E-mail a friendSusan Sarandon
original airdate February 11, 2008
A former Ford model, Susan Sarandon's acting career has included a wide range of films, including Thelma & Louise and the cult feature, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. However, it was the performance in Bull Durham that made hers a household name. She also won an Oscar for her role in Dead Man Walking. Sarandon is well known for her outspoken political activism and humanitarian efforts and has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since '91. She can next be seen in the HBO film, Bernard and Doris.
Actress discusses filming "Bernard and Doris" in three weeks without a lot of money. (2:02)
Susan Sarandon
Tavis: I am pleased to welcome Susan Sarandon to this program. The Oscar-winning actress has starred in many notable films, including, of course, "Joe," "Bull Durham," "Thelma and Louise," and most recently "Enchanted." Her latest project is the HBO movie "Bernard and Doris," which is based on the life of Doris Duke. The film runs throughout the month on HBO. Here now, a scene from "Bernard and Doris."
Susan Sarandon: She's such a bitch. (Laughter) Can you say that on TV?
Tavis: I think you just did.
Sarandon: Oh, okay.
Tavis: Great line. I was saying to Susan Sarandon when she came out that between "Shawshank Redemption" and "Thelma and Louise," you can catch her or Tim Robbins every night on some TV station, some TV network, and now here comes "Bernard and Doris" on HBO for the whole month. Nice to meet you.
Sarandon: Thank you, same here.
Tavis: How is Mr. Robbins? He's been here before. How's he doing?
Sarandon: He's good; he's excellent, thanks, yeah. Playing hockey, working here and there, whatever.
Tavis: Tell me about "Bernard and Doris."
Sarandon: What's funny about this is that my friend, Bob Balaban, had a script that wasn't quite there, and he said, "Are you interested in doing this?" She sounded like such an interesting person; I knew kind of the big parts of her life. And we only had $500,000 and three weeks to do it in, and I went to some of my friends - Joe Alisi, who did "The Wardrobe," who has gotten Academy Award nominations and won awards, and another friend of mine, Frankie Diego, and I said, "Why don't we do this together?"
I thought well, who would be good? Maybe Ray Fiennes would be good, and he called and he said, "Are you really going to do this?? And I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, the script's not right." I said, "I know, but we'll fix it." Then all of a sudden, we were doing it. (Laughter) And I sat down to rehearsal and I thought oh my god, what have I gotten these people into?
And they were all - the thing that kind of made it so much fun, besides the fact that it just went by like that and you couldn't really overthink it, was just the spirit of kind of, well, why not? Let's just all this courageous kind of can-do kind of thing that happened, and then it turned out all right. And so we were borrowing clothes and animals and jewelry, and Donna Karan gave us a whole bunch of stuff out of her treasure trove.
Because seriously, we had about $25, and there were people who knew what they were doing at the top of each kind of department, but then all these kids that didn't know what they were doing were helping, so the learning curve was very steep. And it was just amazing, but it was really fun for three weeks. For three months, we probably would have killed ourselves, but for three weeks, it was really fun. But now that I'm doing press, it was like oh, my god, how amazing that these people were ready to just go off the cliff with me like that.
Tavis: I'm laughing because you say it turned out okay. Well, with Susan Sarandon and Ray Fiennes and others, it's supposed to turn out okay. You're much too modest there. You guys did a wonderful job.
Sarandon: Well if it had really been awful, then no one would have bought it. So then I thought well, no one will see it if we can't do this.
Tavis: Back to your earlier point where you said you had, like, a half-million dollars to do this thing in three weeks, it's clear from anybody who knows your body of work and knows your corpus that this obviously was not a decision made because of the money attached to it.
Sarandon: (Laughs) No.
Tavis: Which raises the question -
Sarandon: I didn't even get to keep the wardrobe. (Laughter) Nothing.
Tavis: Which raises the question, then, at this point in your career how Susan Sarandon goes about making movie choices, given all that you've done.
Sarandon: Well, I don't like to repeat myself, and in this one I got to be the guy and I got to be kind of glamorous, which I haven't done. I've lately done a lot of films that haven't been the same part but they're the kind of part where they say in the review, "and the person that has the emotional core of the movie and holds it together is Susan Sarandon," which translates as the most boring part in the movie.
(Laughter) This one is really a front-foot kind of part. You're not reactive. He has kind of the reactive part. So I thought it would be great to work with him, and I live in New York and it was being done on my own turf, which is always the first thing I ask - how far do I have to go for how long kind of thing. So it fit in with the family, it was something that I'd never done before and that I knew I could either be really good or really bad. And I have to be frightened a little bit in order to really function, so that was good because it scared me.
Tavis: Give me more about that last point.
Sarandon: Well, if it's something that you know you can do easily, I tend to be a little bit unfocused. If it's something that I don't know necessarily what the right thing to do is but I know what the traps would be, in this one, it easily could have been completely over - well, it might be over the top, I don't know, but it could have been really - he's so dignified and so sweet, and I'm always attracted to love stories.
And I thought this was such a great love story, kind of a funny foot meets a funny shoe love story, and I thought it was really funny. I always think everything is really funny, but I was hoping that other people would think it was really funny. And so I knew that we could go wrong in a lot of ways, so that made me pay attention.
Tavis: What do you take away from a project like this about the life of Doris Duke? You said earlier you knew some of the big stuff about her.
Sarandon: For me, who knows her motives? What I thought was amazing about this story was these two very damaged people - she has enough money to completely indulge all of her addictions and she was raised in such an isolated way, she just had a terrible time trying to relate to people or whatever.
And then you get this other guy that's from a completely damaged background also, but in a very completely different way, and for some reason they make this brave choice to befriend each other and to reach out to each other. And try as she might, it never really actually becomes carnal, but she does try. And still, they're there for each other. I just think that's so moving, because for me it's always about whether or not you're going to be intimate with another person.
It doesn't matter the gender, the color, the age, whatever the situation, it's really have you decided to ever be intimate with another human being, and if you do, then why not this person? So I like that because I really love films that encourage people to be the protagonist in their own life, and they find each other through this strange kind of dysfunction.
What family isn't dysfunctional? I don't know. But theirs definitely was, and it's also a glimpse into this world that you don't get to see too much. And one of the things I like about the film is that sometimes when you're seeing films that are about people that are very wealthy, everyone seems like they're afraid to sit down.
I felt that in this we really seemed like we lived there and it's this kind of strange, empty life, but very eccentric life. Most of it's based on the details of her life. Nobody knows what actually the dialogue was, of course, except for a few things here and there.
Tavis: How does doing something - before I move on, ask a couple of questions - how does being forced to do something in three weeks challenge, sharpen your skill set?
Sarandon: Well I'm an actress, so I'm sitting in the back seat saying, "Oh, yeah, let's go here, let's go there." I'm not driving to the destination. So for me, it's liberating, in a sense. You just make suggestions, they're taken or they're not taken. We got to the set one day and there were Christmas trees in the room we were supposed to be filming in because it was now time for the Christmas tour in the mansion.
So I said, "Okay, let's do it on the stairs. Let's do the scene on the - let's combine those two scenes and do them on the stairs." And luckily Bob Balaban, the director, was either crazy enough or had no alternative and he went with a lot of these suggestions.
And because it makes you think on your feet, something great happens when you can't take out the wall, when you don't have three months to have everybody tell you what they think it should be because also when you do a film without a lot of money, the amount of interference increases exponentially with how much money they give you.
So if you're doing a $100 million film, there's like 20 people behind the monitor. I don't even know if we had a monitor, actually. (Laughter) But we definitely didn't have 20 people watching. We didn't even have a still photographer.
Tavis: Shifting gears very dramatically here, and quickly, when I saw that you were going to come on the show I said, "Well, I'll get a chance to do a little politics with her and talk about John Edwards."
Sarandon: Oh, oh. Well, how about that the -
Tavis: You were an Edwards supporter.
Sarandon: I was an Edwards supporter, still am an Edwards supporter. I think he's just so authentic and such a fighter and really the only person who's never taken any PAC money or lobby money. And then when he didn't have the means to continue, I love the way everybody in all the columns and on TV was like "Oh, now who's going to take over for John Edwards, the only person who was really working for the poor? The only person who's been doing this." I thought, why couldn't they -
Tavis: Ask that question then?
Sarandon: Why couldn't they give him time? He got, I think, 7 percent of coverage. So it also broke my heart because we're living with a system that you have to have so much money for such a long period of time, and where there's only five people that are deciding who sees what. In other countries they give all the candidates the same amount, and that's it.
Tavis: So what do you do now?
Sarandon: Well, I'm going to back Obama. But I hope - I think that he, as a symbol, has really excited people, and he's definitely confusing to everyone who really hates America for hating Muslims because a name like Obama and a Black man, they're probably going to go "Oh, wait a minute - what?" It's kind of like when you're out on the line for freedom to have an abortion and you're incredibly pregnant. They just can't quite figure it out.
So I think he definitely has convinced people that he stands for change and for hope, and I can't wait to see what he stands for.
Tavis: Well, speaking of can't wait to see, a lot of you I'm sure now can't wait to see "Bernard and Doris" on HBO all month. Susan, nice to meet you.
Sarandon: Thank you, nice to be here.
Tavis: Glad to have you here.
Sarandon: Thanks a lot.
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