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F. Murray's Italian Love Affair
Twenty years after F. Murray Abraham first discovered the joys of working in Italy, the actor basks in the boundless energy of Lina Wertmuller and the genuine compassion of his most recent co-star, Sophia Loren.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
By Pam Grady
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Jemal Countess/Wireimage.com
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Fahrid Murray Abraham
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The voice on the other end of the telephone is instantly recognizable, offering up a crisp diction and cadence that could only belong to Amadeus' Salieri. It is F. Murray Abraham, speaking with FilmStew in advance of his visit to San Francisco this weekend for the world premiere of his latest film, Too Much Romance… It's Time for Stuffed Peppers, which opens the city's eight-day long New Italian Cinema Festival on November 14th.
What's really great about his voice is the warmth and humor in it. He doesn't sound like a bored or wary actor dispensing with publicity chores. Instead, he is looking forward to the trip west and his first look at his newest cinematic enterprise.
In the film, legendary director Lina Wertmuller's first in three years, Abraham plays Jeffrey, a one-time English journalist who gave it up and became a fisherman along Italy's Amalfi coast, all for the love of his bride Maria (Sophia Loren). But it's many years later, the kids are grown and gone and Jeffrey lives on his boat, rarely venturing home. Alone and lonely, Maria, who has devoted her life to her family, feels like a failure. But when she throws a party celebrating her mother's name day, the event lures her loved ones back home and offers her perhaps the opportunity to find the resolve to bring this fractured bunch together.
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Gossip.it
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Director Lina Wertmuller
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Abraham's long professional association with Italy began over 20 years ago when he made the 1982 miniseries Marco Polo. It started, he recalls, as sort of a fluke when the series' Italian producers saw his photo in the Academy’s Players' Guide. He worked on the project for nearly a year, shooting in China in the years before that country opened itself up to the West, Mongolia, and other locations along the explorer's route, starting off where Polo did in Venice.
"It was a great break for me,” recalls the 65 year-old actor, whose first name Fahrid springs from the Syrian lineage of his father. “From that, through those people I worked with, we got along so well. The business is a small business and your reputation spreads quickly. They knew I was reliable and easy to work with and a decent actor, so I started to work there pretty regularly."
Abraham has known Wertmuller for over a decade and figured they would eventually make a film together; it was only a matter of finding a project that was right for both of them and the actor says he is delighted that Wertmuller took the initiative to ensure that would happen. "What she did was write this script around Sophia and me. It was a nice compliment.”
The actor was also grateful for the high quality of Wertmuller's writing. “Sometimes what you have is a problem with the translations,” he says. “Usually, that's true of any script whether it's translated or not. A good piece of script is really hard to find."
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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Co-star Sophia Loren
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"Lina wrote this one herself, as she does all her films,” Abraham continues. “The difference between her and some of the other people is she is from the theater and she writes theatrically and well. I am basically from the theater. If I'm not doing a film, I'm usually on stage. I communicate with that theatricality. I really love it.”
“I think it's a break from naturalism. Although this is a naturalistic film, there is a great dramatic flair. That's because of her. I really responded to it. I think it's terrific."
Once on set, Abraham found collaborating with the 78-year-old director to be a joyful experience. "She's in her 70s and she just pushes, six days a week, 14 hours a day, but she's inspired,” he marvels. “She keeps saying, 'Oh, no, change this! Try this! Do this! Do this! Try this!' She improvises. She's got the courage of a lion.'"
The drama also introduced Abraham to a new colleague as well in Loren, an experience he hopes to repeat. "I've worked with some of the biggest stars in the world and if everyone of them was as easy to get along with Sophia, it would be a much nicer business.”
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Warner Home Video
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Abraham as Salieri
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It is not just Loren's professional courtesy the actor admires, but her genuine kindness. Abraham's 90-year-old mother is Italian and Loren is one of her heroes. While Abraham was off in Italy making the film, his mother became quite ill. Knowing that getting the chance to talk to Loren would mean the world to her and improve her spirits, he asked the actress if she would call her.
He is still moved by her response. "She spent about 30 minutes just talking to her from Italy,” he recalls. “That's the kind of woman she is. We were on the set. We were there on the coast, preparing shots. She just stopped and sat in this car we had available, this little Jeep, actually, and she just started to talk to her and everything stopped while she spoke with my mother.”
“ I worship her for that."
Could Abraham have imagined where his career would take him back in the '70s when his most high-profile role was as a talking grape in a Fruit of the Loom underwear ad? He laughs good-naturedly, "It was not a grape. It was a leaf."
"I don't think any actor worth his salt ever doubts that he's going be wonderfully famous one day,” he continues, in a more serious vein. “Every actor does. I don't know how you last in this business otherwise. It's the dream. If I hadn't won the Academy Award when I did, which was in my early 40s, I would have expected I was going win it eventually. I still expect I'll win another one."
Amadeus, the 1984 film that garnered him both that Best Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe, was Abraham's thirteenth film. He made his screen debut in 1971 with a small part in the George C. Scott-Joanne Woodward offbeat comedy They Might Be Giants. The man who once worked as a Macy's New York Santa made his stage debut in Los Angeles in a Los Angeles production of Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and bowed on the New York stage in the late '60s in the long-running off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks, before making his Broadway entrance in 1968 in the Harold Pinter-directed Robert Shaw play The Man in the Glass Booth.
He slowly built up film and a few TV credits throughout the 1970s, while continuing to work in theater. But it was the Oscar made Murray bankable. Since then, he's appeared in 61 different movies and TV miniseries, things as diverse as Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose and Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester. What has become rare on his resume in the years since Amadeus, apart from the occasional appearance in something like Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite or National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon, are comedies.
Reminded of how funny he was in 1976's The Ritz as gay bathhouse denizen Chris, a role he originated in the Terrence McNally play on Broadway in the year before it became movie, he maintains, "That's an interesting thing about this business. People always think of me as that stuffy Salieri character, but in fact, I really did comedy for 15 years. Now [drama is] all they want me for. It's a little tiresome."
| He'll soon get a chance to create laughs on stage, playing the fool and master of ceremonies in New York's Acting Company's Bard-infused musical comedy Standup Shakespeare, opening November 22 at Manhattan's 45 Bleecker Theatre. In the meantime, the movies are all about drama. Early next year, filmgoers can see him opposite Robert DeNiro and Kathy Bates' in an adaptation of Thornton Wilder's tragedy The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Then when he finishes with Standup Shakespeare, he most likely will be off to Greece to film a modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet that will cast Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers as an Israeli and a Palestinian.
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But for now, the actor is excited about his upcoming visit to San Francisco where he and Wertmuller will participate in an audience Q&A after Too Much Romance…'s 7:30 pm Sunday November 14th screening. "Wait 'til you meet Lina,” he raves. “That's a fabulous experience; she's a dynamo; she's a great woman. The whole experience, working with those two people was the best, best."
[New Italian Cinema, presented by the San Francisco Film Society, New Italian Cinema Events, and Istituto Italiano di Cultura runs November 14-21 at San Francisco's AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres. For further information, please consult the festival website.]
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