Kim Basinger 9 1/2 Weeks

Kim Basinger 9 1/2 Weeks
Movies | HOW '9 1/2 WEEKS' PUSHED AN ACTRESS TO THE EDGE
HOW '9 1/2 WEEKS' PUSHED AN ACTRESS TO THE EDGE
See the article in its original context from March 9, 1986 , Section 2 , Page 1 Buy Reprints
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Even the critics who dislike her new movie, ''9 1/2 Weeks,'' agree that Kim Basinger is beautiful. Blonde, with full sensuous lips and a certain subtle luminescence to her skin, she projects an air of sexuality mixed with an almost childlike vulnerability that reminds some viewers of Marilyn Monroe. ''There was something else I always saw in Marilyn Monroe,'' she said recently. ''Terror. She seemed terrified inside.''
So was Miss Basinger, she said, during the shooting of ''9 1/2 Weeks.'' The film is about an art dealer named Elizabeth and her sexual obsession, domination and finally degradation by a man named John, whom she meets by accident. As shot, the film, from the novel of the same name by Elizabeth McNeill, contains some explicit scenes with none-too-subtle overtones of sado-masochism, as the two engage in sexual games that become more and more uncontrolled. Elizabeth finally calls a halt and they separate. The affair lasts 9 1/2 weeks.
The controversial subject matter and the more explicit sado-masochism in some of the scenes proved so alienating to preview audiences that the film was severely cut, and its opening repeatedly delayed. There appears also to have been some tension on the set, according to Adrian Lyne, the film's director, about the method he used to elicit the performance he deemed necessary from Miss Basinger. People watching the shooting, he said, who did not understand the rationale behind the approach, sometimes became disturbed at the intensity of the emotions the actress and director displayed - from rage to despair - as they worked together.
Mr. Lyne, who also directed ''Flashdance,'' said he needed to play upon ''an edge of terror'' in Miss Basinger, to create a more believable sense of fear, surprise and sexual arousal between her and her lover, played by Mickey Rourke.
According to Mr. Lyne, the normal professional techniques of the actress's craft were not sufficient to produce the highly-charged emotions Miss Basinger was called upon to portray. So he struck upon a more controversial approach: he tried to create to some degree an atmosphere on the set - and in particular a relationship between the two stars - that would push Miss Basinger into actually experiencing some of the feelings and playing them out in raw form before the cameras.
The experience, Miss Basinger said afterward, was traumatic for her and even created some problems for a while in her marriage to Ron Britton, a former movie makeup man, now a painter. She does concede, however, that the experience helped her to grow as an actress and was a kind of exorcism that liberated her for new roles.
The issue - of manipulating actors in ways that they are not always fully aware of to achieve a desired result -is one that comes up from time to time in movie-making. Accounts of making the film, related by Mr. Lyne and Miss Basinger, raise some disturbing questions. What are the limits for a director in extracting a desired performance? How far can he go? Must he be concerned with the possible adverse affect upon the actor as a person and an artist?
Mr. Lyne sees no real dilemma in any of this. ''The limits,'' he said, ''are defined by your participants. If any of the participants can't cope, it will show on film. They would both be basket cases. They'd fall apart.'' What if the scene calls for them to fall apart? ''Then it's legitimate. You're doing it for the screen.''
Miss Basinger's previous credits include ''The Natural,'' with Robert Redford, and ''Fool for Love,'' in which she co-starred with the playwright and actor Sam Shepard. To win the role of Elizabeth, she beat out Kathleen Turner and Teri Garr, who interviewed for the part, and Isabella Rossellini, who, like Miss Basinger, did a taped audition scene with Mr. Rourke.
Miss Basinger said the audition was grueling - she was called upon to act like a prostitute groveling for money in an elaborate sexual game devised by the male protagonist, John. The scene was to have been in the movie, but was later cut. Miss Basinger said she left the audition crying, feeling humiliated. ''It was like an earthquake in my life,'' she said. She told her agent that she never wanted to hear about this film again and would definitely not do it even if she were chosen, she said. When she returned home, she found two dozen roses with a card from Mr. Lyne and Mr. Rourke.
Mr. Lyne continued to pursue her for the part, she said, and eventually she changed her mind and decided to take it on. She became convinced that playing such a demanding role would benefit her as an actress. ''I knew if I got through this it would make me stronger - wiser,'' she said. ''I was going against my total grain. I felt disgust, humiliation, but when you go against your grain you just know that emotions you never knew you had will surface.''
Before shooting began, Mr. Lyne laid down some ground rules. He told his two co-stars that he did not want them to see each other before the film went into production and, once it did, that he did not want them to develop an ''ongoing intimacy.'' The object, he said, was to keep in place a kind of barrier between them that could be utilized in their performances.
''She needed to be scared of him,'' Mr. Lyne said. ''If they went out and had coffee together, we'd lose the edge.'' At the audition, the director noted, he perceived ''hostility and sexual energy between them. After that I didn't want them to meet again until they began work - I didn't want them to have any relationship that would exclude me. I wanted to have the 10 weeks of the shooting of the movie be like the 9 1/2 weeks of the relationship.''
The injunction not to become friends was taken even more seriously than Miss Basinger expected. On the set, she said, Mr. Rourke barely spoke to her when they were not working. From time to time the director would call him aside, out of her earshot, and deliver special instructions, when he felt that a scene was not working.
Perhaps the most glaring example of using this strategy to draw out the effect the director wanted occurred during the shooting of a phony lover's suicide pact. John convinces Elizabeth, who is totally under his spell, to swallow pills with him, matching him pill for pill. The episode is another of John's games; the pills that Elizabeth thinks are killing her are made of sugar. The realization that their game-playing had actually come to the brink of death, and that she was ready to die for him is what motivates her to finally leave him. The entire scene, however, was later cut from the movie. Mr. Lyne said that audiences at previews found the scene simply too strong to take. ''It made them hate him too much,'' the director said. ''They hated John for doing it. They hated Elizabeth for accepting it. They hated me for making it. It made them hate the whole film.''
To make the scene realistic, Mr. Lyne engaged in one of his private asides to Mr. Rourke. He recalled it this way: ''We were shooting the suicide scene, and this woman was supposed to be totally devastated at this point. But Kim looked dewy and lovely. I stopped and called Mickey aside. I told him that the scene wasn't working, that Kim had to be broken down.'' He said that Mr. Rourke returned to the set and helped extract the effect the director wanted. He said Mr. Rourke grabbed Miss Basinger's arm and held it tightly, refusing to let go. Miss Basinger began to cry and then shouted and struck Mr. Rourke. He then slapped her in the face. She began to weep hysterically. Mr. Lyne then said, ''Now let's start the scene.''
At other moments, Mr. Lyne said, when he thought a particular scene required it, he would instruct the actor ''be kind to her now. Don't let her be so isolated.'' The alternation between harshness and kindness was supposed to give the relationship its particular sexual tension.
Mr. Lyne said this overall approach was ''not the result of a sadistic alliance between me and Mickey.'' He added: ''It was something she knew was helping her. It wasn't pleasant, but it was useful.'' He insisted that the technique was not decided upon as a plan before the shooting began, but rather that it evolved in the course of production and was part of a director's normal skill in drawing emotions from actors as the particular need arises.
The approach was called for, he said, by his sense of the kind of actress Miss Basinger is. ''You couldn't do this with everyone,'' he said. ''Kim is a bit like a child. She's an innocent. That's part of her appeal. She's an instinctive actress.'' Without this kind of emotional engineering from the director, she would not have been able to fully realize the part, he indicated. ''She was that woman for 10 weeks. She didn't act her. In order for her to be angry I would rage at her and she would rage back at me. Mickey also had to do it. He frightened her. And that was done purposely. She's not an intellectual. She doesn't read books. She doesn't actually act, she reacts. And she had to plumb the depths in this movie.''
Miss Basinger, who studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York for three years, said that Mr. Lyne also came to her several times to whisper instructions aimed at getting a certain response from Mr. Rourke. She said she thought the manipulation was the director's way of working - not a reflection of the kind of actress she was. ''I don't identify with that description of me at all,'' she said. ''That was his interpretation. Another director would act differently. To tell the truth, I deliberately didn't allow myself to see all the games being played to get this picture made. I don't know why, if he wanted some emotion, he went to Mickey and not to me.''
She said she never really understood the level of manipulation that went on until after the movie was shot, although several people told her it was happening. ''But I thought that for the character I had to keep myself beaten down and a little naive. If I ever stopped and questioned, if I no longer believed in Adrian, I would have been a mess.''
As it was, the movie had a disturbing effect on her. During the shooting of the suicide scene, she said, ''Mickey was egging me on - I hated him sometimes. I got confused. I didn't know who I was after a while. My husband and I had a bad time during this movie.'' She said that the strains of the experience and her feeling of being emotionally drained contributed to their problems. ''I think the strains of it - the realization of the material being done, would have hurt any partner,'' she said. ''I totally emotionally neglected him for a whole year. I just didn't have anything left to give, and you can't do that in a relationship.'' She said that those problems had since been patched up.
''Over the course of the film,'' she said, she and Mr. Rourke became estranged. ''We shot in sequence, and in the beginning, when the character was sweet, he was very sweet, too. Later, when the movie started getting strange, he stayed in character. I am not usually an actress who stays in character. But in this, as it started getting stranger, I found my character staying with me. I couldn't wait to leave her.'' She described feelings of confusion, exaggerated mood swings off camera, and being depressed, moody, distant - ''not even being there.''
But in spite of this, Miss Basinger continues to feel the experience was worthwhile. Asked if she thought it ethical to wreak havoc in people's lives even for an ostensibly artistic purpose, she answered: ''I think if you are an artist of any kind, if you want to try to excel, there is pain. It would be hard to say if I'd do it again, but finally I would have to say yes. Not because I like pain, but because it brought me over a certain river, to a new point. I don't know if there was any other way to get some of these emotions in a conventional way. The movie we shot - I don't mean the movie that got released - was not a straight conventional movie. I didn't always agree with the way Adrian handled things. There were times I was ready to quit, when I wondered if he weren't a sick human being, if we weren't all sick to do this, but in the end I faced my own fear and came through it.''
Some of the steamier scenes in the film are included in the European version of ''9 1/2 Weeks'' and will also appear in the videocassette of the movie. But ironically, the strongest scenes, the most emotional outbursts, the episodes the most difficult and traumatic for Miss Basinger to do, were excised from the version American audiences will see. The director and distributors decided that audiences here would find them too distasteful.

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