THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9702010088
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 96 lines
ALBERT BROOKS has spent a year or so looking for his mother.
Of course, he has a real-life mom, whom he admits is partially the basis for his award-winning script for the current hit comedy ``Mother.'' Like his movie mom, his real mom freezes everything, has trouble with mechanical things like ``call waiting,'' and still encourages him to give up movies and ``get a real job.'' After viewing a scene from ``Mother,'' she told him, ``You're not going to use THAT scene, are you?''
His movies - including ``Lost in America'' and ``Defending Your Life'' - have always been considered eccentric. Some call him ``the West Coast Woody Allen'' because his films involve little slices of life, and a good deal of complaining.
``I don't think my mother ever quite got my humor,'' Brooks said when he sat for an interview the other day. ``Sure, I think she loved me, but I think she kinda never quite figured me out. I got the idea for this movie `Mother' when I realized how few movies had been made about a realistic relationship between mother and son. They've made things like `Throw Momma From the Train' - comedies in which mothers are off-character. But my mother never had a gun.''
``Mother,'' he said, ``is a tribute to all those women who chose to give up a career and raise kids. It suggests that they don't just go hide in the closet when they hit the 70s. When I call my mother, she's the one who is always busy. She has to call me back.''
In the film, Brooks plays a twice-divorced son who moves back in with mother in an effort to figure her out. Mom, played by Debbie Reynolds, isn't ecstatic about her adult son moving back. She's busy. She has a boyfriend. She's frozen enough food to last for years.
But finding the right woman to play the title role wasn't easy. ``Before Debbie, there was pressure from the studio to put a lot of other people in it,'' Brooks admits. ``They wanted Angela Lansbury, but I asked, `Isn't she British?' How would she be my mother?' ''
Shirley MacLaine wanted the part, but Brooks felt she's played moms before. ``It had to be an event. This had to be someone special. I didn't want an actress you've seen play mother roles years in a row.''
Nancy Reagan!
The former first lady, who was actress Nancy Davis before she married Ronnie, read the script, and she loved it.
``I went to visit Nancy,'' Brooks recalled. ``She said she wanted to do it, and that she was going to hate herself, but she couldn't do it now. She said she had her hands full, and she needed to be with the president. The president was walking in the garden. I saw him through the window, but I didn't meet him.''
Esther Williams!
The swim queen of M-G-M's golden past hasn't made a movie in years, but she has a cult following among young video renters who think those water ballets are just the coolest. Brooks remembers sitting in Esther's kitchen, and talking about it. ``She read well. She could do the role, but her ice cream didn't have freeze marks on it. It just didn't happen. It might have happened.''
Doris Day!
Brooks went up to Carmel, Calif., where Doris Day lives with hordes of animals. ``We had lunch and I felt as if I was her therapist. She was thinking about the role. She kept saying, `But it isn't a Doris Day role.' I told her we didn't want it to be a Doris Day role. Finally, it came as a revelation, seemingly, to her, that she just doesn't want to make movies again. She said, right there, that she will probably never make another movie. `I'd rather they have their memories,' she said.''
Brooks said he couldn't see Debbie Reynolds in the role because she was too close to him. ``I had dated Carrie, years ago,'' he recalled. (Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia of ``Star Wars'' and daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher). ``Carrie kept saying her mother could do it.''
Carrie called Mama Debbie, who was in Las Vegas running the Debbie Reynolds Casino, and urged her to come to Los Angeles and read for the role. Reynolds, who had been a studio star at M-G-M most of her career, had never auditioned for any role, and didn't particularly want to be in movies again - although she has spent years paying off the debts of her second husband, shoe magnate Harry Karl.
Reynolds did come to the Paramount lot (where she had last filmed ``The Rat Race,'' with Tony Curtis, three decades ago). She read one scene for Brooks, and he said, ``You've got the part.''
Brooks says that he is delighted with the performance he got from Reynolds, who has not had a starring role in a film for 27 years. ``She reached realistic pitches that she doesn't even reach in real life,'' he said. ``In real life, she's always on. She's always Debbie Reynolds. Here, she got into the character. I remember that on the day before we started filming, she spent all day Sunday down on the set in the kitchen - just getting used to the room.''
As for the Oscar talk for Debbie, Brooks says he hears it everywhere. ``I think Debbie has a real shot,'' he said. ``There's a buzz. It would be an honor for her entire career. Personally, I think she deserves it. Nothing would make me happier than if Debbie won the Oscar.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by PARAMOUNT
Beatrice Henderson (Debbie Reynolds) is puzzled by her son's (Albert
Brooks) decision to move back home in the hit comedy ``Mother,''
above. Brooks, right, wrote and directed.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE