It was a tough shoot. It was tougher for Tony than for me. I had a couple of things going for me that helped. Especially because of that carefree, nutty character I was played. The bases (unlike Tony's character) of my character was not that he had to act. Tony caused things to happen. I reacted to everything with never a though in my head. It was instinctive. I just did it... The thought that maybe I was going to be shot down by a machine gun. My first reaction was, 'My God, they're going to see in the morgue dressedlike a woman and I'm going to die of mortification!' This is a guy that doesn't stop to think he just does things, automatically. That kind of drive and energy and spirit was important to me.
Tony had a lot of trouble in the second half of the film because of Marilyn's troubles. In my opinion, Marilyn was never temperamental. She was very troubled. The result could interpreted as temperament. She would (even though she was fully dressed and made-up) make everyone wait while she just sat in her dressing room, because she could not face the camera. That's a problem. That's someone that was disturbed... She wanted to go on, but as she told me this one day, 'God I want to do it. But I can-not do it. I just can't come out." This would drive Billy and Tony crazy. I was spared. I didn't have the scenes with her. I was off with Joe E Brown. But poor Tony was stuck with long scenes with her. But the genius of Billy's writing was that he kept my character alive till the very end with scenes that were absolutely brilliant...
The, 'I'm engaged scene ' is only about a page and a half. It seems like five minutes. It is a brilliantly written and directed... I knew what a great scene it was. But in my mind, the actor's mind, I had worked out, how I would play the scene. My scene was totally different in my mind than what Billy had in his mind.
Now the next day, I was ready with my scene, as I walked on the set he hands these two maracas and said, "Here start working with them, because all through the scene you are going to use them," I said uuh-hum. I thought he had lost his mind.
 |
