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The Stepford Women
Nicole Kidman, Glenn Close, Bette Midler and Faith Hill chat about The Stepford Wives within the relatively safe confines of a press conference format.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
By Ian Spelling
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Everyone’s heard about the buzz, the problems, the arguments, the last-minute re-shoots. Now comes time for the moviegoing audience to judge it for themselves.
Written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Frank Oz, the film is a second take on the Ira Levin novel, following Bryan Forbes’ 1975 cinematic stab at the material (which is being released on DVD next Tuesday, June 15th). Forbes played it fairly straight, crafting a sci-fi/horror cautionary tale, while Oz transforms the tale into a satire, spoofing reality TV, marriage, politics and the battle of the sexes.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, it goes something like this: after getting sacked from her job as a high-powered television exec, Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) relocates with her kids and husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick) from New York City to the Connecticut gated community of Stepford. She’s promptly mortified by the ladies: buxom babes who appear robot-like and subservient to their men, most of them who are dumpy and/or nebbishy as Walter.
Fortunately, she meets two other recent arrivals, Bobbie (Bette Midler), a Jewish author with lots of moxie, and Roger (Roger Bart), half of a gay couple that’s trying to salvage their union, not easy when he’s a quipping chatterbox and his partner’s ultra-conservative. Still, after a blow-up with Walter, Joanna tries to fit in, spending time with the town’s leading lady, Claire (Glenn Close) and other Stepford ladies who lunch – though Joanna, Bobbie and Roger still make time to snoop around the edges and insides of Stepford to figure out what’s up.
Meanwhile, Walter learns the truth from Claire’s husband, Mike (Christopher Walken), who seems to run Stepford and certainly is the head honcho at the Stepford Men’s Association, the mansion-like house where the guys act like frat boys. Turns out the women have been transformed into compliant robots, and from there it’s a matter of whether or not Joanna, Bobbie and Walter will be ‘Stepfordized.’
In keeping with the apparent smooth surface perfection of the film’s premise, and as a way to present the unique mechanics of a press conference in all their glory, here now is some of the unedited dialogue that FilmStew was permitted to be a part of on June 2nd, 2004 at the Essex House in New York City with Kidman and her female co-stars Bette Midler, Glenn Glose and Faith Hill. Although not featured here, a separate boys sessions was conducted with Matthew Broderick, Roger Bart and director Frank Oz.
Q: Do you think happiness is found through perfection?
A: (Kidman): I think that happiness is NOT found through perfection or even trying to achieve it. I'm nowhere near perfect, and I'm not ever trying to be. Actually, the things that I find most attractive in people are their flaws and their imperfections. So, I don't know.
Q: Do you think that this movie addresses relevant issues?
A: (Close): I think that it is, very much so. Just where I grew up in Connecticut, where I grew up you could look over stone walls into other people's property and you could run all over the neighborhood. Now it's behind locked gates and very high fences and I think that it really breaks up communities. I kind of resent it.
I go down the streets that I was born on and you get the feeling of, 'I'm not good enough to look over your fence?' It's very exclusive and I think that it's very divisive and it does divide up a community. And I also think that we're homogenized. There will be fewer and fewer places to express yourself and how you shop and everyone is looking alike and wanting to look alike.
My daughter who's 16, I'm appalled because they know all the brand names and the cars, and it's frightening. It's really a matter, for our children, of just being kind of brainwashed. It's very hard to combat. So I think that this movie in its funny way does really address something that's very, very relevant.
Q: Nicole, how was it working with Matthew Broderick as a leading man, and will you be working with him again in The Producers movie?
A: (Kidman) Yeah, that's actually how we stumbled across 'The Producers' movie in a way. Matthew said, 'Mel Brooks wants to call you. Would you be interested? You probably wouldn't be interested.' I was like, 'Are you kidding?' Then he said, 'Well you're just saying that.'
I said, 'No. I never do that.' So I said, 'Yeah. I'll do The Producers with you.' It was that simple. So that's how that came about. But it was lovely working with him. I mean, he really is just a sweetheart and he's very, very talented and patient and generous to all of us. He had a lot of women around on the set.
Q: You guys were dressed up to look like Suzy Homemaker. Do you think that housewives will be at all offended?
A: (Kidman) Well, I don't think that the truly stay-at-home-mom is going to identify with this at all. I mean, the women who are portrayed in this movie are kind of indolent. They're vacant. They're really just shells, and most real women who work two jobs and are trying to raise kids on their own, they're not vacant.
And a stay-at-home-mom is not sort of doing her hair. I mean, my mum, basically, she was at home for our most of our lives and I don't think that I ever saw her in stilettos and her hair all done while baking a cake. I mean, sure, she would cook and she could sew like the best of them and she would make all of our clothes and everything, but she was real and complicated and a wonderful, wonderful role model for me and a wonderful women. But she didn't have to appear or present herself in any particular way, which I think this is.
It's all about the presentation and not having a mind.
Q: But do you think that these housewives are going to say, ‘Oh, that’s how Hollywood thinks of us? We don’t get the respect we deserve?
A: (Kidman) No. They do get the respect. That's what they're saying.
Midler: No. These are fantasies that men want to have. This says that this is the ideal woman that a certain kind of man would want to have, a dopey wife who keeps her mouth shut. That doesn't really have anything to do with reality. It's just a fantasy.
Kidman: It's raising four kids while your husband goes off to work. I mean, that's not the same thing. But I don't think that it's offensive to a stay at home mom or to women who are choosing to raise their children and not have their career for a certain period of time or choosing not to have a career at all, but that's what it's about. It's about that also, it's about the choice to do those things.
| Q: Did you improvise at all
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A: (Midler) No. I didn't do any improvising and actually what's on the screen is what was on the page when I got it. I don't believe that he wrote any of it for…I think that he's just a terrific writer.
I know him. We all know Paul Rudnick. I've worked with him two or three times before and I really adore him. He always puts great lines in my character's mouths, always.
Q: What are your thoughts on TV reality shows? Have they gone crazy and do you watch any of them? [Editor’s Note: This is what’s known in the biz as a “change-up question.”]
A: (Kidman) I have to admit that I have watched some. I got hooked.
Q: Which one?
Kidman: I actually watched the first 'Survivor' and then I watched MTV’s reality series. I've watched a number of them. I haven't watched The Swan. I think that they're disturbing.
| Faith, were you at all intimidated in working with these great actresses, being that this is your first role? And is there a timetable yet for your next album?
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A: (Hill) I hope that I can finish it this year. At the end of this year, the album will be out, hopefully. I was honored to be in a movie with these actors. I mean, they're extraordinary as is Christopher Walken and Matthew and Roger Bart and all of the guys that were in the film.
The first time that we had met was not the first shoot day. We had a couple weeks of rehearsal. So that broke the ice and everyone made me feel very welcome and comfortable. So I wasn't intimidated because I didn't have to sit in front of you do big scenes together. If I did, I probably would've been. But it was really fun. It was a really fun experience.
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