4-part interview with Mickey Rourke below.
Riveting.
One of the things that strikes me is the long-percolating faith of his former colleagues and friends, and how they all seem so so eager to talk about him in a positive way again – because even 5 years ago, it would have been too early. Now is the time. Alan Parker, Eric Roberts – and the guy named Carl Montgomery (he killed me!) – who was the proprietor of the Marlton Hotel, where Mickey Rourke first lived when he moved to New York. Montgomery was a theatre buff, and he sensed Rourke’s hunger – and just had a sense about him – “I truly thought he was going to be the best actor of his generation” – so he started to lend Rourke (who was totally uneducated about acting) biographies – which is how Rourke learned about Brando, Clift, the Actors Studio. So Montgomery, now an old man, is interviewed – and you can sense his loyalty to Rourke – especially in the moment when he talks about watching one of the movies Rourke made during his bad years – “You almost felt embarrassed for him, they were all so bad …” But these people … they remember … and it is like, even with the number of bridges this guy burned – and not just burned – but blew up into a fireball in the middle of the night – there is a place for him. They remember. They remember. Roberts was like, “Yeah, he’s had plastic surgery and that made him look a little weird – but now the surgery has relaxed a little bit – and I think he’s going to blow our minds.”
I am also struck by Rourke’s gentleness (all of his parts have that gentleness in them – even though he usually plays tough guys – the way he moves a strand of hair off of a girl’s face – a more delicate gesture you cannot imagine – and that gentleness and sensitivity seem very much genuine in him, it’s an essence thing, rather than an acting thing) and by the fact that he is STILL a mess. I relate to that. Because yes. Messes are made. But what can be done with what remains? The damage was done. Long ago. Can’t be undone. No amount of self-help stuff will get rid of it. But perhaps now … perhaps now … it can be used. Like my acting teacher Doug Moston said, “I am a big fan of sublimation. Take your pain and make it sublime.”
The most stunning moment for me is when the interviewer asks, in regards to Carre Otis, his ex-wife, “Do you think you’ll get over her?”
Rourke replies, “Probably not.” Just watch how he says it, how he looks after he says it, the way he takes a drag, then the little grin – and it’s got everything in it – he knows he’s dramatizing, but there’s truth in it, too – he’s not self-pitying, just telling it like it is. But it’s also riveting in that way that he has – that movie star’s awareness of the impact he has on an audience … yet it doesn’t feel played. It’s not pretty, but then, nothing is pretty with Rourke.
Do you think you’ll ever get over her?
Probably not.
And that’s the way life is sometimes. That is the hand that is dealt.
Riveting. I can’t take my eyes off the guy.
In which Michael, an ex-boyfriend, remembers more than I do
Mitchell has always referred to me as “the Homer in our group of friends”, due to my propensity to write everything down and to retain EVERYTHING. I have a tendency to shock my friends with my memory about THEIR lives….