About Steve :: Actor :: Movies
L. A. Story
Page 1

1991

Harris K. Telemacher is a Ph.D. who works as a wacky weatherman in wacky L.A.. But his life is missing true love, which he finds with the help of his magical city.

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Los Angeles Times
August 5, 1990, Sunday, Home Edition

Calendar; Page 6; Calendar Desk

ON LOCATION IN L.A.;
$20 MILLION, 87 LOCATIONS IN 57 DAYS A REAL L.A. STORY IF WE'VE EVER HEARD ONE

By PATRICK GOLDSTEIN

How would you like Hollywood to come to your house?

That's what Paul Sillars wondered when he strolled into his front yard one recent afternoon and spotted Steve Martin, astride a huge lawn mower, rehearsing a scene from his new film, "L.A. Story."

When the film comes out next spring, the scene will go by in a blink. A spoof of a celebrity endorsement TV commercial, it shows Martin, grinning broadly as he bounces up and down, saying "Yesterday I was constipated. Today I can ride this power mower all day."

But if you're a homeowner even a homeowner who's given permission for a film production to use your front lawn it can still be quite a shock to see a 70 person crew, with an armada of trucks, trailers and motor homes, converging on your property.

"I must admit I had visions of them firing up the lawn mower and taking a huge divot out of my lawn," said Sillars, a former CBS lighting technician who owns a pretty hillside house in Angeleno Heights. "When all the camera trucks and this huge crew shows up, it really is kind of overwhelming. It's as if the hordes are invading.

"I've heard all the horror stories, but for the most part this crew was really quite good. We lost an azalea bush and had a little damage to our flower bed, but we were financially compensated for it right away."

Things may have gone smoothly at the Sillars residence. But many locals are so jaded about Hollywood moviemaking that when film crews come to their neighborhood they don't crowd around begging for autographs they want payoffs.

Just ask production assistant Ron McGee, one of "L.A. Story's" location scouts. When the film was shooting on a Tuesday night on a residential street in Hollywood, McGee had to deal with a neighbor who claimed his rock band practiced there every Tuesday. Knowing a blaring rock band would disrupt filming, McGee tried to make a deal.

"I said, 'Don't worry, we'll pay for a recording studio for you.' But the guy kept asking for the cash instead. Finally, he broke down and admitted he didn't have a band at all. He said, 'I heard I could get a lot of money out of you guys, so I figured I'd give it a try.' People try to extort money from us all the time."

"L.A. Story" producer Dan Melnick takes it all in stride. "Every once in a while you run into some (jerk) who says, 'Give me $25 or I'll blare my cassette player,' but most people have been very cooperative."

But you never know when you'll need to dig into your pockets. On the set here, Melnick watched as Martin mounted the power mower, ready for another take. Just as director Mick Jackson prepared to call for quiet, an ice cream truck appeared in the distance, rumbling toward the set, its bell tinkling loudly.

As a pair of crew members raced up the street to head off the truck, Melnick turned to his assistant director and slyly joked, "Albert, you've just bought 100 Popsicles."

Making a $20 million Hollywood movie is a daunting task. But "L.A. Story" isn't just any Hollywood movie. Written by Martin, who stars as a lovelorn weatherman who no longer remembers which way the wind blows, the film is an impish commentary on L.A.'s disconnected mores. Set in a world populated with interior plant designers, spokesmodels and restaurants with eight week waiting lists, it required a lush, unreal landscape as a backdrop for its deft satiric barbs.

In other words, it had to be shot in L.A.


"If Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' was his take on New York, then this is Steve Martin's view of L.A.," says Chris Coles, the film's production manager. "It's a very affectionate, but satiric portrait, and rather than try to shoot it on a back lot, we decided to use the great L.A. basin as our studio. It's an enormous undertaking. We're like this huge factory assembly line that gets moved to a different location every day."

Shooting at 87 locations in 57 days, "L.A. Story's" savvy production crew members have often found themselves in the midst of a grueling ordeal where everything even Popsicle trucks has its price.

Dying to shoot inside a fancy Hancock Park mansion? That'll cost anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000? Have to put a crane in someone's driveway? That'll be $100. Want to use Mr. Sillars' front yard for a few hours? That's $500.

Want to film for a week outside an apartment complex in West Hollywood? No problem. All you need is approval signatures from 90% of the neighbors in a three block area (350 in all), a bewildering array of city permits and a little extra cash for the most outraged area resident, who miraculously abandoned his staunch opposition to filming after the "L.A. Story" staff put him on salary as a "neighborhood consultant" for the seven days they were filming there.

"Every day's a big new headache," says Jerry Ariganello, the film's location manager, whose four person department found locations everywhere from Long Beach to Pacoima to Palos Verdes. "The problem is that you have to handle not only the person you made a deal with, but the neighbors next door too.

"We go out of our way to be considerate of everyone, but if you're shooting on a residential street at night, with a huge crane and a generator going full blast till 4 a.m., it's a nightmare. We may have 90% of our permission signatures, but somehow one of the other 10% is going to have the house next to the generator and they'll be out there, screaming and yelling all night."

Every day brings a fresh challenge. One of the film's scenes involves a parody of "Hamlet" set in a local cemetery. The film's location scouts found the perfect site until the cemetery director discovered the scene would show bones being dug out of a mock grave. Whoops the production suddenly had to find a different cemetery.

The crew needed to shoot a day at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That was easy they filmed on Monday, when the museum was closed. (OK, things were even a little easier because Steve Martin's on the museum's board of trustees.)

It wasn't so simple finding a freeway that the production could conveniently close down for seven nights. (One of the film's recurrent gags involves a freeway sign that sends messages to Martin's character.) The only freeways available were either situated in heavily industrial areas (giving them the wrong look) or were burdened with too many timetable restrictions.

What to do? Working on a film that makes fun of L.A.'s illusory nature, the resourceful location staff discovered a perfect solution a freeway look alike.

"There's actually a whole list of streets that can double as freeways," explained Ariganello. "We ended up using Burbank Boulevard at Woodley and Havenhurst, near the Sepulveda Dam. You actually don't need a lot of tricks to make it convincing. It really looks like a freeway." (The crew also shot three days in Long Beach, using its Shoreline Drive as another freeway stand in.)

Finding a location is easy compared to the blizzard of bureaucratic paperwork needed to shoot there. To film on Burbank Boulevard, the "L.A. Story" production had to not only seek approval from the city's department of transportation but from the parks department. "We needed a permit from them to remove a tree, and guarantee we'd replace it, when we made room for our freeway sign," said Ariganello.

The production also needed approvals from the Department of Water and Power (to bring in power, along with 28 temporary phone lines to run the sign); the phone company (which provided a temporary phone line for the sign) and the Department of Public Works (which issues permits for filming).

"Getting up and going to a new location is like moving the Fifth Army," said Tim Hill, the film's beefy transportation coordinator. "We're hauling five huge 70 foot trucks, six trailers, two motor homes, the entire crew and if you include all the extras we'll use in some scenes, we've got 120 or 130 people to move around."

Back in the film's West Los Angeles production offices, the phones ring nonstop. Production manager Chris Coles says the production will easily spend $50,000 just on local phone calls for the 12 weeks they're shooting. If a location falls through, Coles has a row of file cabinets overflowing with photos and background information about more than 5,000 different possible locations, all cross referenced. His bookshelf is also bursting with art, architecture and design books. ("We went to Book Soup and practically bought out their entire stock of books about L.A." says Coles.)

But sometimes you just can't find what you're looking for. Enamored by an old Spanish style duplex with the perfect look for Martin's apartment, director Mick Jackson asked Ariganello if he could locate a similar duplex, but with homes next door in Art Deco and modern styles, which would better fit the personalities of the characters who play Martin's neighbors.

The location director searched the city, driving around at all hours, shooting panoramic pictures of entire streets so Jackson could envision how he could use them on film. But none of his candidates ever measured up to Jackson's initial choice.

So? "We ended up using the original place Mick saw," Ariganello said, a bit sheepishly. "We just changed the facades of the other two houses so it would match what he had in mind."

After you spend a little time on the set with Jackson, you can see why he's so exacting about the look of the "L.A. Story" characters' homes. A bright, engaging Briton, he's best known for English films like "Threads" (about the effects of a nuclear war on a small English town) and a controversial miniseries called "A Very British Coup."

He's never made a Hollywood film before and had never lived in Los Angeles until late last year. Like many newcomers, the bearded director is unabashedly enamored with L.A.'s tropical topography.

"When foreigners, especially Europeans from cold Northern climes, arrive in L.A., I think we're all struck by how lush it is here," he says between shots, wiping sweat from underneath his broad brimmed baseball cap. "It's as if you're in this tropical rain forest that has spawned an entire city. It has an artificiality to it that fits perfectly with the attitude of the script."

To emphasize this, one of the production's equipment trucks is loaded with palms and shrubs, which are strategically placed in the foreground of many outdoor scenes. Today Jackson is standing at the bottom of a bridge across an Echo Park lagoon, which indeed has been adorned with added clumps of potted palms and vines.

"There's a wonderful Rousseau painting that depicts a jungle scene with a nude Gypsy reclining among the tigers and lions," he explains as his crew sets up a new shot. "And I want the movie to look a lot like that. Because this isn't just a comedy, it's also a love story. So we want to symbolize the passions that lurk in the jungle, to see our unmediated, uncivilized selves to show a little magic under all the gags."

Actress Victoria Tennant, who plays an inquiring English reporter in the film, puts it more succinctly: "You look at L.A. in this movie and you say, 'What a weird and wonderful place.' It's not like a lot of films where you'd just say 'What a dump!' "

As a fellow Britisher, Tennant understands why Jackson sounds as if he's gone a bit la la over L.A. "When you first come here, all of the sensory excitement can really overwhelm you," says Tennant, who, in real life, is married to Steve Martin. "When you've been here a while, your vision gets a little bit out of focus because habit blurs the sharp edges. But when you see L.A. for the first time, the physical beauty of the place is overwhelming."

But what gives this smoggy, disconnected city it's eternal charm, for regular folk as well as for film makers? According to Tennant, it's all in your memories.

"When I first moved here, a bunch of us actors, directors and whatever would get together every Sunday night for chicken legs and six packs of beer," she recalled. "But one by one our lives splintered off as we got other jobs and got married. And as I look back, I realize we had so much fun because disappointment hadn't entered our lives."

The loss of innocence it sounds like the ultimate L.A. story. "Who knows, maybe it was just a special time," Tennant said. "We all had hopes and dreams. Now some of them have come true. But some of them have been bashed and scraped and lost their paint job along the way."
 

Los Angeles Times
February 3, 1991, Sunday, Home Edition
Calendar; Page 7; Calendar Desk
A SIDE ORDER OF STEVE MARTIN; HE'S HAD HIS UPS AND DOWNS WITH L.A., BUT THEY'RE BACK TOGETHER IN HIS NEW MOVIE
Elaine Dutka, Times film writer

Steve Martin has always been "out there." During his days as a standup comedian in the 1970s, the prematurely gray fellow in the white custom tailored suit would face the audience with balloons on his head and go lurching across the stage with an attack of "happy feet." On the big screen, he portrayed a woman trapped in a man's body in "All of Me," and Cyrano de Bergerac as a modern day fire chief in "Roxanne."

His new film, "L.A. Story," (to be released by Tri Star Pictures on Friday ) has its own over the top quirkiness, with scenes of Martin rollerskating through the L.A. County Museum of Art and having philosophical discussions with a freeway sign. Martin sees it as an attempt to break new comedic ground, to explore the intricacies of life and love and to paint an affectionate portrait of the town he's called home for most of his 45 years.

Off camera, however, Martin is neither wild nor crazy, but a solid, almost stolid practitioner of his craft. The interview process, in his mind, is a chore undertaken because the studio and box office demand it. But he'll only go so far. Discuss his highly regarded modern art collection? His four year marriage to actress Victoria Tennant? Well, EXCUUUUSE ME!

In a recent conversation with L.A. Times film writer Elaine Dutka at the Four Seasons Hotel, however, the comedian was surprisingly expansive about the trade offs of living in a company town and the competitive pressures that once led him to leave L.A. He also elaborated on his brand of comedy, the difference between love and romance and the confidence (or naivete) that enables him to do the work that makes him one of a kind.

Question: You moved to Inglewood from Waco, Tex., when you were 5, lived in Garden Grove as a teen ager, attended UCLA, Cal State Long Beach, performed at Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. It would seem, on the face of it, that you are . . .

Answer: Very California.

Q: Do you identify as such?

A: I don't, but others might. It would be very fair if they did. I just don't identify myself with a place. It's like "Go Raiders!" I just don't get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don't have principles, constitutions. You wouldn't go to war for your town. I didn't base the character in the film on myself, but I didn't write it radically different
from me either.

Q: "Roxanne" the other screenplay you wrote on your own also deals with love and relationships. Does this reflect certain changes going on inside you, certain preoccupations?

A: Love stories have always been my forte, or at least my area of interest. Even "The Jerk" was a love story. But certainly the presentation of it has changed, gotten more complicated. A friend said to me that he saw this movie as "The Jerk" for adults. "L.A. Story," though, is more about romance than love. I distinguish between the two. Love takes place over 25 years. Romance takes place when you first fall in love. It's a high concept idea. It stirs all emotions and you can manipulate and be manipulated. It's very fertile ground.

Q: Could you have written this film 10 years ago?

A: No. No. It's not what I say in the movie that is significant but how it is said and I don't think I could have said it this way 10 years ago. The romantic parts of the movie are not so much dialogue as visual. The director, Mick Jackson, tried to visualize the emotions of being in love. The wind, the rain, the storm, the turmoil, are really metaphors for something else. The scene where we turn into children is meant to represent the feeling that comes over you when you are captivated by someone and everything is new. That's why L.A. is presented so beautifully in the movie. The vision is altered, seen through their eyes.

Q: Did you make a conscious decision not to present the "underbelly" of the city?

A: From page 1. The ugly side of L.A. has been presented so much and I thought it was a cliche and wouldn't be that interesting. Also, I didn't want to muddy the works in this particular story with a big smoggy day. It just doesn't serve the story at all.

Q: Does L.A. get a bad rap?

A: Yes, it definitely does. It's a real scapegoat. A lot of people love putting it down because it makes them feel better. I remember reading an article in the Village Voice in which the writer was just so disgusted from the moment he stepped off the plane. Victoria says when she meets English actors and says she lives in L.A. they go: "Oh, you poor thing." . . . And, of course, the first place they all want to come is L.A. This attitude is definitely out there and it's way overboard. Yet you could make a case for hating it. Or loving it. L.A. is not something that you have to have an opinion about, you know.

Q: This is the first time that you've acted with your wife since you two met on the set of "All of Me" in 1984. Was the part written with her in mind?

A: It was written for an English . . . person. We wanted an "alien" to come to L.A. and be hit with it. In this case, we had not just one alien, but two: the director, an Englishman and an outsider, also had a different eye. It was his decision to present the natural, wild underside of L.A: the deer, a cat, that ceramic leopard in the tree.

Q: Production designers frequently draw on the work of specific artists when creating the "look" of a picture. Was that the case in this one?

A: I didn't have anyone in mind, but Mick did. And it surprised me because it wasn't (David) Hockney but (Henri) Rousseau. The lurking lions, everything poking out from the foliage. We were constantly hauling in plants. Hockney is the quintessential L.A. painter, though . . . his images couldn't be anywhere else. We were just looking for a different metaphor. 

Q: When you close your eyes and think of L.A., what do you visualize?

A: Green against blue.

Q: Is the portrait, on balance, an affectionate one?

A: I have fond memories of my life here, especially in my early 20s when I was writing for television. There were hopes and dreams about "making it" a great optimism. At 22, I went to work for the Smothers Brothers and the thing, then, was variety television. I could have ended up hosting some show which would have sank because the form was dead and I would have been this failed TV personality. It was just luck . . . I would have grabbed it at the time.

Q: Could you understand others coming away from the movie with a less than positive take on the city?

A: Definitely. It's a little bit like a Rorschach test. Your opinion going in will affect your response. My wife put it best: it's like teasing your best friend. You have to like him, know him pretty well, in order to do it. Anyhow, this movie is nowhere near a lethal blow. It's not mean or ugly, but anything can be misconstrued. Someone can find something awful in a fairy tale.

Q: You've said that the story and the city are integrally linked. Is there a sense of possibility here you don't find elsewhere?

A: This is the place where, truly, anything can happen. Where one day you're down and out and the next day you're on top of the world at least, professionally. In New York, there's more ladder climbing but, here, it's almost like a Scud (missile) undirected. It can land anywhere and it can land on you.

Q: In the movie, Victoria's character says: "L.A. is a place of secrets. Someone said if you turn off the sprinklers it would turn into a desert. But I see it as a place where they've taken a desert and turned it into their dreams."

A: She actually said that to me once . . . and it's true. First there was the desert, then they brought in water and started making movies. The weather, the sunshine, also sets a certain tone. This place is like a retirement village for the young.

Q: But you didn't always feel so enamored of Los Angeles.

A: No. I left in '73 or '74. It was all the obvious things: the smog, the traffic. I was going nowhere. My girlfriend and I packed everything in the car and took off. We passed through Santa Fe and stayed there for two years before moving to Aspen. When I moved back to Los Angeles in 1979, I was less angry. I slammed my fist against the steering wheel less often. Not only at the traffic, I now realize, but at the display of wealth and fancy living which was always in your face.

Q. Was your objection philosophical or personal?

A. I hadn't yet broken through and the fact that I was a failure in show business was constantly hit home to me. All that fancy living reminded me not only of other people's success but the lack of my own. It was a constant reminder of how well I wasn't doing. I was in my middle years and just needed some freshness. I needed to get out. It was a good thing, as it turned out, because my career started happening out of town . . . in San Francisco and Miami the Coconut Grove, of all places. In Hollywood, I was regarded as just another act. It was that old show business cynicism at work. When I opened for Linda Ronstadt at the Troubadour, in fact, a review came out saying that it was the worst booking in the history of Los Angeles. 

Q: How do you insulate yourself from such attitudes and the dog eat dog mentality which permeates the industry, in general?

A: I cancelled my subscription to the trade publications, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and have been a lot happier ever since. But I don't think I've ever reached a plateau where I truly didn't care. Plugging into some of it keeps me alive and competitive. Though perspective insulates you, it also keeps you from enjoying success. You tell yourself: "A hit, after all, is only for now. Who knows what will be next year?" It works both ways.

Q: Are you able to enjoy yourself right now?

A: More than ever before. It's a cliche, but stand up life is really hard. Life is much more comfortable these days. And, for the first time, I'm truly confident of my abilities. All these years, I've fought it, despite external recognition. Awards mean nothing to comedians. What matters is the audience, how you're doing artistically, for the most part at that moment. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for
stand up. Now, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but, because the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone, it's just about coming up with it.

Q: You're in the fortunate position of being able to call your own shots. Can you visualize a time when you'd have to start playing the game again or would you just as soon cut out?

A: If I no longer had the prerogative of doing it my way, if I had to go back to pitching ideas, I'd definitely say "that's it." I've never had to make concessions. I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself. A friend of mine once asked how to make it in show business and I said "Be so good that they can't ignore you." She thought I was being flip but it's true. The challenge is trying to live up to the opportunities given me.

Q: There was a wonderful line at the opening of the movie: "I was deeply unhappy, but I didn't know it because I was so happy."

A: That's not exclusive to Los Angeles. It's everywhere. Filling up time may be what life is about. You temporarily take a job and end up staying for seven years, just like my character did. He didn't really plan for things to go that way but couldn't energize himself to get out of it. It's a pitfall of society, the way things are structured. Often people don't have choices. There are children, rent payments. I was lucky because I was able to gamble. Don't ask me why. I didn't come from a wealthy family. I had no money. Maybe it goes back to naivete which is your greatest asset when you're young. If I was starting in comedy today and if it didn't work the first time, I'd probably quit. But I kept at it, kept at it.

Q: Is it a mixed blessing to be living in a company town?

A: There's nothing mixed about it. That's the worst part of it. Pretty soon you think your whole life is only about movies and you find yourself concerned about such things as how so and so's movie did in the fourth week. You're playing a game because numbers are so seductive. The trade off is that I like the people and the company.

Q: Are you afraid that some of the humor is too "L.A. specific?" Will people in the heartland, for instance, be able to relate to the need to eat at 5:30 or 11:30 in order to get a last minute reservation at a chic restaurant?

A: The further out of L.A. and New York, the worse the snobbery in restaurants. The more flambes on the table, the more complicated the dishes: white fish with the mustard sauce and kiwi and raspberry. The food is one of the most obvious changes in this town. It's as good as anywhere I've ever been.

Q: Rob Reiner was accused of treading on Woody Allen's turf when he portrayed New York City's upscale neurotics in "When Harry Met Sally . . . ." In the same way "L.A. Story" has been called a take off on (Allen's) "Manhattan." Does that bother you?

A: Not at all. I used to describe my movie as "Manhattan West" . . . if only. But it's not a lift from "Manhattan" at all only in that it's about a place.

Q: You've said that Woody Allen's work is characterized by the presence of a "radical" concept: In "Manhattan," his relationship with a 17 year old girl; in "Crimes and Misdemeanors," by Martin Landau's murder of his mistress. Is there a radical concept in your film?

A: There is within the humor, I think. The freeway shootout is kind of an edgy, scary bit. For me as a writer, at least, it's right on the edge of good taste. One of my purposes is to find a new place to go in comedy, somewhere that's just slightly different. This represents that an attempt to push it out just a bit. I don't think you can keep repeating yourself. Eventually it winds down and doesn't work anymore.

Q: Still, in some ways, the film's absurdist, non sequitur comedy and visual gags seem a throwback to your stand up days.

A: Not really. Stand up is unique unto itself, but I do think of this movie as a synthesis of everything I've ever done: surreal comedy, plain old dumb jokes, complicated metaphors. It's not a pastiche, but where I was always headed. I feel like it's the end of an era. This is my one chance at this kind of film, so I was very nervous as I was writing it.

Q: When you're creating a fantasy, how do you decide how far you can take the audience without losing them?

A: Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my (stand up) act, I learned that, in the first 10 minutes, I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie, it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. My 20 years in front of an audience, I would hope, gives me a sense of what works.

Q: Still, film and stand up are two very different media.

A: That's something I had to learn. I've found that any type of humor can be transferred to the screen, as long as there's clarity. The audience wants to know just what they're supposed to be feeling, when they're supposed to laugh. In the orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally . . . ," for instance, the big laugh came not when Meg Ryan's character was writhing in her seat at the restaurant, but when they flashed to the face of another customer . . . Her look said it all. Yes, we can hear it. Yes, we are shocked. Any device will work, as long as there's clarity. The audience doesn't want to feel tricked or outsmarted. When that happens, it's not because we're smarter than they ...  just that we're doing things badly.

Q: You've always been "off base." What gives you the confidence to be one of a kind?

A: It's partially stupidity, not knowing that it's supposed to be done any other way. When I first started doing my act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements except I dropped the poetry.

Q: Have you always thought of yourself as a "creator" rather than a performer?

A: Since the age of 19, anyhow. I was sitting in a college class one day and this revelation hit me like a sledge hammer: I knew that I could no longer get my stand up material from joke books, that it would never be unique unless I wrote it myself. And that was very depressing because I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

Q: You've gone on record as saying that movies are not art, but entertainment . . .

A: I knew it would be reduced to that. Movies definitely can be artistic but a lot of it is just movie making or product making. "The Killing Fields" is art. "Die Hard 2" is entertainment that really works.

Q: And "L.A. Story?"

A: I'd call it entertainment with high aspirations.

Q: What do you hope people take away?

A: I don't know what is actually said by the movie. I know what I intended. One of the big story points was: If you're in a relationship and it's not working, maybe you shouldn't blame yourself or her or him but just realize you're with the wrong person. Represented, of course, by Marilu Henner's character in the movie.

Q: Then in this age of analysis and angst, you think we're too introspective that sometimes it may just be an instance of "it's just not meant to be?"

A: Right. I always felt guilty in my relationships, like I was a really bad boyfriend or always making someone unhappy. And then I met Victoria and said "Oh." I knew, then, it wasn't me.

Q: Did you ever give any thought to directing this film yourself?

A: No. I like what a third man brings. A kind of oblique vision, seeing something in the material that you didn't know was there. As a comedian, I'm always listening to the audience. And in movies, sometimes the only audience you have is the producer and the director. I like having someone else's opinion, especially if you're on the same wavelength. Directing is not an ambition of mine.

Q: Do you miss stand up?

A: No. I feel like I did it and it came to the end. I couldn't get any bigger. I had nothing left to say. I quit. The collaborative nature of movies is not a frustration but a relief. I've always enjoyed writing comedy with someone else. It makes everything fun.

Q: You've received your share of praise from the critics most notably when "Roxanne" was released. Yet, when it comes to Academy Award time, your achievement was overlooked. Does Hollywood, in general, have a dismissive attitude toward comedy?

A: Comedy is perceived as a kind of stepchild of drama. The only time it is recognized, at least by the Academy, is when a serious actor does it. Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie", Kevin Kline in "A Fish Called Wanda." Both of those performances, by the way, were very deserving and I was glad to see Kevin win it. But, in the end, you can't be upset if someone doesn't give you an award . . . it's their game, after all. They are the players and I've won my share the New York Film Critics Best Actor Award for "All of Me" and the Los Angeles Film Critics Best Actor Award for "Roxanne." I was flabbergasted . . . and really honored. The academy, it seems, is a different beast. I can't figure it out, but I always go in expecting the worst. Anyhow, it's not something I give much thought to except at awards time.

Q: You've said that winning the WGA award for the "Roxanne" screenplay was more rewarding than any acting prize you've received. Do you still feel that way?

A: Yes, because writing is something I took up rather than anything I had an inclination toward. I like acting delivering someone else's message but writing is more of an accomplishment. I'm a little on edge now because, with comedy, there are more ways to go wrong. This movie needs strong critical response, a bit of a preamble, so people don't walk in cold. They need some hints as to how it works. My philosophy, taken from Carl Reiner, is that in the first moments of the movie, you establish the rules how far you can go. The montage upfront is intended to let people know we're going a little further than real.

Q: Are you working on anything now?

A: I'm writing a script that, unlike this one, is very story oriented an adaptation of a 19th Century novel, updated like "Roxanne." I can't be more specific because it's in the public domain.

Q: Any more acting roles on the horizon?

A: In March, I start a Larry Kasdan film called "Grand Canyon" starring Kevin Kline and Danny Glover. I have just a small part, playing a movie producer, of all things. It's not a comedy so I'm really thinking about it: I don't want to do a parody . . . it has to be real. After that, I'm doing a modernization of "Father of the Bride" directed by Charles Shyer for Disney and then a movie with Meg Ryan. Working title: "House Sitter." It will be directed by Frank Oz, who I've worked with twice before: on "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "Little Shop of Horrors."

Q: Do you have a sense, as a film is being shot, of whether or not it's working? So many times, you wonder just how it is that talented people can go so wrong.

A: When you're inside a movie, it's the most wonderful thing that ever happened. You're working with people you like. You feel like you're being funny. The overview is something completely different. Unfortunately, personal vision doesn't necessarily match up with that of public's.

Q: Do you feel like you have more riding on "L.A. Story" because you wrote the screenplay?  Do you regard it, in a way, as your child?

A: Probably. It's hard to admit, because I come from this WASP background, that I'm so involved and care about something that much, but it's true: there's an extra chill that sets in every time the movie starts to screen. Maybe because I don't want to go down in flaming disgrace. Writing is so blind, and there's no precedent for something like this. In the end, it's mostly about nerves and nerve.
 

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