforward person. She means what she says. That’s a great quality. She also has a unique, stunning presence. I wasn’t sure whether she could be really funny, but I thought she would be special.”
Kollek and Schygulla found that they were very compatible in their approach to preparation. “On the set I prefer not to rehearse something to death so that by the time we shoot it, everybody knows exactly what will come out. I always hope to get something a little off-center because movies should have magic and I think they shouldn’t be entirely predictable. We decided not to rehearse much. Hanna’s very good at being spontaneous and she always gives you different things so rehearsing doesn’t lose freshness.
“We discussed the film quite a lot at one point, but we didn’t really extensively go into scenes and read them. We read the script once together in the beginning and then we talked about different things. But we didn’t sit each day and read the scene 15 times and figure out exactly how to do it. Mostly we discussed concept and character.”
They also didn’t improvise a lot. “We basically followed the script. There were certain things that we tried to pay attention to. Hanna had certain ideas that were very good. Certain interpretations, physically. She’s also tremendously experienced and you can feel that. When she would say, ‘This is not good for me,’ I knew she was probably right. And she would do something spontaneously, which was very good.”
Kollek also says that Schygulla contributed a lot to how her character looked: “She was very much into the aspects of what she was wearing and how she was looking. She was very attuned to the look.”
Deborah Harry stars as Lulu, a blonde, mute, furtive presence lurking stealthily on the sidelines of Elaine’s life – who seems mysteriously intertwined with her fate.
The lead singer and sex symbol of New Wave’s premiere band, Blondie, Harry has previously appeared in “Union City” and the 1980 Meat Loaf vehicle, “Roadie.”
“When I wrote the script and called it FOREVER, LULU, I had a character with this kind of fantasy quality, this mystery quality to her. I didn’t know much about Deborah Harry, but I had seen her pictures and I sort of registered this kind of quality in my mind. In a sense, she projects in a nucleus the feel that the whole film should have: enigmatic, mischievous, and both down-to-earth and somewhat out-of-reach because life works in mysterious ways.”
Alec Baldwin makes his feature film debut as Buck, a Manhattan policeman who attempts to woo Elaine Hines, but meets with resistance from the struggling writer. Under different circumstances, he would have been her knight in shining armor, but when you’ve got the Mafia on your trail and a blackmailer ready to squeal to anyone who’ll listen – and your suitor wears a dark blue uniform and carries a night stick – it’s better to avoid him.
One of the stars of the popular television series, “Knots Landing,” for two seasons, Baldwin recently received acclaim for his performance in the highly-praised revival of the Joe Orton black comedy, “Loot.”
Veteran actor Paul Gleason plays a real estate attorney who gifted Elaine with six years of misery as her married Casanova. When Elaine suddenly becomes the victim of blackmail, as a result of her meddling in the Mafia’s business, she foolishly seeks out his advice, only to be rebuked again.
Gleason’s most prominent role in films was in the box office hit, “The Breakfast Club,” as the Dean of Students, whose stern, authoritative control over Saturday detention hall proceedings coalesces his one-day charges into a youth rebellion.
Portraying herself, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who became an overnight media sensation, plays a television talk show therapist who interviews new sudden-celebrity Elaine Hines. “She’s one of those phenomenons,” Kollek points out. “It’s very bizarre. She’s as well known in America as Ronald Reagan’.”
Annie Golden plays Diana, Elaine’s best friend who advises her through troubled times. Golden will always be remembered for her starring role as a gun-chewing, preggie flower child in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical hit “Hair.” Most recently, she was featured in the film, “Key Exchange,” and in this season’s two-hour premiere of “Miami Vice.” She was also on Broadway last year in “Leader of the Pack.”
After a well-received directional debut two years ago with “Goodbye, New York,” which he wrote and co-starred in with Julie Hagerty, Kollek has been a significant force in independent filmmaking.
Kollek admits to a fascination with the phenomenon of instant celebrity/overnight success in this country. “You appear on national television and all of a sudden you are a household name and everybody wants to write your autobiography or the mini-series based on it, and a minute ago you couldn’t get arrested.”
“Maybe I notice it more because I’m an outsider. It’s probably to a degree happening everywhere in the world, but the magnitude of it here is so much greater.”
New York is as much a character of Kollek’s films as any of the actors, because “it seems like around any corner, there’s always this possibility that everything can happen, which is very fascinating to me. And this is part of what “FOREVER, LULU is all about. It’s a bit like a fairy tale. Anything can happen and a lot of things do happen unexpectedly and one thing leads to another. In New York this is more so than a lot of other places I’ve been in, because there is such a concentration of people and different cultures. And all those absurdities of everyday life… I suppose it’s sort of a satirical look from an outsider’s point of view.”
Elaine’s seedy environment and the zeal of her artistic convictions is a world personally familiar to Kollek. “I used to live on the Lower East Side. There were times when I lived a little bit like she lives in the movie or was close to people who lived like that.
“In general, I’m drawn somewhat to people who live in the edge. In other words, this is not a story about the typical housewife in Middle America. Most of the characters in this film are more like those people who live on the fringes of society. I find them intriguing.”
ABOUT THE ACTORS
HANNA SCHYGULLA
BIOGRAPHY
The French refer to her as La Lumineuse. Her cameramen claim that a single candle is all that it takes to light her. Directors have declared that she burns from within.
She is HANNA SCHYGULLA (pronounced Shee-goo-lah), one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, who makes her long overdue comedy debut and stars in her first American feature film with FOREVER, LULU.
Much has been written about this classic actress. John Gruen in The New York Times has described her as “one of the most visible and luminous figures in international cinema. In recent years, her cool, enigmatic beauty and her fluid, subtly modulated acting have prompted a wide variety of well-known directors to cast her in their films, usually to stunning effect.”
The world-class directors with whom she has worked have also recorded their respect and high regard. Marco Ferreri, who starred her in the controversial “The Story of Piera,” has characterized her as “magnetic, strong, powerful, a star who is also a good actress.” And, ironically, since she is finally making her comedy debut, Ettore Scola, director of her “La Nuit de Varennes,” praised her “comic touch – Chaplin would have loved to make a film with her.”
Film critic Richard Corliss in a 1985 Time story on Schygulla, called her “one of the cinema’s most enduring treasures”: “Traditionally, movie actors are classified as either stars or character players… Schygulla is both: a chameleon with charisma. Her ingenuity and technique are large enough to find fresh resources for a broad range of roles, from many social strata, in any of five languages… She is the woman of a thousand faces and emotions, the archetypical actress for the fluid, perilous 1980s.”
Besides being one of the most praised actresses of any period in film history, Schygulla has been one of the cinema’s most prolific artists. In some 15 years, she has made more than 40 films. It is an extraordinary achievement compared to the frequency with which major American actresses are seen on screen.
Most credited as the catalyst for her creative development has been her collaboration with the late director Rainer Fassbinder, the prolific master of German expressionism in cinema. Their work together spanned 20 films and television movies, from 1969 to 1972.
As it was pointed out by Kevin Thomas, a film critic for The Los Angeles Times, “When you think of the great star-director collaborations, you recall Griffith and Gish, Sternberg and Dietrich, Mizoguchi and Tanaka – and, in recent times, R.W. Fassbinder and Hanna Schygulla, who were at the very heart of the renaissance of the German cinema.
“In one Fassbinder film after another, Schygulla not only revealed an ever-growing talent but also revived on the screen an image of the frankly sensual, bold-featured, blonde Teutonic beauty.”
But she has also produced extraordinary work with other directors, including Andrzej Wajda, who directed her in his masterpiece, “A Love in Germany.” The film, together with her performance, produced an inspired commentary from Vincent Canby, film critic for The New York Times, who called her performance “triumphant”: “Though ‘A Love in Germany’ is one of the Polish director’s finest films in recent years, it is Miss Schygulla’s presence that transforms the movie into a cinematic event. With ‘A Love in Germany,’ it is apparent that Miss Schygulla has at long last become one of the great European film actresses of our era, comparable only to Jeanne Moreau…”
FOREVER, LULU marks the first time that Schygulla has filmed in the United States. Her only previous work in an American production was on foreign soil in the NBC eight-hour mini-series, “Peter the Great,” in which she starred as Catherine I.
Highlights of her film career include the following movies for Fassbinder: “Love is Colder than Death” (1969); “Katzelmacher” (1969); “Beware of the Holy Whore” (1970); “The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant” (1972); “Effi Briest” (1974); “Berlin Alexanderplatz” (1980); “The Marriage of Maria Braun” (1979); and finally “Lili Marleen” (1980).
Highlights of her film work with other directors include Jean-Luc Godard’s cryptic “Passion” (1982) – her first film after breaking with Fassbinder; Volker Schlondorff’s “Circle of Deceit” (1981); Marco Ferreri’s “Story of Piera” (1983) – for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival; and Margarethe von Trotta’s “Sheer Madness” (1983).
Schygulla was born on Christmas Day, 1943, in the Polish mining town of Katowice during the German occupation. She was five years old when she met her father for the first time, as he had been conscripted into the Germany army, then captured by the American forces and imprisoned for four years in a POW camp in Pennsylvania. She and her mother fled to Munich, when the Red Army approached Katowice in 1945. An only child, she was raised there.
Schygulla has pointed out many times that if she had never met Fassbinder, she would never have become an actress. Instead, she grew up planning on a career as a schoolteacher, and was studying philology, when she took an acting class which included fellow student Fassbinder, who had spearheaded Munich’s theatrical avant-garde. In 1968, she joined the Munich Action Theater, a center for politics as well as drama. She became Fassbinder’s ideal star and in 1969, he launched her career with his first film “Love is Colder Than Death.”
DEBORAH HARRY
BIOGRAPHY
DEBORAH HARRY stars as the elusive Lulu, a mysterious woman whom Elaine seeks to find.
Harry has had a significant impact on America’s cultural landscape since her rise to stardom as the lead singer of New Wave’s premiere band, Blondie. She “may be the quintessential rags-to-designer-rags saga of the 1980s,” People once raved. “From her sultry, pouty bombshell looks to her thrift-chic duds, Harry has forged a hard-edged persona, providing a wildly eclectic and even alienating vision of popular culture. She is a chameleon of charisma, picking up where such previous avatars as Dylan, Jagger and Bowie left off. Indeed no other musical performer has done so much in recent years to widen the mainstream and make room for rock’s new undercurrent.”
Her film credits include “Union City,” the 1980 Meat Loaf vehicle, “Roadie” and “Videodrome.” She also appeared on Broadway opposite the late Andy Kaufman in “Teaneck Tanzai.”
Born in Miami, but raised in Hawthorne, New Jersey, Harry is the adopted daughter of Richard and Catherine Harry. She briefly attended Centenary College, but was lured to the psychedelic turbulence of Greenwich Village in the late Sixties. She started out as a back-up singer for Wind in the Willows, a short-lived band that released one album of folk-rock in 1968. Harry mostly occupied herself for the next few years making a living as a waitress, a Playboy bunny and a beautician. She was a member of the cabaret troupe, The Stilettoes, when she met Chris Stein, and together they formed Blondie in 1974.
“Though it took several years to jell, the idea of Blondie was there from the start,” Newsweek has said of their particular style. “Debbie played a prom queen turned slut, a klutzy guttersnipe Garbo, acting out deadpan versions of her own star-struck fantasies. The band grafted cartoon lyrics onto rock cliches. They injected surf instrumentals and old girl-group songs such as ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ with the amphetamine rush of their punk competitors, the Ramones.”
ALEC BALDWIN
BIOGRAPHY
ALEC BALDWIN stars as Buck, a shy, gentle New York cop who quotes Shakespeare and pursues Elaine, but keeps getting the brush-off.
Baldwin recently won a Theater World Award given to newcomers for his performance in “Loot,” in which he replaced Kevin Bacon when the play moved from off-Broadway to Broadway. The play marked his first non-television role and had him co-starring with such distinguished, veteran performers as Joseph Maher, Zeljko Ivanek, and Zoe Wanamaker.
In the fall of 1984, Baldwin debuted on the popular television series, “Knots Landing,” as the long-lost son of Julie Harris. In the midst of the second season, his character was killed off and Baldwin turned down other offers to star in a series for the lead role in the ABC mini-series “Dress Gray,” which brought him his first serious critical notices.
Following “Dress Gray,” he moved to New York for “Loot,” followed by his staring role in FOREVER, LULU.
Baldwin is currently filming “Beetle Juice” for Geffen Pictures and Warner Bros.
Baldwin grew up in Massapequa, New York, one of six children in a boisterous Roman Catholic family. His father, who died four years ago, was a high school civics teacher and a major influence on his life.
Although he had done a few high school plays, Baldwin was a pre-law student at George Washington University until the enthusiasm of an actress friend influenced him to transfer to New York University to study acting. He’s also studied at the Strasberg Theater Institute. Before he received his degree, however, he was cast in a day-time soap, “The Doctors,” where he spent the next two years.
Immediately after “The Doctors,” Baldwin starred with Shelley Hack in the television series, “Cutter to Houston.”
ANNIE GOLDEN
BIOGRAPHY
The multi-talented singer and actress ANNIE GOLDEN plays Diana, Elaine’s nympho friend with a manic interest in sex.
Golden is probably best-known for her starring role in the film adaptation of “Hair” in which she starred as the pregnant flower child.
Ironically, Golden was auditioned by Director Milos Foreman and choreographer Twyla Tharp for the film, “Hair,” several months before she was cast in the Broadway revival of the play. In July 1977 she was cast in the film and in October, The Shirts, a band Golden joined at age 19, got their long-awaited record contract.
The eldest child in a large Irish-Catholic family, Golden began singing in the school choir when she was ten. In high school, she switched to the drama club so she could both act and sing in musical comedies. Always diligent, she began working full-time as a secretary at United Artists at the age of 17, and at 19 she joined an obscure New Wave band, The Shirts, while continuing her day job. The opportunity to sing with the group came when Shirts guitarist Artie LaMonica heard her harmonizing with a jukebox. It was during one of The Shirts’ regular engagements at New York’s downtown club, CBGB’s, that director Foreman spotted her for his film.
Golden and The Shirts eventually released three record albums, and since their dissolution several years ago, she has continued to record. She is included on the soundtrack album for “Sixteen Candles,” and her music video of “Hang Up The Phone” was featured on MTV.
PAUL GLEASON
BIOGRAPHY
Veteran actor PAUL GLEASON plays Elaine’s married lover who promised eternal togetherness, but delivered only heartbreak and rebukes her again when she seeks his advice on the predicament she finds herself in. But Elaine gets her revenge, whe his wife finally gets wise to his philandering ways and casts him out in the cold.
Gleason portrayed Dean of Students Richard Vernon in the box office hit, “The Breakfast Club.”
His other film credits include “Trading Places,” “Tender Mercies,” “The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper,” “Arthur,” “The Great Santini” and “Fort Apache: The Bronx.” On television, he was seen in the mini-series “Ike,” and in the recurring role of David Thornton on the popular daytime drama, “All My Children.”
Gleason has been involved as a writer, director and actor in New York’s off-off Broadway movement, working at Cafe Lemama, Ensemble Studio Theatre and various other theatres. He appeared as McMurphy in the off-Broadway production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and on Broadway in “The Front Page,” as well as “The Gingerbread Lady.” He has also worked with Arvin Brown at the Long Wharf Theatre and Elia Kazan at the Hartman Theatre in Connecticut.
Gleason directed the West Coast premier of “A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking” at Los Angeles’ Westwood Playhouse with Elizabeth Ashley and Susan Anspach.
He is also a playwright and poet whose verse has appeared in such prestigious publications as The Yale Review, Paris Review and Georgia Review. He has published a collection of poetry, entitled Uleta Blue.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER
BIOGRAPHY
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER plays herself as a psychosexual television talk show therapist who interbiews Elaine Hines.
Westheimer recently appeared in the French film, “One Woman or Two,” which starred Gerard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver and was directed by Daniel Vigne.
Westheimer helped pioneer the field of media psychology with her radio program, “Sexually Speaking,” which debuted in September 1980 as a fifteen minute, taped show, airing once a week in New York. She has since expanded to national radio and to cable and syndicated television. In addition, she has published three books, Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex, First Love, and Loving Couples. Warner Records has released her first home video, Terrific Sex, and Victory Games has produced her board game, “Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.”
Born in Germany in 1928, Westheimer attended school in Switzerland at the age of ten. At sixteen, she went to Israel to fight for that country’s independence, then moved to Paris to study psychology at the Sorbonne. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1956, later obtaining a Masters Degree in Sociology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School of Social Research and a Doctorate of Education in the Interdisciplinary Study of the Family from Columbia University.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
AMOS KOLLEK
BIOGRAPHY
Filmmaker and actor AMOS KOLLEK has been characterized by one writer as “the Israeli version of Woody Allen,” sharing with Allen “an absurdist worldview and droll understatement.” Another writer has said that he “possesses the same self-deprecating aplomb as Judd Hirsch.”
Kollek made his directorial debut two years ago with “Goodbye, New York,” which he wrote and co-starred in with Julie Hagerty.
The son of Teddy Kollek, the mayor of Jerusalem for the last twenty-two years, Amos was born there in 1947. He served in the Israeli army from 1965 to 1968, then enrolled in the Hebrew University, where he obtained his bachelors degree in Psychology and Philosophy in 1971.
Although his desire to make films was not realized until the late Seventies, Kollek was “basically always interested in film. When I got out of the Army, I got married and started studying philosophy and psychology and at the same time, I started writing a semi-autobiographical novel in Hebrew. I wrote only a few notes and then I ran into a Hollywood producer, Ray Stark.
“I talked to him somewhat casually about what I was writing, and he said, ‘This sounds like a Hollywood movie. If you have the time, write me an outline and send it to me in Hollywood.’ He was leaving the next morning, so I proceeded to write him the outline the same day, and I left it in his box at the hotel. He called me and we had breakfast and he gave me a check to write him a treatment.”
Sometime later, Stark decided to pass on the idea – a very common event in the film industry. “When he dropped it, I had a 40-page movie treatment of some sort, which I proceeded to write into a novel in English. So my career as a novelist really started from a movie treatment.”
Kollek then concentrated on a writing career, because of the economics of filmmaking. “I was not a very sociable type and I also didn’t have any money. Writing a novel, you only have to sit with your typewriter and try to do it. To make a movie, you need a lot of people around you – you need a million dollars. So, it wasn’t really that I had no interest in films when I was writing novels, it was just that for a few years I was avoiding the issue, so to speak.”
When his first manuscript, based on the movie treatment, was completed, he called Ray Stark for advice on how to peddle it. Stark suggested he look up his former partner, a literary agent, in New York. Kollek borrowed the money from his father, made the journey, and called the agent. “He said, ‘Drop by the manuscript,’ and I did. I was only in New York for a couple of weeks, and I kept calling – I didn’t know that you don’t get a reading the next day.
“They called me two weeks later and said, ‘Come down, we’ll talk.’ They got me a publisher almost immediately and I didn’t know at the time that this is not always so simple. I thought, ‘Gee, this is easy. It takes two minutes.'”
Don’t Ask Me If I Love was published in 1971 by M. Evans. Three more works of fiction followed. Then he co-authored his father’s memoirs, For Jerusalem.
Kollek finally decided to adopt Don’t Ask Me If I Love into a film, raising the money independently and hiring young L.A. documentary filmmaker Barbara Nobel to direct. He wrote the script, co-produced the film and made his acting debut in an extensive role. The film was released briefly without a distributor in 1980, under the title of “Worlds Apart.”
Then came “Goodbye, New York,” a story about the comic misadventures of a New York yuppie stranded without money in Israel and trying to make the best of it in a kibbutz.
“I just decided one day that I was really going to get into making films. I wrote the script (“Goodbye, New York”) and I went around to raise money from private investors, which is fairly difficult and time-consuming,” he recalls.
Kollek and the film received some flattering notices, putting him on the map of serious, independent filmmakers. But he does recall that the experience was no breeze either. “‘Goodbye, New York’ was very, very hard for me emotionally, because I really had no confidence and I felt that no one around me had any reason to have confidence. It was a strange situation – because I took a lot upon myself, the budget was low, and in a sense I really didn’t know if anything would come of it. It was one of those peculiar feelings, ‘Here I am, I’m directing and I’m acting.’ I enjoyed the making of the film, but it was very strenuous.”
Like his earlier, unplanned plunge into writing fiction, Kollek simply dove head first into filmmaking, even though he had no academic preparation and no actual experience. How did he get away with it? “First of all, I watched a lot of movies,” he explains. “I’ve been briefly on the sets of all kinds of films so I had a little bit of feeling of what a set was like and I talked to people.” He also had “a certain view of what I would like to see.”
Would Kollek accept an offer to leave the frustrations of raising money and working on very limited budgets behind, if invited to Hollywood? “It’s very hard for me to tell because I’ve never been in that position. So the answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ It probably depends on what it would be. Would it be just something or would it be something that was interesting to me? I’d have to be able to have some say in what I’m doing. I don’t think I’m terrifically good at just being told what to do and just showing up and doing it. But I don’t know if mainstream implies that,” he says.
He does emphasize, however, that originality will always be an important ingredient in his artistic efforts. “I certainly don’t want to do a remake of something else in a slightly different way. That’s not my intent.”
