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Susan Sarandon Speaks!
March 31, 2007

I had a chance to speak with Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon last week about her experiences working on Tempest, filmmaker Paul Mazursky’s 1982 contemporary, loose take on

Shakespeare’s The Tempest wherein Sarandon plays a mistress to a married American architect (John Cassavetes) who travels to Greece to revitalize his life and marriage. It’s was released on Sony DVD last week for a suggested retail price of $14.94.

VB: We speak to a lot of directors and performers and they don’t always want to talk about a specific older work if they don’t have to. I’m assuming that’s not the case in this instance and that you enjoyed your experience on Tempest.
SARANDON: You know, I don’t even remember if I’ve seen it. But I had a good time doing it. John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands were fabulous and we were all stranded in this idyllic setting in Greece. When we started to get bored, we did a talent show that was pretty amusing where everybody—all the crew and the cast—got involved. [Co-star] Vittorio Gassman jumped over six guys into a somersault off of the stage and [director] Paul Mazursky did a stand-up routine and Molly [Ringwald] and I changed the words to “These Are A Few of My Favorite Things” and we made fun of everything. And then we had other weekends when we read plays and other stuff. It was kind of like a camp. The actual shoot was hard because we had to travel an hour to the set every day.
VB: You had to take a boat to an island or something like that?
SARANDON: Paul Mazursky took a boat—I had to drive. He had a quick trip and I had a long trip. But it wasn’t on an island—it was on a peninsula.
VB: In the film, all the other characters seem to be floating around in their own worlds, but your character, Aretha, seems to be the most level-headed and sane and not at all like The Tempest’s “Ariel” character, upon which she is based. You seem have a line of reason going through you.
SARANDON: I don’t know what Paul intended with that. Paul kept on saying that John and I didn’t love each other, and we kept on insisting that we did. I don’t think we think we were all on the same page with that, but my character was certainly somebody who was well-traveled and had accomplished a lot and was independent.
VB: I have a vivid memory of Tempest where you and Molly Ringwald splashing around the Aegean and singing “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.”
SARANDON: That wasn’t in the script--we just worked that up on the spur of the moment to keep

ourselves amused and then Paul said ‘Let’s film that!,’ so we did. I asked him if we would be able to loop it later and fix it, and he said ‘yeah, yeah, yeah.’ And I think it’s the only thing we didn’t loop in the whole movie. The way the sound ended up, we had to loop almost every scene except for that. I was very angry he didn’t let us do it.

Check back for more idyllic chat with Susan Sarandon later in the week!!!!

Posted by Laurence Lerman on March 31, 2007 | Comments (1)