Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: FRIDAY, October 20, 1995 TAG: 9510200003 SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: JAY CARR THE BOSTON GLOBE DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
Not that Moore, perched on a Park Avenue hotel's sofa, wearing pressed blue jeans and black satin blouse, is feeling that strong, she says, much less heroic.
The reason is that she's caught in something of an endgame. The scarlet letter of the title is A, for adultery, for which Hester is stigmatized. Lately, though, Moore has found that the scarlet letter is R, for revisionism. She's been hearing demi-semi-quavers of reaction to the fact that director Roland Joffe and screenwriter Douglas Day Stewart don't end things on the scaffold the way Hawthorne did. Moore played a role in shaping the script, she says, but essentially she played what Joffe came to her with - a script he refers to as freely adapted. ``It kind of feels like a no-brainer, everyone jumping on the ending,'' Moore says, ``because it's an easy thing to compare. But my feeling is that the movie needs to be looked at as a whole. Because people become so literal that they miss the heart and flow of the story. To make a long story short, I support the ending.''
Typical Moore - plunging in with both feet, answering questions carefully but forthrightly, pale skin setting off black eyes looking unflinchingly into those of her questioner. Ultimately, the big question will be whether Moore can fill the movie's strong central role with enough heartfelt presence and appeal to carry it. That strength thing again.
Screenwriter Stewart, interviewed separately, says that while Hester did what she did for love, he did what he did for accessibility. Joffe added a back story, a murderer and material about the Puritans' uneasy relationship with the native tribes before trekking off to Canada to film it. After Moore came aboard, and he sat down with her one-on-one, says Stewart, ``We worked on what she felt was a tone of strength that was missing from the first take.''
Hester's strength is what has made this story irresistible to Hollywood and to actresses. Lillian Gish played her in the 1926 version that is the most famous of a number of silent treatments; Colleen Moore starred in the first sound version, in 1934. Even Wim Wenders filmed a remake in 1973, starring Senta Berger.
Asked how she'd respond to suggestions that the new script was tailored to suit her, Moore says, ``I'd say they're full of [obscenity].'' One thing she did want, Moore adds, was more ``thee''s and ``thou''s, especially between Hester and the character of Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, played by Gary Oldman. ``When he comes and expresses his love to me at the fence and says, `God help me, I love thee,' I just said there's something not as romantic about saying `God help me, I love you.' I mean saying, `I love thee,' I was like, you know, there's something really moving and beautiful about that.''
``But the role, not just for Hester but for all women, is to break down barriers, stereotypical barriers. I see certain parallels in the way we want to judge people and place restrictions on people today, whether it's based on our fear or our inability to control a situation, or the elements of hypocrisy. Hester is branded not just because of her adulterous behavior. She's actually being branded because they fear the power of her voice, the power of what she might communicate to other women, which is that women have something to say.
``I think I just have to be as much of a woman as I can possibly be, and not be a man,'' says Moore in her soldiering-through mode, obviously still sensitive to detractors nicknaming her ``Gimme Moore.'' ``You know, when women ask for something, they're being demanding and bitchy, whereas if men ask for something, they're just being men. I think I have definitely fallen prey to an agenda that started with a couple of Vanity Fair articles. But the good news is that truth is always revealed. My passion and my desire to do good, quality work drives me to be a perfectionist. And I take strong positions. I give strong opinions. I stay focused on my greater priorities, which is just doing the work I enjoy and living my life with my family and trying to allow what's written to just blend into the background. In the end, you do have only to get in touch with yourself and your own beliefs of who you think you are.''
Moore reflects that she might have been drawn to the next film we'll see her in - ``Now and Then,'' which opens today - because its story of four girls growing up in Indiana in 1970, staying friends into adulthood, represents an idealized childhood she never had. ``I moved so much I only remember one or two people,'' she says. ``I went with Bruce to his 20-year high school reunion and there were people there that he was in second grade with, which is a completely foreign concept to me.'' Although there's a strong mothering element to Hester in ``The Scarlet Letter,'' and although her next two films - ``The Juror'' and ``Striptease'' - have her playing mothers, Moore doesn't literally play a mom in ``Now and Then.'' Still, she mothered the entire project, producing it, casting it (with Rosie O'Donnell, Melanie Griffith and Rita Wilson) and hiring women to work behind the camera. Ironically, Moore has for several years been estranged from her own mother.
In ``The Juror,'' Moore plays a single mother threatened by the mob if she doesn't go their way on jury duty. In ``Striptease'' - which Moore says bears no resemblance to ``Showgirls'' and has been supported by copious research at strip clubs - she plays a mother who turns stripper to pay legal bills in a custody fight with her ex. When one stripper told her of getting through each night by immersing herself in a private world and shutting out her surroundings, it struck a sympathetic chord, Moore says. As a child, Moore says, she lost herself playing with dolls. The result is that she now has a museum-quality collection. ``I have a real sense of play and a strong childlike quality,'' she says. ``I can spend hours at Toys `R' Us, but my doll collection is a very serious art collection.
``No disrespect to Barbie, but we are not talking Barbie. My dolls show different human emotions, because the dolls are of people. Sometimes children, sometimes old characters, men and women alike. The pieces I tend to collect you cannot just call dolls. They're contemporary-art doll sculptures, and in a small package you can communicate a lot because the dolls communicate through their body language as well. I have always been attracted to figures and faces in art. I like nudes in that same way. I like photographs of nudes.'' She still gets reaction, she says, from that now-famous magazine cover for which she posed naked and pregnant with the first of the three daughters she has had with Willis, whom she met at a screening in 1987.
``I don't know what made it click,'' she says of their relationship. ``It was a response. It's just how he was with me and how I was with him that made it right. He was just very open and embracing and available and accessible, and many people aren't. At least that's what I saw. There's a deeper comfort than just, say, `Oh, we're very comfortable with each other.' We feel natural together and I feel very lucky. Then we discovered that children really teach you how to love and be loved. Because they have no fear about loving. They're a joy. Every once in a while I'll say to my husband, `Isn't it funny that we're still together?' Because it is, you know? It's eight years for us, and time has really gone by, and we've created a really full life for ourselves. I think we really each made bold commitments. It's not like we're both playing here.''
by CNB