Bette Midler Goes for Broke In The Rose
Best Bette Yet
Corby Kummer


''I didn't know what to expect. I'd heard all these stories about what they do in the trailers – you know, cocaine, and how they shtupp on the couches. I thought, oh my, it really is Babylon. But it didn't happen on this film at least nor around me." 

Bette Midler is talking about the making of her first film, The Rose, which opens in New York on November 8 at the Ziegfeld, more than a year after its announced opening. At last count the film cost $9 million and took more than five years to make. 

"It's so easy, you know?  If you do it wrong, they let you do it over again. On the stage you have to go two hours straight without f---ing up. I think it's lazy - no, not lazy, just easy.  You don't have to sweat, and everyone is so sweet. They say, 'Darling, you were just divine,' which is unusual. Maybe not that unusual. When your star is in the ascendant, they’re really pleasant people.  When you're a burnt-out old has-been, it's not so much fun. 

"I think the fact that they saw how concentrated my effort was and how interested I was in doing a good job carried over to a lot of people," Midler says. "We had a great crew and a very happy set, which I think is unusual by Hollywood standards. It was the happiest 10 weeks of my life, if I may be so bold." 

At 34 or thereabouts, Midler is a screen neophyte.  From practically the moment her career put skates on in 1972, she and her former manager, Aaron Russo, sought a suitable vehicle for her film debut.  One of the first offers they received was The Pearl, a script by Bill Kerby that Marvin Worth, a producer at 20th Century-Fox, had commissioned.  Worth wanted to make the first major Hollywood film about rock and roll, based loosely on the life of the late Janis Joplin. 

"It was first sent to me," Midler says, "not long after Janis passed away, in fact moments after Janis passed away. I thought it was in very bad taste to send the script to anyone. It was like dancing on someone's grave before the body was cold. To be blunt, I didn't like it very much. 

"By '75 or '76 we were at Columbia trying to tailor-make a screenplay and having very little luck, mostly because the writers were unfamiliar with my work or I couldn't communicate with them. This script kept coming back like clockwork. Eventually I sat down and reread it, and it wasn't bad. It's not exactly the strongest plot in the whole world, but for a performer like me it had a big emotional range, and I was interested in range. 

"We eventually left Columbia," says Midler. "Maybe we were even thrown off the lot - I don't remember. When it came down to the wire, The Rose, as it was called by then, was the one script we'd been offered in all those years that was a real big part and a real big good part. 

The Rose, set in 1969, is the story of the last week in the life of a hugely popular rock singer "on the down bound train who can't get off," says writer Bill Kerby. "She has plenty of talent but not the complete killer instinct that it takes to survive. She's a hard driven woman, but very gentle·" Outside of the main character, there is only her Texan lover, played by Frederic Forrest, and her ambitious manager, played by Alan Bares. 

Director Mark Rydell was also offered the script in 1973. "I wanted to use Bette Midler, but at the time the studio didn't appreciate my suggestion," Rydell says. "So I passed. The script went to many directors, including Ken Russell, and finally back to me five years later with a rest of Midler, which to my mind made it possible.'' 

Rydell and screenwriter Bo Goldman began revising Kerby's script in December of 1977. (Kerby had no further say on the film.) "At first it was more directly about Joplin," says Rydell. "Bo and I fictionalized it and made it into a much more personal story instead of a documentary. We wanted to reveal some of the heroism of virtuosity. There's a price that people who are that gifted pay - a kind of deep hunger that's hard to satisfy." 

Like everyone connected with The Rose, Midler takes pains to stress its heroine's distance from Joplin. "When it's time to do a film about Janis, the star will be someone who's physically not like me at all," she says. "There are a lot of girls out there who can sing that style much better than I do - that great, raucous, Southern-white-blues-singer sound. I can't imitate her, which is one of the main reasons - the others being moral - that I wouldn't attempt to.” 

Another conclusion that Midler fans will find easy to draw is that many of the events in the Rose's life, such as her troubles with her manager and her insistence on taking a year off, parallel events in Midler's own career - her acrimonious split with Russo and her disappearance to Paris for a year in 1974 just when her record and concert sales hit their peak. 

"Stuff like that is common to everyone in show business who has a fast-moving career," Midler saps. "It's stereotypical.  It has nothing to do with me. The movie wasn't written for me. I changed a good deal of it, but the writers didn't read all my interviews and rewrite the script. My wailing against my manager is only typical of what goes on in the business." 

A worse mistake would be to confuse the character of the hard-drinking, tough-talking singer in the film with Midler's. "I think I'm a lot more lighthearted than she is," she says. "I'm not that self-indulgent. I don't drink that much and I'm not into drugs. I lead a fairly orderly existence, or try to." 

"Midler has a good personal understanding of what it is to undergo that kind of pressure and agony," Rydell says, "but the character of Rose is as far away from her as her act is. She's a very shy girl, she doesn't curse, she's embarrassed by bad language. If she was sitting at a party in your house, you'd have to point her out.'' 

Midler does agree that the background she made up during shooting for the character, whose history is only hinted at, was "fairly close to my own.  Bur acting the part doesn't reveal anything about me. I think the best acting is revelatory in the sense that the audience comes away with an idea about themselves or how to live their lives or what, indeed, life is all about. Great drama is supposed to educate, not entertain. The best acting shows the inner workings of the man and the mind.  People who watch it can say yes, oh yes, she’s doing that because of such-and-such and I remember when that happened to me and look what this person is doing and how she's handling the situation and what it means to him." 

Since concert scenes dominate The Rose, Midler has few opportunities to prove her acting prowess. Most of her spoken lines are whines, complains, or dismissals. One scene, in which she talks to a former woman lover, will probably be controversial: It touches lightly on the theme of lesbianism, which played a major part in Joplin's life but seemingly a minor one in the Rose's.  Fredrick Forrest, as her lover, breaks in on the two women embracing after Rose has confessed her love for him. "That scene is there to show how much the character loves the boy," Midler says, "and also to give credence to the woman's wildness. 

"What ultimately killed the Rose," Midler explains, "was not having a center, not having a hold on what a good person she was.  You have to like yourself, and she didn’t.  Then comes indulgence, and then the outside force of the speed of her career." 

Those who revere the memory of the 60s will not be entirely happy with the scan attention paid to a sense of period in The Rose, and the fidelity of what little is there. Neither is Midler.  "'We didn't shoot very much period because it wasn't in the script," she says. "The thrust of the script was towards the actual love story: Girl gets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy, girl dies. I think it's a long time now from the '60s. To have enough period in it to satisfy everyone, the movie would have to last the weekend." 

"The intent was not to accurately portray the '60s," Rydell says. 'To my mind, the story could exist in any period."  Rydell doesn't think The Rose will offend Joplin admirers. "So far the response has been that people feel there is a kind of nobility to the film that in no way offends their memory of Joplin," he says. 'They feel that Midler's performance is so strong that the specter of Joplin is soon forgotten. Though it was never intended to be about Joplin, the film does embrace the spirit of those people who, like Joplin, like Hendrix, like James Dean, like Marilyn Monroe or Monty Clift, were tormented and driven to grave ends in their desperate attempts to reveal creative truth. Judy Garland is a perfect example of someone on the edge." 

Musical scenes take up so much of The Rose that since its completion it has been rumored that with each cut more dialogue was excised. "There was never more or less singing in the script,'' Rydell insists. 'The ratio of concert scenes to dialogue in the final cut is exactly what we intended. Those rumors began with a longstanding feud between Bette and that guy at the Village Voice Arthur Bell), who took a cheap journalistic shot." After seeing a sneak preview in Long Island, Bell began a column with "To put it charitably, The Rose stinks." 

Audience reaction so far goes against Bell's opinion. "Market research shows that 84% of the people who saw the film at sneaks - in all age groups - would pay to see it again," Rydell says. "I know the kids are gonna like it. I certainly think it's a new look at the life of an entertainer." 

'"The word has been excellent for a year, so of course it's been lovely," Midler says.  “Now we have to give it up and let it live its own life. I really do feel positive about it. It's not exactly life at the circus, but it has some very wonderful things about it." 

Given the chance, Midler feels as Rvdell does that she wouldn't change the film. "I might have played any number of scenes more lightheartedly," she says, "and some of the angles on my face make me wince, but I think the film is fine. I didn't direct it, I didn't edit it.  I brought a lot of concentration to it, I know that." 

The one thing Midler doesn't hedge about is the music. "I had a hand in selecting it, and must say I think it's real good," she says. "I love the band we worked with and I think it's gonna be a great album. It'll surprise a lot of people because it's straight-ahead, no-frills rock and roll with gut lyrics and gut emotions. It's loud and screechy and my favorite kind of music, I just love it. It's a thrill to stand up there and get kicked in the head with a bass. It feels like nothing else in the whole world." 

Music, rather than films, is still Midler's primary concern, and she'll be back on Broadway with a new show after Thanksgiving. The tentatively titled “Midler on the Hoof” opens a five-week run at the Majestic December 3; previews are scheduled for November 28-30. 

Then there's the music she records for Atlantic Records.  "I like to make records, and more than that I like to sell records," she says. Her sixth and most recent, Thighs and Whispers, is selling strongly. "People say it's the best thing I've done in a long time and that's gratifying," she says. "I really do love the ballads. For someone like me, they keep you alive. I think 'Cradle Days' is one of the best things I ever did. I love old tunes and disco and rock, but ballads really are the key to my soul. 

Hard rock will probably dominate her next album as disco does this one. "I see a revival not of acid rock - that's two generations away – but of early '60s rock and roll, which was great. It has truly infectious melodies, simple lyrics, loud bass, high lilting harmony, and not the greatest voices in the world. At one point there was serious soul music and you had to have one of those gorgeous soul voices or you couldn't sell records.  Now it's coming back to guts, and that's new wave. 

"The new wave thing is going to be bigger than anything else next year," she predicts, "The groundswell is building everywhere. Not only is it infectious, it's art school, which appeals to intellects.  Will I try some?  I don't mind if I do.  I think I should jump on every musical bandwagon and really drive people mad, just irritate them to s--- so they say, 'She's such a cow - she'll jump on any musical bandwagon.’ Why not!  I'll bleach my hair and rip my clothes.  I think it's fun. I'm getting silly in my old age." 

Evidence of that silliness is plentiful in A View from a Broad, Midler's diary of her 1978 European concert tour, to be published in February by Simon and Schuster. The book is a scrapbook of journal entries, letters home, a quiz she gives to potential hand members, opening routines, lists, and soul-to-soul monologues (see below). It is frenetic and raucous "and a lot of fun," she says.  "It's jaunty. Some of it is absolutely real and some of it is totally off the wall, but that's the way my life is, you know!"  Midler says that the manuscript went through three or four drafts - "just like a real book" and that she wrote it without assistance. "It's up to the reader to tread this sodden, marshy fen and come up with some kind of conclusion, if he's interested, about my life." 

The book is as campy as any of her acts, despite rumors that she seeks to shed identification with gay fans. "Not at all," she laughs. "That's bulls - - -. You heard I was trying to broaden my base! Oh please. My base is very broad. Trust me." 

Aaron Russo, Midler's former manager, mikes a brief appearance at the beginning of the book as a "man of direct action and some girth, whose emotional response to any given event was generally the exact opposite of mine." Russo, considered to be Midler's Svengali, persuaded her to play The Rose and claimed to have "kept her our of turkeys like The Fortune." Six months after shooting was completed, however, Russo and Midler split, to the surprise of many. 

"I'm doing fine without a manager," she says. "I have a lawyer and lots of help. If I ever get a new one I'm going to get one that's, uh, blind to my sexual charms.” 

The role of a manager, she says, is "strictly a business proposition. It has very little to do with creativity. A good one makes sure that the artist survives, is compensated properly for his services, and the moves he makes in a career build it rather than lay it to waste." 

Midler, whose career has hit slow periods, seems to be back in the fast lane. Is she happy? "More than I've been in a long time." What makes her happiest! "A plate of linguini at Umbetto's.  White clam sauce, thank you, with lots of fat, juicy clams."

Setting The Record Straight
Excerpt from “A View From A Broad”

Oh, how I love to be interviewed!  How I look forward to answering the questions which have, since they've been asked so often, become like old friends, family even, expected company whenever the interviewer shows up, perspiring and poorly dressed, notebook open, cassette recorder recharged . . . The decline in the quality of my interviews stems directly from the lack of challenging questions put to me. You'd be in the same boat if year after year you faced these dreary queries: 

Q: How did you get your start? 

What they really mean is: What was it like to work in a steam room with all those fairies dressed in towels?  EEEUU!  For some reason which will forever remain a mystery to me, the idea of a woman entertaining an audience dressed only in towels - an all-male audience, and homosexual, yet - is to every reporter I have ever met at once repulsive yet endlessly fascinating.  They cannot hear enough of it.  I will now say what I pray to God will be my final word on the subject.  

It was a great job and a great experience. I did not perform in the middle of a Steam room but in the poolside cafeteria next to the steam room. And I always performed en costume. It's true that occasionally I did wear a towel. But on my head, with some bananas and cashews hanging from it, as part of my tribute to Carmen Miranda and all the fruits and nuts of the world. The audience there treated me with more respect than I deserved, considering I was brand-new at entertaining that many people, clothed or naked, for more than ten minutes at a time.  My act, if you could call it that, was more like a mishmash of possibilities than the cogent, noble work I am offering nowadays. I was able to take chances on that stage I could not have taken anywhere else.  Ironically, I was freed from fear by people who, at the time, were ruled by fear. And I will always be grateful. 

And by the way, just for the record, I never laid my eyes on a single penis, even though I was looking real hard.
 

Q: What was it like growing up in Hawaii? 

I must confess that the undying popularity of this question is entirely my fault, because I encouraged the asking of if in the first place. I thought it would amuse, and I was right. But I have lived to regret it. Lately I have begun to embroider the tale something fearful, with cockfights, Tong Wars, furious Fire Goddesses, volcanic eruptions, and escapades with all branches of the Armed Forces. This is not to say that all this embellishment is untrue, because I HARDLY EVER LIE. I do, however, forget, so here's the naked truth as well as I can recall it .... 

We were four, three girls and one boy. My two sisters, Judy and Susan, were older than I, and my brother, Danny, is younger.  

In the beginning we were all dressed alike. My mom loved to sew, and she was terrific at it. 

When I turned twelve, Mom decided it was time for me to learn to sew. Both my sisters had had to undergo this ritual, and now it was my turn. What an ordeal! But it was worth it. Now I could make the cloches of my dreams, ensembles inspired by the revolutionary Mr. Frederick of Frederick's of Hollywood. It wasn't long before I was the only eighth grader in Honolulu to come to class wearing a flawless copy of Freddie's Satin Surrender. Of course, Freddie's version was black. Mine was crimson and lilac. 

You see, one of the most important differences between a Mainland-born American and your true Island-born wahine, such as myself, is that Mainlanders are brought up to believe that navy blue, beige and gray are the colors of good breeding and good taste, while in my part of the world those colors are only worn by old people. This is more significant than you may imagine, for I grew up in a blaze of color provided not only by orchids, bougainvillea, hibiscus and all sorts of other aggressively flamboyant works of nature, but by the very people themselves, who decorated themselves in ways that could blind the uninitiated eye. Yellow, aqua, orange, red, fuchsia and chartreuse was a combination I particularly favored ... ah, quel spectacle! 

And of course, my roots are always in evidence whenever I put a show together, as it is always bound to include at least one tropical number. I took part in so many Polynesian Festivals that show biz and the hula are synonymous to me. 

My first hula teacher was a lady named Kuulei Burke, and she was held in much awe because her great-great-grandmother had danced in King Kulakaua's court. She weighed in at 250 and liked to throw it around. I was not a favorite of Mrs. Burke's and was always put in the back row with the other little girls who were not so hot.  I didn't care, though, because I couldn't remember the steps anyway, nor to mention what my hands were supposed to be doing. I always had to keep my eye on the girl next to me so I could navigate my way through the maze of movement that was Mrs. Burke's hallmark as a choreographer.  If she caught anyone cheating in this fashion, she would make the poor kid stay after class and sweep up – a considerable punishment if you've ever seen the way a grass skirt sheds. 

Mrs. Burke wore her hair in a large bun perched right on top of her head - very appealing if you happened to be a bird. Once when my class of utter losers was to perform at a local talent show, she insisted that we all wear our hair that way too. Mustering up the full strength of her 250 pounds, she pulled my hair up and back so tight that I had only two little slits where my eyes used to be. My usual trick for checking our the steps was completely out of the question. 

As it turned out, that was the best thing that could have happened. Having absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing, I danced blindly out of the back row, knocking down several of Mrs. Burke's pets in the front, and emerged triumphant center stage. The audience roared and cheered me on.  Suddenly I was in the spotlight, and I wasn't going back. But just as I was about to segue into a torrid little Tahitian number, two of the older girls came onstage and carried me off, kicking, into the wings. 

Anyway, that's what it was really like to grow up in Hawaii. Don't you think I should stick to the Tong Wars?