Cher (37 page)

After a year of no new movie releases, no albums, and no concert tours, suddenly Cher was back in the spotlight. During this era, Cher’s most famous television appearance came in May 1986. It was her first guest spot on the television show
Late Night with David Letterman
. Up to this point, she had been invited onto the show dozens of times, but had declined every time. Finally, when she was again invited to appear on the program that spring, she agreed—but only if they met her financial requirement. It seemed that she had run up a hotel bill at posh Morgan’s Hotel in New York City, which was—according to her—somewhere between $26,000 and $38,000. She told the show’s producers that if they paid her hotel bill, she would agree to come on the show.

She was informed that they only paid “scale” to guests, which is in the vicinity of $700, so she declined. Finally, they agreed to pay off her extravagant hotel bill, and she agreed to the performance. When the show’s producer, Robert Morton, asked her why she had never appeared on David Letterman’s show before, she replied without hesitation, “Because I thought he was kind of an asshole” (25).

That night, when she came on the show, from the moment she appeared on camera, it was clear that David Letterman was not one of Cher’s favorite people. He has always been known for his sarcastically antagonistic attitude toward guests. He likes to throw them off-guard and make them squirm. Obviously, Robert Morton had told Letterman what Cher had said about him. Not missing a beat, Letterman expressed amazement that finally, after several years of turning him down, she had consented to make an appearance. Cher pondered on camera, “I thought that I’d never want to do this show with you.” An astonished Letterman asked, “Now why? Now, let’s explore this a little. Why? Because you thought I was a, a. . . .”

“An asshole!” exclaimed Cher (142). Although they “bleeped” her comment, viewers could easily read her lips. She so befuddled Letterman with that reply, that he wasn’t able to recover his composure for the rest of the program. Leave it to Cher to always say exactly what is on her mind.

Letterman was later to say of Cher’s on-air comment, “It did hurt my feelings. Cher was one of the few people I really wanted to have on the show. . . . I felt like a total fool especially since I say all kinds of things to people. I was sitting there thinking, ‘O.K. Mr. Bigshot, can you take it as well as you can dish it out’ ” (143). Thanks to Cher, he obviously developed a thicker skin, and learned painfully that “turnabout” is indeed “fair play.”

May 20, 1986, was a very important date for Cher, as it was her fortieth birthday. Still in residence at Morgan’s Hotel, she was awakened by the ringing of her telephone. It was director George Miller, who was in preproduction on his forthcoming film,
The Witches of Eastwick
. While she was still on the telephone with him, her best friend Paulette, Chastity, and Elijah came into her room with one of the hotel bellmen, carrying her birthday cake.

That night, Cher went out partying with her friends—including her assistant Debbie Paull—at the downtown Manhattan hangout Heartbreak. At the party, Cher sighted a handsome young man in his early twenties. Having broken up with Josh Donen at this point, she was currently single. The hot-looking young man’s name was Robert Camilletti.

According to Cher, “I saw him in a restaurant on my fortieth birthday—actually it was a nightclub, Heartbreak. I said to a friend, ‘Who is that boy? He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ I didn’t talk to him, but I knew I was thinking about doing this video, so I asked Debbie to get an eight-by-ten glossy of him” (115). Although Cher and Robert didn’t have a conversation that night, she had it on her mind to look him up the next time she returned to Manhattan.

When she was asked at the time how she felt about turning forty, without batting an eyelash, she announced, “If I could be turning 25 instead of 40, I would certainly do that. . . . I’m not like Jane Fonda or any of these other women who say how fabulous they think it is to turn 40. I think it’s a crock of shit. I’m not thrilled with it” (62).

Meanwhile, Cher was focusing on her upcoming role in the film
The Witches of Eastwick
, which was based on the book by John Updike. At the helm was Australian director George Miller, best known for his successful films—especially the Mel Gibson star-making projects,
Mad Max
(1979) and
The Road Warrior
(1981). “I didn’t love the script,” explained Cher, “but I wanted to work with Jack Nicholson” (144). Indeed, the all-star cast would put Cher in a production with three of the hottest names in 1980s cinema, Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Filming was to began in New England in July of 1986, with a 1987 release date.

Among the other alluring factors that made Cher want to work on
The Witches of Eastwick
was the fact that she was going to be paid a million dollars for being one of its stars. She may not have won an Oscar for her role in
Silkwood
, nor had she been nominated for an Academy Award for
Mask
, but through both of those films, she established herself as a huge box-office draw.

Her first obstacle was her instant clash with George Miller. According to Cher, “The director didn’t want me—he only knew me as part of Sonny & Cher. But the movie company put pressure on him. I said to George, “I don’t know where you’ve been; they didn’t find me under a rock’ ” (115).

The plot of the story takes place in witchcraft lore–filled New England, where three single women are close friends. They are Alexandra the sculptress, Jane the cellist, and Sukie the local newspaper reporter. When the mysterious Daryl Van Horne arrives in town, and seduces all three of them, frightening consequences occur. Originally, it was Susan Sarandon who was to portray the character of Alexandra in the film.

Resigned to using Cher in the film, Miller’s vision was to have Cher play the meek cellist, Jane. However, Cher had other ideas. “They always knew I wanted to play the role of Alex, and that I didn’t even want to talk about the role of Jane,” she claimed. When she threatened to pull out of the project altogether, she ended up getting her way. Cher was not happy with the movie, or the vibe on the set, but she was happy to be working with such a great cast. Although she never had fights with George Miller—once she was awarded the role she wanted—she was unhappy with several of the aspects of the film, and was less than thrilled with the studio she was working with. In typically Cher terms, she was to explain, “If I’d been fucked by my husband as much as I was fucked by Warner Brothers [Pictures], I’d still be married” (22).

In one of the first scenes in the movie, the three women get together amid a torrential rainstorm. When they start discussing it, they find that they were all wishing that a rainstorm would end the dreary outdoor event they had just come from. When they make this discovery of potential telepathy, Cher delivers the line, “It’s not like it’s gonna get us on
David Letterman
” (145). It is an especially amusing comment, since the real-life Cher had just gotten a ton of publicity from appearing on that very show.

Evil-spirited Van Home turns out to be devil himself. When each of the seduced women begins to suspect his true identity, they all pull away from him. Frustrated by their rejection, Van Home casts spells of his own on them as a threat to lure them back into his mansion and into his bed. The spell that Van Home was to cast on the character of Jane called for her to awaken in her bed and discover that she was surrounded by over a thousand live snakes crawling on and around her. Susan Sarandon had no intention of getting anywhere near snakes, so the script was rewritten, and it was Cher who ended up with the snake scene. According to her, she had no problem with the 1,300 slithering nonpoisonous snakes—as long as she didn’t have to do a scene with 1,300 insects.

During the filming, in the initial takes, the snakes kept getting up under the T-shirt that Cher was wearing. Fearless Cher even admitted that she was concerned for the snakes’ safety, as she had to react violently as she threw back the covers of her bed when she awoke and found herself surrounded by the slithering creatures.

There were also several other special effects utilized in this black comedy of a film, including having the actresses floating through the air. According to Cher, “It was like filming a movie on Friday the 13th in the middle of a hurricane. But a movie doesn’t have to run smoothly to be good” (119).

She was also to claim that director George Miller seemed to be more preoccupied with the way the special effects looked than what his actors were up to on camera. She was hoping to receive a stronger sense of direction from him regarding her acting. It was never to come, at least not to her satisfaction. “We all became friends on the film—Susan Sarandon, Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer and the crew—but, I’m telling you, we didn’t get a thing out of the director. It was a bitch,” said Cher (115).

In addition to her on-the-set frustrations, while she was in the Boston area, working on
Witches of Eastwick
, Cher and Josh Donen were involved in an automobile wreck. According to the press reports, she and Donen were riding in a chauffeur-driven station wagon, when a car driven by Floyd Hardwick of Boston struck the car they were driving in, causing them to hit the car in front of them. Hardwick was arrested for drunk driving. They had just left the set, in nearby Cohasset. She was taken to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, said a nursing supervisor. “Cher Escapes Accident with Minor Injuries,” read the item in the
Tallahassee Democrat
, and several other major newspapers (146).

Cher was on a roll, and within one year she was to film three consecutive movies. Next on her plate was the sparkling romantic comedy,
Moonstruck
. Originally, Cher was reluctant to accept the part of Loretta, the slightly frumpy thirty-seven-year-old Italian widow who finds herself involved in the life of two feuding brothers. According to director Norman Jewison, he really wanted Cher for the part, but he had to trick her into taking it. He simply told her that if she didn’t want the role, she shouldn’t worry herself, as he had another actress in mind. But, he wouldn’t tell Cher who the other actress was. Apparently, the mysterious identity of the other actress somehow forced her into making a decision and accepting the role. She reportedly nagged him throughout the shooting schedule to reveal the identity of the mystery actress. He repeatedly refused. After the filming was over, Jewison revealed that the part was originally meant for multiple Academy Award–winning actress Sally Field.

The original screenplay was entitled
The Bride and the Wolf
, but that bewitching “bella luna” that is so prominently featured in the film led to the film’s name change. The film was sheer magic from the moment the cameras began to roll.

According to Cher, this was the most enjoyable film in which she had been involved. “
Moonstruck
was too silly, too much fun to be work,” she claimed. “It was like getting paid lots of money to have a good time with a bunch of people you wouldn’t have minded spending time with anyway” (119). And lots of money was exactly what she received for this role: a cool million dollars.

Another alluring point to working on
Moonstruck
was the fact that it was filmed in New York City. It gave Chastity and Elijah a sense of security to have their mother go to work every day, and come home every night. “I was lucky in New York when we did
Moonstruck
, because I was living in our apartment and both of them were there. Everyone was circulating in the house and the family was intact. I think children just want to know that you’re at home so that they don’t have to be there. As long as you’re in the house, everything seems O.K.,” Cher claimed (119).

Jewison had assembled the perfect cast for this bit of moonlit lunacy, including Olympia Dukakis as Cher’s sage advice-sharing mother, Vincent Gardenia as her father, John Mahoney as Professor Perry, Danny Aiello as her inept fiancé, Anita Gillette as her father’s girlfriend, and Nicolas Cage as Ronnie Cammareri—the passionate baker she falls in love with. However, Cage was not originally part of the cast; he only joined it at Cher’s insistence.

Initially, the film studio had wanted to give the role her of her love interest, Ronnie Cammareri, to Peter Gallagher. Although she respected Gallagher, Ronnie had to come across as just a little bit “nuts” in the head. Cher felt that Gallagher was too cool and calm of a person to walk the fine line between sane and crazy. She felt so strongly about her casting choice that she told the studio she wouldn’t do the film if Nicolas Cage didn’t play Ronnie. Always one to stick to her guns in a battle, Cher naturally got her own way, again.

Norman Jewison was first enchanted by John Patrick Shanley’s charming script. According to the director, “It read to me almost like a novel. He writes in long arias. Maybe Cher is the lyric soprano and Nicolas Cage is the tenor. Danny Aiello is the baritone and Vinnie Gardenia is the bass and Rose, the mother—Olympia Dukakis—can be the contralto and you bring them in with a triumphant fugue ensemble performance at the end” (147).

The chemistry between all of the actors in this film vividly, and comically, brought it to life. Throughout each of her 1980s films, Cher worked hard to become a brilliant ensemble player.
Moonstruck
showed off her acting skills to radiant perfection, and everything seemed to “click” with maximum comic effect. Cher also got along wonderfully with director Norman Jewison. He was later to claim, “Her comic timing is natural and almost infallible. I’ll say so even though she nicknamed me ‘the curmudgeon’ ” (22).

Moonstruck
was filmed from November 24, 1986, to February 13, 1987. One of the most important things that Jewison did with the cast he had assembled, was to have them rehearse their lines together, like a big family. That way, when the cameras started rolling, there would be a camaraderie and a family feeling between them.