Every Day I'm Hustling Page 8
“Get that tailored,” she said. “Bring it in on the booty and that’ll be the one.”
“Charge it!” I yelled.
Once it fit like a second skin, the suit completely made the scene. Style is a weapon in Shanté’s arsenal, so I had to make sure it was perfection.
Morris Chestnut defined perfection as Shanté’s love interest and opponent, Keith. Lord, I knew Morris from our Out All Night days. He was a kid then, playing video games, nobody’s hunk, but now he was this man. When we had kissing scenes, that was the only time that I ever lost myself in kissing another actor. He was that good. I damn near forgot the cameras were rolling. Hands down, the best kisser I have ever had on-screen. But don’t worry, you know Vivica always keeps things professional. I like to tell people, “I kissed Morris Chestnut for all the ladies!”
I still had one problem with the script, and I was really irritated about it. Shanté constantly breaks the fourth wall, talking to the audience and giving the real skinny on what’s actually happening beneath the dialogue. I pictured the audience screaming at me, “Turn around and act, bitch! Stop talking so much. Do you know you’re in a movie?” I kept mentioning this to Mark, who was really good about listening to me. Finally a producer on the film had enough.
“Vivica, just go rent Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he said. “He does it really well.”
I listened and did my homework, thank God. Watching Matthew Broderick was a revelation. The voice didn’t have to be all-knowing, but conspiratorial and just honest. From my first words to the viewer, an “Oh, hey,” like you just walked into the scene and I need to catch you up, we are best friends. After watching Ferris, I apologized for not understanding earlier. “I got it now,” I said. When you receive constructive criticism and it helps you deliver, you have to acknowledge it.
I loved my girls in that movie, Tamala Jones, Wendy Raquel Robinson, and Mo’Nique. Mo’Nique was a wonder, let me tell you. She was one of the last people cast, playing my fashionista friend. The role was originally supposed to be Tyra Banks, and Mo’Nique just loved that she was this big, beautiful woman who was completely believable as my most fashionable friend. She told me her agent called her on a Friday and said, “There’s a Vivica Fox movie starting Monday, are you in?” She said yes without reading the script, and she is so funny in the film.
She had a gift for making the friendship seem real on-screen. There’s a party scene where Morris is dancing up on some women, trying to make me jealous. The three girls are like a Greek chorus, with this rising crescendo of each saying, “What you gon’ do, Shanté?”
Well, she improvised, “What you gon’ do, bitch?”
Mark, the director, jumped in. “No, no, no,” he said. “They’re friends. She can’t call you ‘bitch.’”
There was a pause and I just took him aside.
“Mark, that’s Shanté’s girl,” I said. “She sure can call me ‘bitch.’ This is really how girls speak to each other when it’s just them. It’s like a term of affection.”
There was someone who always called me “bitch” around that time, and I loved her for it. Ms. Whitney Houston. Her then-husband, Bobby Brown, had landed a small role in Two Can Play That Game. Whitney called me just before shooting started.
“Bitch, you better look out for my boy,” she said.
“You know it,” I said. “I got you.”
We connected because our images in magazines were like ice princesses. Black Barbies. But we knew the truth: She had that Jersey in her, and I grew up two blocks from the projects. So we could hang. One night after filming, she called me.
“Hey, what are you doing?” she said. “You want to go out?”
“Girl, I’m just in a warm-up suit.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m casual, too.”
So we decided to meet at the Hotel Bel-Air. As my friend Darren Bond and I were pulling up, there was Whitney. She was wearing an $850,000 sable-fur full-length coat. A star of old Hollywood ready for her close-up.
“Casual?” I yelled. “Casual?”
“Oh, this?” She laughed that huge, amazing laugh of hers and threw the fur on a chair. “I got my jeans on!”
We had some drinks at the bar and got someone to round up a deck of cards. Then we headed to her room and played spades for hours. As we talked, we of course got to what music we loved. We started doing Sade songs together like “No Ordinary Love” and “Smooth Operator.” Whitney was a human being who wanted to live, to love, and to have that private time. To sing just for herself, and not always be a singing doll in a little glass case. When it becomes boring and too much pressure, people rebel. You’re like, I don’t want to be perfect today.
I have a portrait of her in my bedroom that I wake up to every day. And she is smiling, because that’s how I want to remember her.
Two Can Play That Game opened September 7, 2001. We premiered at the old Cineplex Odeon in Century City, and I got out of the limo and saw “Starring Vivica A. Fox” on the marquee. It was the best feeling in the world. The movie made more than its budget back in the first weekend, and I was set to go on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that Tuesday.
Then of course 9/11 happened and there were more important things to worry about. But people are still discovering the film because Mark put in that effort to make it great. When a girl comes up to me with a big, knowing smile, I know she is either going to be telling me all about Two Can Play That Game—or my wigs!
* * *
They told me I had fifteen minutes with Quentin Tarantino.
“Quentin’s going to meet with you in a coffee shop,” my agent said.
“A coffee shop?”
“It’s to see whether or not he likes you,” she said. “Then he’ll let you know if he wants to see you for the part.”
I thought, That’s some shit, but okay. He’d written a role for a black woman in Kill Bill, a script that was already getting so much buzz. Vernita Green was a cold-blooded assassin hiding out in the suburbs of Pasadena—until Uma Thurman comes to get hers.
I was so anxious when I got to that coffee shop. It was like an audition for an audition. The first thing he told me was that he was in a video store and saw my name on the cover of the Two Can Play That Game DVD.
“I was like, ‘Vivica Fox!’” he said, shouting my name like I already was an action hero. “I am going to take this home, and if she moves me on the screen, that’s who’s gonna play my Vernita Green.”
Quentin loves telling stories, and if he likes you, oh, he is going to talk. At like Mach 5. We discussed favorite movies, of course. I talked about Pam Grier and how much I loved her, and Richard Roundtree, who’d played my dad on Generations. “Yeah, I’m Shaft’s daughter,” I joked.
The fifteen-minute meeting stretched to an hour and a half, until he said, “I’m going to send you a scene and I’m going to come to your house and we’ll work through it together.”
“My house?”
“Yeah.”
“Promise me you won’t hold my house against me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just promise me, Quentin.”
He did, and I’m sure he suspected I was a hoarder or some crazy person living in a tiny house. The truth was that I was living in a huge eight-thousand-square-foot mansion in Tarzana. I’d invested in real estate, was doing very well, thank you, and this place frankly looked like a diva lived there. It was straight out of Dynasty, with a double staircase and huge chandelier right when you walked in.
It could easily be mistaken for the home of a spoiled brat who would never follow direction. This was a time in film when studios were not playing. They were tired of problem actors and had dealt with their spoiled stars shutting down productions because of heroin problems. They wanted workers on the straight and narrow, and any red flags could put me out of the running.
I was afraid he would take one look at the place and say, “Here I thought Vivica was hungry.” I still was.
“You promised me you wouldn’t hold it against me.”
“Holy shit,” he said again. “I’m not. Let me see this place.”
Before I could say anything, he helped himself to a tour like he was scouting a location. When he was done, he said he wanted to do the scene in the kitchen. Just like in the film.
He made me read it twice. And then, like he was making an idle remark, he said, “Very good. You are my Vernita Green. I’m hungry, do you want sushi?”
We went out to Kushiyu on Ventura in Tarzana. At dinner, he told me his plan for the film: There would be no quick cuts or getting away with special effects to make us look like real warriors. I had to commit to six months of training, and all of the actors needed to become experts in martial arts to make his vision real on the screen.
“No problem,” I said, thinking back to my high school athlete days. Piece of cake.
Ha.
For three months, Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, and I spent eight hours a day studying martial arts at a gym they put together in Culver City. It was nine to five, Monday through Friday. If you didn’t walk in the door between 8:55 and 8:59, you were in trouble at 9:01. I thought I was in the damn Olympics or something.
Uma was three months out from having her gorgeous baby boy, Roan, and she also brought her equally beautiful four-year-old, Maya, along. Of all the girls on set, I think Uma liked me best because of her kids. I used to play with them all the time. That baby boy would stare into my eyes. “Vivica,” she said one day, “I think he’s in love.” She and I were on strict diets, and we had a ritual of spending our one cheat day a week hanging out at this bowling alley Maya loved. We’d eat slice after slice of cheap pizza, loving every bit of it.
At first, Uma was frustrated because all the other women on the film were dropping weight so quickly with the intense training. I mean, the woman had just had a child. “Don’t worry,” I said, “it’ll come off.” She went to Tokyo to film for a month, and when I saw her again, I walked right past her. She yelled, “Yay! I got skinny!”
Uma needed all the support she could get—the movie rested on her shoulders. She was so busy, and then her and Daryl had that blonde competition thing going on. And I was like, I’m gonna be cool with you and I’m gonna be cool with everybody. I’m not in a pissing contest.
I have to tell you—whether you’re on a movie set or working at a law firm, some people will try to pull you into their drama and make you pick sides. Don’t fall for it. Think for yourself and stay above the fray.
Drama aside, the training itself was brutal. We’d do fight choreography, knife throwing, samurai lessons, and hit the treadmill and weights in between. They liked me because I could do them high kicks from being a cheerleader. And every Friday, at the end of the day, Quentin would gather us around and give us a review. He called it his “State of the Union.” We all had to sit and listen.
The first week Quentin cut into us, telling us we had to work harder. Okay, I can work harder.
Second week, we got the same thing after we busted our asses. He said we weren’t giving it our all.
Third Friday, I was so proud of all that our team had accomplished. I was sitting between cute little Lucy and sweet Uma, and I was ready for a high five for all of us.
Instead, Quentin tore into us. Something about us lollygagging in the morning, taking too long to suit up and gabbing over coffee. He said we should get here at eight-thirty, a half hour early, if we wanted to do all that.
I raised my hand. “Hold up.”
And I lost it on him. “Is this a ‘beat us up’ contest?” I asked. “Are we fucking doing anything right? Goddamn.” Everyone gasped. I felt Uma draw back. Lucy grabbed my hand and was trying to do a kind of acupressure on me, whispering, “Calm down. Calm down.”
I couldn’t. I kept sputtering, thinking I was taking a stand for everyone. And finally Quentin sort of said he appreciated the work but he wanted us all to do our best and to trust him.
Uma came up to me after. “Come here,” she said. She put her arm on my shoulder and those beautiful eyes of hers locked on mine.
“You know, Uma, it’s bullshit,” I said.
She repeated in her calm, meditative voice, “I’ve worked with him. I’ve worked with him. I’ve worked with him. And … it’s how he does things. He doesn’t mean anything by it, it’s just how he gets down.”
“Well, God,” I sputtered, “I mean, we’re working our fucking asses off. And it’s like, you know, we’re not doing anything right.”
“What you need to do is learn how to manipulate the situation better. Then you can get what you want.”
I was all righteous. “I don’t have to manipulate nobody,” I said. “That’s not me. I don’t have to kiss his ass.”
She cocked her head. “No, I don’t mean like that,” she said, still speaking in that calm, soothing voice. “You have to learn to be quiet, speak less. He’s tough, but he’s not stupid. He’ll concede you something if it’s to make the film better. Learn to attack intelligently, Vivica. Because he’s got the power to fire you.”
And she told me she didn’t want that to happen. “But thank you for speaking up,” she said.
That moment was pure sisterhood. She was honestly looking out for me. She wanted me to advocate for myself, but to do it in a way that was more constructive. I’ll admit, it still took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about.
I was driving home from Culver City when I realized why she had touched me so deeply. I thought about my dad, and when he would tell me not to just go off on the basketball court when all my energy had me spazzing out. “Attack intelligently,” he would tell me, the exact same words Uma used. “Don’t blow it by blowing up.”
When it came time for real rehearsals and filming, I got to see Uma give a master class in being a movie star and leader on the set. I watched her argue with Quentin, intelligently and successfully, for wardrobe changes and even dialogue rewrites. She made it a true collaboration, pushing him away from simply making an ode to the samurai films he made us all watch with him, toward something new. Kill Bill is an astonishing work because of their shared efforts, and it’s because they each approached it not as a job, but as a cornerstone of their careers.
I know it’s the work that I am most proud of in my career. It took four days to film our fight scene, and on the last day I took a long bath when it was over. I sat in the tub and counted all the bruises on my arms and legs. I got up to thirty. And I did so with gratitude. I was proud of my battle scars. I had done a Tarantino film, and nobody could take that accomplishment from me. Quentin is a fabulous director and I’d love to work with him again. I appreciate those endless hours in the Culver City torture chamber. It was his way of breaking us down to build us back up.
From Uma, I learned so much about sharing power. She wanted me to do my best. That hasn’t always been the case for black actresses in film. I think the dirty secret of why African American actresses are only now getting more opportunities is that directors were afraid to put a sister against a white actress. Because they knew the sister, who’d had to work her ass off to get to that moment, was always going to shine like the brightest light and blow the white actress off the screen. I say put me with the best. Because if she’s bringing her A game, I’m bringing my A-plus game. And we gonna turn this mother out.
PART TWO
FIND YOUR DREAM—AND ACTUALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN
LESSON FIVE
YOU CAN’T AIM IF YOU DON’T HAVE A TARGET
I just want to briefly address the reader who might be saying, “Shoot, I don’t know what my dream is.” Calm down. Let’s figure it out together.
I’m going to give you some exercises, and the only thing I ask is that you think big.
1. Make a list of jobs you wouldn’t hate doing.
I phrase it like that because sometimes w
hen you’re unhappy with where you are in life, or facing a setback, it’s hard to imagine liking work. So what wouldn’t suck? Go as pie-in-the-sky or far-fetched as you want. That list will tell a lot about you. A friend of mine, Mary, had worked in the corporate litigation department of a law firm for about six years. She had been passed over for partner, and wasn’t sure if she even wanted to make partner anymore. She was miserable. One day after we talked on the phone, she wrote a list of about ten jobs she wouldn’t mind doing. Let’s look at the pros and cons of just two from the list:
Yoga instructor
Divorce lawyer
Examining each one revealed what she truly wanted in life. Her reasoning for considering becoming a yoga instructor seemed obvious to me because she goes every week. But as she talked to me later, her reasons became more detailed. “I like helping people and making that connection,” Mary said. “I would save money on classes, obviously, but there’s a teaching aspect to it that I like.”
As she imagined the scenario, she pictured her own studio. She didn’t want to partner with an existing facility because she was tired of dealing with office politics and clearing everything with someone else. Going on her own would mean finding a space and keeping it maintained, not to mention finding the students to fill it with. She would also need to be certified as an instructor to run a yoga school. That would take two hundred hours of training and money for classes. It didn’t seem like a return on her investment in law school, or the hours she spent miserable in the law firm. “I needed a return on all that time,” she told me.
When she thought about starting her own private practice as a divorce lawyer, she realized it provided some of the things she liked. She would be the boss and wouldn’t have to answer to anyone. She would be helping people through a crisis, teaching them how to look out for themselves. And since she was already licensed as a lawyer, there was no more certification needed other than the continuing education that all lawyers have to do to maintain their bar status.