Boxoffice-June.1997

in
tltwfwpit^t:
•
Cover
JULIA ROBERTS on Fame, Fortune, Woody, Mel, and
Making It to "MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING" by Ray Greene
shriek of schoolgiri pleasure resounding through the open door
Theof an editing room on the Sony Pictures lot is loud, full-throated,
even musical. The popular (and often all too true) assumption is
that filmmaking is an arduous process—as painful in its own way as
giving birth is said to be, with perhaps even more opportunities for
something critical to go wrong. But the work-in-progress threading its
way through a flatbed editing machine in the next room must be
different. From the sound of things, somebody watching those freshlyassembled
images on that dimly-illuminated screen must be having the
time of her life.
That someone is, of all people, Julia Roberts—superstar, accomplished
actress, and national fetish object. After some jovial goodbyes
and a few giddy compliments to the editing team, she hurries into the
hall, that quicksilver smile playing across her lips, her moist eyes still
creased with laughter. "Oh! Nice to meet you!" she says, her hand
extending gracefully. "Would you mind ifwe did this in my car? There's
a yam store I want to get over to if it's still open! Give me a second, 1
just have to make the call."
In a blur of movement, Roberts disappears, her blonde, female
assistant chasing at her heels like a well-trained housepet. A moment
passes, just long enough to contemplate the earth-shattering news
possibilities in the revelation that Julia Roberts is a closet.. .knitter!
Almost immediately, she's back, looking crestfallen. "Wouldn't you
know? They're closed. Oh well..." She brightens in an instant. "We'll
just have to do it here, then."
"Here" ends up being a deserted dialogue
editing room—the most comfortable private
space available in what is, after all, a full-scale
post-production facility, and therefore a place
more amenable to work than it is to the prerequisites
of a quiet chat. Roberts settles down onto
the sofa amidst trim bins and editing tables
filled with neatly labeled spools of what the pros
call "elements"—bits of 35mm film and magnetic
tape which are in the process of being
assembled into a "first cut" of "My Best
Friend's Wedding," Roberts' new summer
comedy, and the subject of so much of the
activity swirling around her.
She doesn't sit so much as splay—majestically,
it's true—and she still has about her much
of that quality which made America fall in love
with her back in her "Steel Magnolias"/"Mystic
Pizza" period. In life as on film, she perfectly embodies the awkward,
Everygiri grace of the gangly duckling, newly emerged as a magnificent
swan. Her trademark flowing tresses have been cut back into a more
fashionable and "mature" shag, but to look at her, it's still hard to believe
that the 21 -year-old naif who took America by storm when "Pretty
Woman" earned $178 million and became the top-grossing picture of
1990 is now all of 28. Time, as they say, flies.
She looks radiant and unchanged. The only detail indicative of the
growth and the distance is her absolute mastery of the Art of the
Interview. It's a skill nobody is bom with, but Roberts has it down pat.
She seems absolutely spontaneous and totally in control, all at the same
time.
"I'm so proud of everybody in the movie," she gushes about "My
Best Friend's Wedding." "Everybody worked so hard, and they were
all so charming. [Supporting player] Rupert Everett is the funniest thing
to ever hit the planet. Tmly. I mean, so funny that there were scenes
where we'd be doing stuff and I would be laughing so hard that you
can't even understand what I'm saying! 'Cause I'm trying to get through
the scene, but I'd just be peeing in my pants!
"I'm gonna take so much credit for this," she says, her voice gone
suddenly wondering and little-girlish. "Even though—heh heh—
there's no reason I should. I was actually teasing [director] P.J. [Hogan]
today about all the ways in which I'm gonna take full and complete
credit for the movie." She laughs, then turns mock-.serious on a dime.
"If it's funny. But if it sucks, it's all PJ."
A. s
"I don't search for
specific scripts. I
just
look for good scripts.
If they're good scripts
that are funny, then
terrific.
If they're good
scripts that are tragic,
then terrific as well."
ou can tell by Roberts' contagious sense of accomplishment that
the possibility of"My Best Friend's Wedding" sucking has never
so much as entered her mind. Nor, on the basis of the film's
pedigree, is there any obvious reason it should have. In addition to
British character man Everett (an actor she calls "our secret weapxan"),
her co-stars include Dermot Mulroney as the "best friend" of the title
and "The Mask's" Cameron Diaz as his too-good-to-be-true intended.
The screenplay is an original by Ron Bass, who wrote the Roberts-starring
"Sleeping With the Enemy," but is most
famous for his Oscar-winning "Rain Man" script
and for his screen adaptation of Amy Tan's "The
Joy Luck Club." The director is a hot young
comedy "find:" P.J. Hogan, whose uproarious
Australian effort "Muriel's Wedding" was easily
the most engaging knockabout amusement of
1995.
Hogan's experience with the farcical treatment
of matrimonial material must have come in handy
on "My Best Friend's Wedding," a film which,
like "Muriel," promises to do a great deal of
comedic violence to the sanctity of the marital act
"The long and short of it is that my best friend is
getting married," says Roberts. "He's someone
who I've known for 10 years, and we were once
lovers, and then that sort of didn't come to pass.
And so we're best friends, and we've been best
friends forever. Upon discovering that he's getting miuricd. 1 sort of
realize that, 'Weil, he can't marry someone else because I'm in love
with him, and he should be in love with me.'"
So far, "My Best Friend's Wedding" sounds like a poignant relationship
film, about a situation more than a few people could pmbably relate
to: the closing off of romantic possibilities when those we've loved
commit to someone else. But then comes the comedic kicker, accompanied
by a devilish variation of that tixithy grin:
"And so I set off to this wedding to destroy it, so he'll be with me."
THE BOXOFFICE
INTERVIEW
3