I Blame Dennis Hopper (33 page)

Mr. Wilder was kind and adorable and kept saying, “Scoozi” every time he needed to get past us.

He agreed to cross the frame for me with his shopping cart, so I can
sort of
say I worked with him. The irony of this was one of the hardest parts of pitching the show to the executives was that they didn't believe celebrities ever did their own shopping!

I was really proud of
Illeanarama
. We had an all-star cast: Justine Bateman, Jane Lynch, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begley, Greg Proops, John Heard, and The Beaver—Jerry Mathers. Jerry had my favorite line in the show. He asks me—referring, of course, to his beloved show,
Leave it to Beaver—
“Is that like starring in a television show, where everybody loves you, and then you grow up, and nobody wants you anymore?” and I shudder and say, “No. Nothing is as bad as that.”

I had to turn down Margot Kidder, which broke my heart. Margot was basically living out the plot, having moved to Montana. We had a long talk about how much she related to the material and that meant a lot to me. I figured that once we were on the air, I could have her on. For whatever reason (see my “Roulette Wheel of Insanity” chapter),
Illeanarama
did not get picked up. Here's what did:
Mr. Romance,
about a group of “real guys” who are mentored by Fabio to learn to become more romantic, and
The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency
, about a group of “real girls” who are mentored by Janice Dickinson to become what she used to be, a model.

I was back living in Hollywood, wondering what my next movie would be. For
Illeanarama,
I had written the lines “My life is like a movie. At first it was like a Busby Berkeley musical with everybody happy and dancing, and then it was like a French film that I didn't understand, but I looked really good, and now it's like a seventies disaster movie where I'm screaming, but no one can hear me.” People don't understand that even to get a show on the air, you write out a year's worth of story lines showing where this character is going. I loved writing where this character was going, because I had no idea where I was going myself.

When the pilot got picked up, I had given up my New York apartment and moved back to L.A. How many times would I have to move my gigantic
Breakfast at Tiffany's
movie poster back and forth across the country? I had this horrible hip little '60s shotgun house in the Hollywood Hills, off Woodrow Wilson Drive. It was one of those typical glass houses on stilts that make you think, One good earthquake, and that thing is going to fall off a cliff and take that insufferable actress and her pilot with it!

Right before I had left for L.A., I had run into Brian De Palma near Washington Square in New York City. I had known Brian ever since I had done publicity for
The Untouchables
and throughout my relationship with Marty, but I hadn't seen him in years. We exchanged numbers, and I said, “Hey, if you're ever in L.A., give me a call.” He assured me that that would
never
happen, and I laughed. Good old Brian.

Months later, I got an unexpected call that he had moved to L.A., and did I want to hang out? Post-pilot slump, it was the best offer I'd received in a long time. Although, you don't exactly just “hang out” with Brian De Palma, you hang on! Brian is not the most inconspicuous person on the planet, but he was game to accompany me to some pretty artsy events. I remember he was editing
The Black Dahlia
, and he called and asked me what I was doing that night, and I told him, “I'm doing one of these storytelling evenings at a place called Sit 'n Spin.”

He roared, “Oh, my God, that sounds dreadful! I want to watch!”

I said, “Brian I really don't think this is your scene—”

And he bellowed, “Are you
embarrassed
? Is it that
awful?
Are you
so afraid
of being
humiliated
by me?”

You don't argue with Brian. You just shake your head and laugh, knowing that he always tells it like it is. Shut up, listen, and try to get a word in here or there, because what he has to offer is pretty brilliant.

His movies like
Dressed to Kill
and
The Untouchables
are all known for their unusual camera angles, compositions, and choreographed long takes. They are stylized, and the images are thrilling. He's whip-smart, so sharp and intuitive, and although he might not want to admit it, deeply sensitive—but he does tend to bellow. He has never lost his curiosity about life, and it has always impressed me, because it means he has never lost touch. Sure enough, he came to Sit 'n Spin that night, sat on cushions on the floor with a bunch of hipsters, and watched me perform for the first time in public a story I was working on. That story became the first chapter in this book:
I Blame Dennis Hopper.
I looked out, and there was Brian, sitting on the ground, cross-legged in his ever-present safari jacket, just roaring, laughing his head off.

Afterward, the subject of my failed pilot came up. I really didn't want him to see it, because I figured the work was just bad, but he insisted, and as I said, you don't argue with Brian, so I invited him over to my groovy '60s house for dinner and a viewing of the show. I made roast chicken—because I knew that at least
that
would be good. Typical Brian, as soon as he walked in he started to make fun of my house. “I'm having a '60s flashback!” he shouted. “I should have worn beads!”

He scolded me, “That driveway is a deterrent to all men!
No one
will ever visit you here.”

He cursed me, of course, because Brian and my friend Danny Ferrington were the only other two people who ever saw the house. Brian had scraped the bottom of his car pulling in. Danny hit the fence while trying to park his truck, and I almost backed my car off a cliff before I finally had enough of life in the Hollywood Hills!

I was in a self-help phase—you know, livin' in L.A. and all—and Brian spotted a large sheet of affirmations that I had taped on the refrigerator. He started to read them aloud with asides.

“GET WHAT YOU WANT.”

“Of course.”

“DON'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER.”

“Always.”

“LET YOUR AURA SHINE.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Brian wanted to see the
Illeanarama
pilot, and I was making excuses. I said, “Brian, it's awful; it's amateurish. It doesn't work.” And he shouted, “Listen, if it's shit, I'll tell you it's shit, and then we can have dinner!” That became my next affirmation, by the way.

“IF IT'S SHIT, I'LL TELL YOU IT'S SHIT, AND THEN WE CAN HAVE DINNER.” Works for a lot of things.

After some hemming and hawing I put the tape in the player and just left the room, waiting for Brian's inevitable skewering. The show ended, and Brian proceeded to give me a detailed and helpful critique that went beyond just mentioning the line that referenced him: “There's a ketchup spill in aisle four. It looks like something out of a Brian De Palma movie.” He said thoughtfully, “There is something to this idea. Stick with it. It's good.”

It was those words of encouragement from Brian that made me keep trying. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and continued. I figured if someone of his stature took the time to encourage me, who was I to let him down? Once again, the movies had rescued me, from Dennis Hopper helping me understand and appreciate my
Easy Rider
childhood, to singing in the key of Liza, to Rudy Vallée's playing me the tape of his applause backstage at the Camelot, to Lee Marvin's wishing me good luck on Madison Avenue, to getting words of wisdom from Marlon Brando, to meeting Albert Brooks when I was directing
Supermarket
—the right person, at the right time, has always stepped off the screen and been there for me because I couldn't be there for myself.

Brian brought up the idea of putting the show on the Internet, because he said that was the future of entertainment. He was saying this in 2005! At the same time, I started to call supermarkets such as Vons, Ralphs, and Whole Foods. I met with the supply chain Office Depot. I tried to explain the premise of the show, but in the end, the idea of financing a comedy show that took place in a supermarket aisle, or in an Office Depot, seemed too far-out for everyone. Two years went by, and as Brian said, the Internet was beginning to explode. I put
Illeanarama
on YouTube, cutting it into sections that could be played as episodes, hoping to gain some interest there.

A very lucky thing happened. In addition to our getting a lot of views and winning an online-video award from the TV Guide Network, a man named Fred Dubin who worked for a media company called MEC saw it. MEC's client was IKEA, and he brought
Illeanarama
to their attention. The next thing I knew, I was meeting at MEC in New York with Fred and IKEA's marketing executive, Magnus Gustafsson, to discuss writing comic interstitials for them. IKEA and Magnus had launched a successful campaign in which the comedian Mark Malkoff lived at an IKEA for a week, but they wanted to follow it up with something a little more high-profile. I was tasked with changing the image of IKEA as a brand that only college kids used and making it seem a little more hip. The more we spoke about how to accomplish this goal, the more the idea of creating a kind of
Illeanarama
at IKEA came up. I actually used the IKEA products, so I was a consumer being given an opportunity to promote a brand that I believed in. That was good for the marketers.

On the creative side for me, there was something intrinsically funnier about my working in an IKEA rather than in a supermarket. The bright primary colors and the little home within IKEA's home displays were ideal for situation comedy. Part of IKEA's philosophy was to give me free rein to come up with any story line I wanted—as long as Jeff Goldblum was in it, that is. I remember that when I told them I was pretty sure I
could
get Jeff to make a cameo, Magnus leaned across the table and with a thick Swedish accent said, “U cud haf Yeff Guldblume at IKEA?” Thank God it happened, or we would have never moved forward, apparently. Jeff had never set foot in an IKEA, but he came through for me, appearing in the first season as himself and shooting a fake IKEA training video called
Helpful Swedish Phrases
. There was a wormhole feeling at IKEA that lent itself to having any number of guest stars. You could walk down an aisle, get lost trying to find something, and see me and Tom Arnold trying to shoot a sex video, or Jeff Goldblum discussing personal grooming with IKEA coworkers. We had Craig Bierko secretly living in one of the bedrooms after his real-life television show had been canceled. “Do you work here, too?” I ask him.

No, he says, “I live here. Don't tell IKEA.”

No one likes to hear this part. The first season I wrote the script, turned it in, and waited for my notes. First note: “We don't sell ice cream; it's frozen yogurt.” I got my pen ready for more. “OK, what's next?”

That was it. One note!

Magnus said, “Good stuff,” and we were shooting by the summer of 2008. We filmed on the floors of a working store in Burbank with Jeff Goldblum, Justine Bateman, Jane Lynch, Greg Proops, Ed Begley—all of the folks from the original
Illeanarama
—plus Robert Patrick, Tom Arnold, Kevin Pollak, Alan Havey, and Craig Bierko. Shooting
Easy to Assemble
was like live theater. Because we filmed in a working store, we had shoppers, so we used them as extras, and they were thrilled to be part of the action. They watched our fictional Justine Bateman talk show,
40 and Bitter,
and thought that it was a real talk show. Justine was so wonderfully deadpan. “In my twenties I was self-deprecating. In my thirties, I was ironic; now that I'm forty I'm just plain bitter.” Then we had an actor “pretend” to be a shopper and start measuring her desk, trying to walk off with it while Justine yells at him that he can order it online. This blend of fact and fiction was exciting to all of us.

The idea of
Easy to Assemble
was to confuse the audience as to which scene was real and which was staged, but I can tell you, everything was carefully planned and written—but in the natural style of Albert Brooks. I loved writing the “frenemy” story line between me and Justine. Two actresses trying to one-up each other to avoid coworker downsizing became the subject of our second season,
Coworker of the Year
.

Magnus made sure I was given complete access to the Burbank store. We would shoot scenes with actor managers such as Jane Lynch and Eric Lange alongside real IKEA managers working at their desks. IKEA thought it was important that I be treated as a real coworker, so I was given a handbook about coming to work at IKEA. I kept explaining, “You realize I'm an actress, right, and that this is all fake?”

But a funny thing started to happen. Working for IKEA started to really affect me. I began to feel like part of the IKEA family. It went beyond loyalty. They trusted me, and I trusted them. I made IKEA seem like a fun place to work because
I
was having fun. They were letting me stage musical numbers in the self-serve warehouse. Coworkers were asking if
their
IKEA shirts could be retrofitted the way our costumer had retrofitted mine, turning them into minidresses. We once made a dress out of a 36-cent IKEA bag for actress Kate Micucci, and it was the envy of all the real employees. IKEA was a character in the show. We highlighted the yellow shirts, the meatballs, the relentless cheerfulness—even the name
Easy to Assemble
poked some not-so-subtle fun at furniture that was notorious for being
not
easy to assemble. I created fake IKEA training films introduced by celebrities and a fictional Swedish band called Sparhusen that only IKEA coworkers knew about.