Just as director Martin Scorsese has had a longtime collaboration with Robert DeNiro and, more recently, with Leo DiCaprio, filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan has made six features with Kevin Kline.
Their work together began with 1983’s The Big Chill, includes such varied movies as Silverado, Grand Canyon and French Kiss, and continues with Darling Companion, which will be released May 4 in South Florida.
In Miami recently to promote the film, about a stray dog that Colorado housewife Diane Keaton rescues and adopts, and that later her doctor husband Kline lets run off while he is distracted, the director and actor spoke — with tongue firmly planted in cheek — about their working relationship.
After almost 30 years together, Kasdan and Kline claim to know what each other is thinking. “Yes, and it’s terrible to know what he’s thinking,” says Kasdan drily. “It’s awful.”
“Because I’m not thinking at all. It’s a real shorthand,” chimes in Kline. “We just kind of shrug at each other.”
Asked why he finds Kline to be so right for many of his films, Kasdan responds, “That’s a very good question that I don’t know the answer to. He’s taller than I am, he has so many more skills than I do. I idolize him and then I try to make him more like me.”
According to Kline, the collaboration works “because when Larry dumbs me down and makes me less glamorous, instead of irresistible, I find it humanizing. And ennobling. But then the movie ends and I go back to being the glamorous, shallow person I am.”
Silverado, the character-driven western from 1985, their second film together, was the first one that Kasdan wrote with Kline in mind. “I don’t know if you remember, but the move starts with him lying in the desert in his underwear. He’s been abandoned, he’s gotten in trouble with some guys. And when my brother and I wrote that scene, I was thinking of Kevin,” says Kasdan. “I thought, ‘Who better to be lying in the desert in his underwear?’
“What I didn’t know is he has a great beard. I envied his beard so much. In ‘Silverado,’ he had one of the great beards of all movie history.”
Asked how Kasdan makes him a better film actor, Kline answers glibly, “Uh, I think it’s the shrugging,” then adds, “I’m joking, but in a way it’s true. Larry does not intrude until he has to. He loves actors and he lets actors find their way. When they lose their way, he intercedes and rescues us.
“There are directors who, when the actor arrives on the set, have it all planned out. ‘Here’s what I want you to do, here’s where I want you to go, here’s how I would like you to say it.’ Some actors like that, but I can’t bear working that way. Larry encourages all the actors to bring something to the table. He knows when to help and when to leave you alone.”
Two of Kasdan’s early films — The Big Chill and Grand Canyon — are major works, full of thought and substance. As even the director concedes, Darling Companion is the opposite.
“No, it’s lightweight. It floats away,” he says. “I think it’s supposed to be fun.”
As to whether Hollywood prefers this lighter fare from him, Kasdan shoots back, “Hollywood prefers nothing from me. We had a lot of trouble getting this movie made, and it’s not because it’s heavy or light. It’s because it’s about people who are 60 years old,” dinosaurs in movie marketing terms.
As Kline puts it, “As Larry matures — which we’ve all been waiting for — I think the lightness, the incredible lightness of being older, it’s about being at a point where we take ourselves less seriously.”
Darling Companion may be slight, but it stems from a real incident from the lives of Kasdan and his wife/writing partner, Meg. “We rescued a dog from a shelter in Los Angeles, and we lost that dog in the mountains and we got him back,” he explains.
Besides Keaton, the cast includes Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins and Elisabeth Moss, most of whom were lured into the project after hearing that Kline was involved. “People want to work with Kevin,” notes Kasdan. “He has a great reputation, he’s won everything — an Oscar, Tonys — people want to be around Kevin Kline, he’s legendary.”
And they giggle like schoolboys at the notion, two film legends having too much fun to be very serious.
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Darling Companion opens