by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 28
It was back to the parking lot for my latest interview with Renee. The wind was blowing or we would have been under the umbrellas at a nearby Coffee Bean. Instead, we took refuge in my car and then hers.
Walking over to the car, Renee said, “I wanted to address that short film called Enter fans were reading about on the web. It was a little fun thing I did for a friend. The guy’s acting class encouraged them to make little films and they were going to put them on as a film festival in their class. But it was never meant to be seen by anyone else commercially at all,” Renee said, laughing. “It was just him playing around with a camera. I didn't do a whole lot. just said a couple things.”
We settled down in my car. Renee was headed for her acting class - it was improv night. Which was a perfect lead-in to our conversation about a film she had done for a friend the previous weekend.
“You were just in San Francisco?” I asked.
“I went to do a short film for Eric Escobar, a friend of mine, who I met at the Austin Film Festival two years ago,” Renee began. “We wanted to work together. That’s how it all started. And then he created the story of this woman for me. This was his project. So I've known about it for a long time. We filmed it last weekend. It's the story of a National Guardsman, Meg, who’s a single mother of two children and gets called to go to the Iraqi war. But she's in a bind because she has no one to take care of her children. It’s ten minutes of a slice of her life in the morning of getting her children ready for the day.
“We talked about this before and you had said that she was kind of conned into the National Guard?” I queried.
“I wouldn't say she was conned into it,” Renee explained. “Eric wanted to have her part of the economic draft. Someone who needed the money to go to school or just to live on. She has no help and is trying to support two children on her own so she joins the National Guard. But she makes a compromise on her Emergency Family Plan when she puts her mother down as the caretaker of her children. In fact, her mother is really messed up and not someone who's able to take care of kids. And the family life is messed up as well. She doesn't want to leave her children in a situation that's unhealthy which means the mother’s not an option. That comes up in the film, how she lied about that. And now the Guard is saying, ‘This is what you put on the paper. You signed up. You're going to Iraq or you're going to jail.’”
“That's some choice,” I responded. “And the film is about solving this problem?”
“The film is a ten-minute series of phone calls,” Renee continued. “Meg calling other people trying to find out, first, if she is going and then what to do about her children.”
“She's trying to find a guardian?” I asked.
“Yes. Eric's been doing a lot of research on this with the National Guard. He said the way they usually find out they're being deployed, even now, is that a rumor starts. Someone hears about it from someone else and then it spreads like wildfire before they actually get the notice from their commanding - it's not a commanding officer, but I forgot the terms. The terminology amazed me! I was like, ‘Oh my God, it's a whole other world!’ Eric wanted to have the rumor mill be part of this story.
“That's how the film starts. Meg gets a phone call from a friend who says she heard it from another guy. She calls the other guy. He really doesn't know anything. Then she calls her first sergeant, who’s not around. Then she calls the person above her. Finally she gets the right person and they say, ‘Yes, we are going. You have a week to sort out everything.’ She ends up calling her mother - having to ask her mother to take the kids,” Renee laughed.
“Now the catch to this is. there is no…” I began
“... there is no script!” she chimed in. “The whole thing was improv. The way we prepared for this is Eric came down to Los Angeles one weekend and we worked with other actors from my acting class to establish relationships through improvisational work. You have circumstances that you know and you go from there. We did it in LA and then in San Francisco the day before filming. Eric used the same cast that helped me in San Francisco to be on the other end of the phone.”
“Are you the only person on camera?” I asked.
“My children are there,” Renee burst out laughing. “My children. Oh my God! My children.” It cracked her up that she was still referring to them that way instead of as the character's children. “It was tough,” she continued. “Cuz Meg is dysfunctional. She’s a dysfunctional mother. And there's a lot of cussing. I had a pretty good idea of who she is because we had done enough improving around her. All of our improvisational work had been in her back story and how she got to this point. I knew she had one father for each child. I knew the relationship with the mother, the stepfather.”
“Does all that stuff come into the story - the fact that there's two different fathers for the kids - or is that just stuff that’s in your head to play the character?” I asked, wondering how an actor uses a character’s back story.
Renee thought for a moment. “You know. I don’t remember! Because every phone call, during the improvising, was different - even if it was to the same person, I ad-libbed a little bit differently. I can’t remember what actually came out. But I knew her story. I know she calls the second father who's around, but it turns out he's stoned. She calls him on that, ‘When are you gonna grow up and take care of your son?’ It was really fun for me. Because the character is so dysfunctional and yet she's so judgmental of other people, you know what I mean? That was interesting.”
“And judgmental, according to our last interview, is something you're trying not to be,” I reminded her.
“Yeah!” she said cheerily. “So it's really good! That’s what I'm enjoying. I'm learning about myself. The more I learn about what I do, they're like flags that come up in my life. It's character traits I can chose in a character. Does that make sense? It's like when you know your accent, it's very clear to you. You can then choose not to use it. Do you know? Like a Southern accent, they have the flat ‘a’s,” she said and then softly drawled the word “can't” as an example. “Once you know it, you know how to change it,” she explained. “I chose to make her judgmental, she blames everybody and yet she made a pretty big mistake,” Renee chuckled.
“Is she like some politicians, no responsibility for her decisions?” I said.
“She doesn't want to take responsibility,” she agreed. “And that was another thing - I thought this film was going to be more political than it ended up being. Because I know Eric has certain political beliefs and I thought he was going to bring them into the film. But it ended up being his choice to make it about this woman and her relationships and a situation that many people get into.”
“How old is she? Where did it take place?” I queried.
“She's my age?” Renee laughed and I grinned ruefully as she teased me. “The idea is that she fell in love with a guy in the National Guard, they got married, had a baby, got divorced. Then later on she had another child to a different guy, but not a guy she married. Her daughter is ten years old and the little boy is three. It takes place in Oakland. And we do deal with that. We deal with how her mother's a racist and doesn't want to come and stay in Meg's house because it's in a certain area of town she doesn't go into. She calls her mom a racist!” Renee said with a bit of awe in her laughter. “Eric wanted to cover everything!”
“Whoa!” I said.
“I know, it's a lot of stuff. Sharon's going, ‘Oh my God!’” Renee laughed as she watched my reaction.
I couldn't wait until we were done talking to ask, “Are we gonna get to see this film? This is a SAG film, yes?” I asked.
“I don't know. Yes, it's SAG,” she confirmed. "I'll have to ask Eric if he’d mind showing it at a convention. It depends on what he wants to do with it. It was made to submit to festivals.”
“I'll make a note to keep in touch with you about that,” I said.
“I was watching Michael Caine in Inside the Actor's Studio and he talked about working at the Guthrie Theatre,” I began. “He was sitting on the edge of the stage, didn't have any dialogue or any movement at that moment in the play and the director said to him, ‘What are you doing?’ Michael said, ‘I'm not doing anything cuz I have no dialogue and no movement.’”
Renee burst out laughing.
I continued, “The director said, ‘Your head is filled with things to say and you are choosing not to say them.’”
Renee’s eyes lit up. “Oh that's great!! What great direction!”
“So that’s why I was wondering, when you have all this stuff about a character in your head and you start to improv…”
“...Did I choose not to say something?” she jumped in. “Yeah, there was some of that. Depended on who I was talking to. Especially with the mother which was the last conversation and the most heated. I remember choosing to call her a racist. I remember choosing not to go into why. Not using some of the back story the actress who played my mother and I learned in our day of working together. There were a lot of things I chose not to even bring up, which is typical of families, you know?” she laughed. “You know what I mean, like, ‘Oh, I'm not going to address that. I'll skirt around that issue.’” She chuckled again.
“Did you talk to any women in the National Guard?” I queried.
“I did,” she said, nodding her head. “I spoke to two women. One lady teaches at a military school and has a daughter who’s twelve. She went to the Gulf war when her daughter was two months old. She was in a situation similar to my character's. She had to go. Single mom, had to leave her baby. When she came back a year later, her child didn't even know her. It took her a long time to develop the bond with her child again. The other was a lady who had just came back from the Iraqi war. She explained how horrible it is and how, without getting into politics, what a mess we created. It is interesting because she's a National Guard person, you know, but she’s pretty angry about the whole thing.”
“The people playing opposite you, where are they?” I asked.
“They were in another room using cell phones,” Renee explained.
“How do you work on an improv? How many takes do you get?” I asked, trying to picture how this works.
“We had about 7 to 9 takes for every call. We just played, really. I wouldn't say we went into a whole lot of depth in expanding the improvs to make them different each time. It was mostly just my winging it. I don't know what to expect, that's what's interesting. There are so many different ways to cut it. You could cut it where she's really angry because there are definitely points where I was angry. Or where she's just messed up. I don't know what Eric’s going to do with it.”
“And the people on the other end of the phone are improving at the same time?” I queried.
“Yes,” Renee answered. “But they had script guides in what they needed to address with me.”
“Which were generated during the rehearsal sessions?” I continued.
“Right. The day before we shot the movie,” she explained. “Then Eric wrote them up that night and gave them to the actors the next day. Just to remind them.”
“Have you done a lot of improv work?” I asked.
“I just started it back in November in this acting class. We do the improvs on scenes we’re working on to flesh out a character. For instance, I just finished a scene from Laundry and Bourbon.”
“That's a real play?” I chuckled.
“Yeah,” Renee said laughing. “The actress and I would improv scenes like when they were in high school together. We improved going out shopping and we actually went out shopping, which is improv in character. You make it up as you go.”
“But Eric's movie - this was the first time you’d done an extensive improv?” I queried.
Renee laughed again. “On camera!”
“How did you feel about it? And have you seen any of the footage?” I asked.
“I haven't seen any of the footage yet,” she said and I could hear the curiousity in her voice. “I wished that we had. Eric is new as a director. I wish he had had the experience of seeing what I, as the actor, was addressing and getting and yet asking me to go into other areas of my emotions or other areas of the story and relationships. Just to make the dialogue a little more diverse and interesting.”
“Was that something you could feel after you'd done a take?” I inquired.
“I would feel inadequate. But that's just me knowing I could do more and I didn't know how to do more. Me feeling I haven't completely fulfilled everything in this moment, but I don’t know why,” Renee explained.
“There are directors who would latch on to something and be able to feed you that way?” I asked.
“Yeah. If I was a director. I would say, ‘Okay, you got the resentment with the mother. I got you blaming her. I got all that. What about you really needing her help and having no one to turn to? Or what about the shame of having to ask her for help?’ You know what I mean?” Renee said eagerly. “So many different little things you can bring in and heighten it all. That's what I wished we had done, but I didn’t know at the time. I'm just in that shadowy place with this woman. It was just like, ‘Oh my gosh! She's horrible!’ And still feeling inadequate but I didn't know why.”
“It's funny, you can think of these extra points now, but, as an actor, it's hard to bring them up at the moment,” I said.
“Yeah,” Renee agreed. “It's also hard in an improv because the other actors have story points to bring up and I found that they would say some of the same things over and over again, even during each take. So my reaction became almost the same. It almost became scripted. As an actress, I wanted to break it up and explore. Because that's what's great about an improv, you can do anything.”
“You liked this cussing lady?” I teased. “I wonder if this interview will be in the same kit where we have you giving the finger on camera?”
“What was I doing that for!” Renee said, her eyebrows heading for the top of my car.
“You were describing your experience with road rage when we did the interview with Lucy during the DVD interviews. And you said to me, ‘Can I show what I did, Sharon?’” I laughed. “You were talking to Lucy and you said, ‘So I went like this to him in my rear view mirror,’ and you made the one-fingered salute.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Renee burst out laughing as she remembered.
“And you did it three times,” I told her, wagging my finger in front of her face.
“No!” Renee said, rolling with laughter.
“So we're having a debate,” I continued with mock seriousness, “do we show it once, twice, all three times? Do we cover the finger in a black band?”
“That would be funny,” Renee said, wiping her eyes and getting back to my original question. “Did I like her? You know, I wish I hadn't cussed as much as I did. It was my not knowing what to say. Not having a script. So more profanity came out. Where if I'd had something else to explore, I would have known what to do. I kind of felt I was treading over ground I'd covered. I’m hoping he can cut a lot of it out.”
“Do you cuss much in real life?” I said, hoping it wasn't an offensive question. Hmm, why am I feeling this way?
“Occasionally,” she said easily.
“Cuz I don't notice it much with you. I kind of tone myself down when I'm around you,” I said, realizing that was true as I was saying it.
“Do you really! I see that in so many people. You’re not the only one. It really cracks me up,” Renee smiled.
“Other people have told you that or you can…” I began.
“No, I can sense it,” Renee chimed in. “I can just sense it. I haven't sensed it from you, though, that surprises me. There are certain people, I can tell, they're on their best behavior around me,” Renee bubbled with laughter.
“I wouldn't say I'm on my best behavior, but I watch my language,” I said with a grin.
“That cracks me up. That's so funny!” she chuckled. “And I'm the same, though, which is maybe why people do that to me. I know when I cuss around certain people that don’t cuss. I feel I have to apologize. I went through a period where I tried not to and I'm starting to let that go. You know what, that's way too hard.” She paused. “I'm kidding,” she added. “I try to be careful around Miles. There are certain words I say more than others. But I don’t say f*** a whole lot. Like I don't say, ‘Oh the f****** dah dah dah.’ We have a lot of friends that do. But I'll say it when I'm really angry or really scared which is interesting. Like, on the Rockford Files - did I ever tell you that story?”
Ahh, James Garner storytime. “No,” I said eagerly, wondering what this would have to do with cussing.
Renee began, “We were filming on the streets in LA and James Garner was driving with me in the passenger seat. This guy ran out in front of us and we actually hit him! He was okay, but still, we hit a person! It was a guy trying to run from the cops. A motorcycle escort was in front of us, they saw him and said he was an illegal alien who was intoxicated. I was so scared, when it happened I yelled out, ‘F***!’ That’s all I said. James Garner got out to see if the guy was okay, while I'm like, ‘F***********!’ in the car.”
“What did James Garner say?” I said, astounded.
“Nothing,” Renee answered.
“What did he do?”
“He sat there and I kept going, ‘F**********!’” She burst out laughing.
I pictured the young, innocent looking Renee sitting in the car, frozen with a cuss word on her lips. It was an incongruous image. Oh well, that's Hollywood. Ever onward with the interview.
“Meg seems like an angry person. Do you allow yourself to feel anger in real life?” I asked.
“Occasionally, not as much as I should, yeah, not as much as I should,” she said, thinking out loud. “It's funny, cuz when I say, ‘not as much as I should,’ it's because it's definitely something I'm working on. Which was fun and not so fun with this character. I've dealt with anger in life and in acting, but this character was darker than anyone I've played before because she's not a good mother. She's just not. And she doesn't want to be there. I didn't like being in that skin, it felt bad.”
“Was she using the children as a reason to get out of going to Iraq or did she really not want to leave them?” I asked.
“She didn't want to leave the children,” Renee stated. “But she was very unhappy. And that did not feel good. She’s just coping, she was very angry. It was pretty easy for me to tap into the cuss words. Eric was surprised about that. He was really wondering if I could pull it off. But when he came to LA and started improving, it was very easy for me to go there. I just need to allow it more,” she laughed.
I decided to bring up the new movie Renee was about to begin filming for the Sci Fi channel. “We talked recently about Josh Becker not thinking of you for the woman astronaut in Alien Apocalypse because he still thinks of you as a young 20-year-old. And you said, ‘Oh my god, he knows me and he still thinks of me that way!’ So you're trying to make people see you as older?” I queried.
“Not really, it's more for my own well-being,” she answered.
“Wanting to have people in the industry think of you more as an adult than the twenty-something who left Hollywood for New Zealand almost ten years ago?” I asked.
“Not even that. What's funny is I really don't care. Which is great, you know what I mean?” Renee laughed. “And that's new for me - to not care. That’s where the anger comes out. Not that I'm angry about it, but that if I do get angry, so what? It's not like I'm going to hurt anybody. And that's new for me. So when I say I should address the anger more, it's like, if I'm angry, so what? You know?” she said. “But what did that have to do with Josh?”
“I was doing a segue into the fact that you’re heading to Bulgaria,” I answered. “For the movie called…”
“Alien Apocalypse. By the way, Xenophobia is not gonna happen. Put that out there for everybody to know. It completely fell through, but I'm really happy to be doing this project with Bruce and Josh. Bruce plays a doctor astronaut and I play a girl who ends up being his girlfriend. And that's one of the reasons I liked it. I liked the idea of playing someone's love interest and it being a guy!” Renee burst into peals of laughter.
Me - silence - looking at Renee. Then, “You know, it took a minute for that to register,” I said, laughing.
“Seriously. I feel like I've already played a love interest, but I wanted to play the love interest of a man,” Renee went on. “And I thought that would be fun. And Bruce is so much fun to work with. Those are the two things that drew me to the part. Josh is directing it. And Josh is always fun too.”
“For the Xena fans who don't know. Josh directed some Xena episodes,” I stated.
“He's done heaps of Xena,” Renee said. “He wants to play this very straight. And, typically, when I've worked with Josh, it's all about comedy. So I'm intrigued to see how this manifests itself and what the tone is going to be. I really won't know until we start working on it. He’s so smart and so interesting, he really is. He's always reading fascinating books. You seemed surprised, it's funny, I'm going to be playing Bruce's love interest.”
“There's a bit of an age difference,” I said cautiously. “Do you think you'll play the love interest opposite a man any different than you did a love interest opposite a woman?”
Renee laughed. “You know, it's all about chemistry. And Lucy and I definitely had chemistry. I have that with Bruce, too, because I enjoy working with him and I enjoy him as a person and those two things come across on screen. If the characters flirt, it's gonna work because we already like each other. That’s what worked with Lucy and I. We liked working together and we liked each other, so then you can read whatever you want into that. Do you know what I mean?”
Sharon (raising her eyebrows).
“No, no!” Renee laughed.
“I’m teasing you,” I said.
“I know,” Renee laughed again.
“I couldn’t resist,” I said.
“The chemistry was on camera and it'll be there with Bruce. That's what I was trying to say,” Renee said with an evil chuckle. “What time do you have? I should go put more money in the meter.”
We take to the street, continuing the interview as we walk. I don’t want to waste a minute of my time with her.
“Now, I said to you that Josh hadn't thought of you for this character initially. Were you aware of that?” I asked.
“I had no idea,” she answered. “I didn't even know that Lucy turned it down. I'm glad it worked out because it's gonna be fun for me.”
“So, Josh hasn’t talked to you about the fact that he didn't initially envision you in the part?” I queried. “I'll have to ask him, ‘What did it take for you to see Renee as a grownup?’”
“Actually, it came through Rob Tapert,” Renee explained. “Rob said they were doing this film and he wanted me to send my picture to Josh and Bruce because Rob said they kept talking about me, but thought I was too young for the part and Rob thought I was perfect. So, I did, not really knowing what the heck anything was about and next thing I knew…”
“...there you were with Bruce,” I chimed in.
“Yeah,” she said.
“At our last convention, Katherine Fugate talked about how difficult it is for women writers, directors. Have you got any input from your experiences?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “It's funny, because I think it’s getting a little easier in that more and more women are becoming more prominent in so many different careers. I really don't know what to say because it hasn't affected me either way yet. I haven’t gotten to the point where I can choose a production company to help me co-produce something. I think if I could, it would come down to who’s the most qualified, be it man or woman. Although I would prefer to work with women. It comes down to who's the best match for a project.”
“If you were producing a movie,” I began, “you’re not going to get as many women applying as men simply because there aren't as many women who have the experience. They've been shut out for so long.”
“But if there are two people who are perfectly capable of handling the position, I would choose a woman over a man,” Renee stated.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because women talk to each other differently. It’s not about sex - hierarchy and sex,” she explained. “Do you know what I mean. You're not objectified. I can learn from everyone, but I want to be a woman who's successful in my career which is acting and producing. I want to be able to talk to other women who have gone through sexual discrimination. It helps to talk to women because it's definitely harder. It’s a boy's club. I just said that it's definitely harder and I don't really even know what I'm talking about. But it seems like it would be,” she laughed.
“Meryl Streep, at an awards banquet not too long ago, said how hard it was for her to find parts,” I said feeling the same amazement I did when I first heard her say that. “And you figure this is one of the finest women actors in the country and she's struggling!”
“Yeah. It's like that for everybody,” Renee commiserated. “I just heard about other well-known actresses I think are great that are having to audition for parts. It's crazy!”
Gotta fill you in on what's happening at this point. We get to Renee’s car which is parked outside the building where she takes her acting class. We're sitting inside and her fellow students are walking past us. I think we either looked like a drug deal - this is LA after all - or maybe I was wiring her for a sting operation!
Time for the last question. I always have a list, but it also pays to listen during an interview.
“You said it would be nice to play a love interest with a man,” I began.
“Yes,” Renee answered slowly, laughing, as if she's wondering where I'm going with this.
“Did you ever, when you were doing Xena, think of it as a love interest between those two characters?” I continued.
“You know, I didn't at the time, but, looking back on it, obviously there was subtext,” she stated.
“But I never played it like that at all. Isn’t that funny? It's funny that it came across cuz I never played it. Which is interesting, it’s interesting,” she laughed.