Audrey, Too: FFC Interviews Ellen Greene

by Walter Chaw I was a full-grown man before I understood completely the grace of Audrey. Audrey, as interpreted by the legendary Ellen Greene in Frank Oz’s big-screen adaptation of the Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors, one of my beloved films from childhood. Audrey, who saw in nebbishy amateur horticulturalist Seymour the champion of her dignity, the guardian of her heart. Greene was a fixture of Joe Papp’s Public Theater in New York, a place she has described as an egalitarian artists’ studio so full of the gifted that no one was gifted. It’s where she cut her teeth as one of the most ferociously singular performers of her time. I have always been in awe of her absolute commitment to a role, her transparency and extraordinary vulnerability. She has been an inspiration for me to be present and unafraid in my own work, even if it takes a toll. Especially if it takes a toll.

Ms. Greene has described herself as a “caretaker,” and I see elements of her desire to heal in her performances, particularly on her two eclectic albums with ex-husband Christian Klikovits (2004’s In His Eyes and 2014’s Songs for a Winter’s Night), which cover a handful of my most treasured songs. She spent much of the ’90s away from the stage to look after all of the friends she was losing to the last years of the AIDS epidemic. She didn’t have it in her to sing, she said. Too heartbroken. In 2015, she returned for an encore run of Little Shop‘s stage version at New York City Center opposite a starstruck Jake Gyllenhaal. Interviewed by PLAYBILL at the time, he spoke for me when he said:

She’s so brilliant and talented… When I was a boy and I saw the [‘Little Shop’] movie, she was this mix of sexuality…and this oddity I couldn’t seem to understand. All the things that she really is, but as a boy watching it, I sort of fell in love with her…

It was while watching videos of this revival that I heard, for maybe the first time, the brutal introspection and doubt that drive Audrey–and the hope that, despite the “terrible life” she’d lived, she could be seen for who she truly is and respected for her perseverance and essential decency. The role she’d crafted with her dear friend, the late Howard Ashman, took on the gravity of so much troubled water under a bridge of turbulent decades. Really, the gravity was always there–it just took me my own long stretches of rough road to appreciate it. I also love her as the empathetic teacher in Pump Up the Volume, a defining film of my high-school years. I’m delighted any time she pops up in a new movie or television show.

Ms. Greene is back again, starring in a short film called Beatrix is Invisible: a modest tour de force from writer-director Alex Farias centred around an older woman who wonders if she has done enough in the measure of things and whether she has finally earned a break from the hell of self- appraisal and loathing. I see it as the crowning achievement of a long, idiosyncratic, defiantly original career. Our interview began with me asking her to elaborate on how her acting and singing were extensions of a desire to be a caretaker of her audience.

ELLEN GREENE: I couldn’t do it any other way. You can’t escape who you are, and that’s, you know–I like to give, and I like to touch people and make them feel, make them think. I’ve taken some really rough roles that are really tough, like In the Boom Boom Room or David Hare’s Teeth ‘n’ Smiles that Helen Mirren originally did. Those two plays were very rough and very hard to live with, but I do like to do them. In fact, that’s what they used to say: I like to take parts that no one else wants to live with. Threepenny Opera was very hard to live with also. But I don’t know if I can touch people or make them think if the work doesn’t have a hard edge. Part of it, too, is it has to make me feel first, and then I feel like if I can feel it, then I can get you to open up and either cry or make you giggle.

FILM FREAK CENTRAL: That’s Audrey.
Yeah, just like Audrey. Just when you’re about to cry, I make you laugh. And just when you’re about to laugh, I make you cry, because I, you know, that’s all we have is our feelings.

How do you leave yourself open?
Well, you have to be authentic yourself. That’s the first thing. If you don’t know who you are, you better find that out first before you want to interpret and become other characters.

You make us feel seen and accepted.
Well, at least it’s what I’ve been told. Yeah. You’re not alone. We all do scary things. You know, when you open up, you tell someone, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” It’s okay to be hurt, and vulnerable, and to feel this way.

There’s a scene with a Rabbi in Beatrix is Invisible that spoke to me about my perception of you.
I thought that sequence was profound. It was asking an existential question about if they had done enough in their lives to matter, and I thought, who doesn’t? Who doesn’t ask themselves how they measure up, and who are they? And for the character, Beatrix, she has no vocation. She’s not on social media. She was a wife and a mother. She had sex. She was of this world, and now she doesn’t have a husband. We don’t know where he is. Her daughter’s full-grown with her own life. And who is she now? She doesn’t seem to have any friends. That’s the whole thing. It was a different kind of character for me because I’ve always known who I wanted to be, since I was very little.

You called it?
You know how you have to always write [that] thing, “What I wanna be when I grow up”? Well, I wrote, I wanna be an actor, singer, or dancer because I wanna be a witch fairy princess or tell someone off. So, obviously, I must have had a problem telling somebody off, and I probably still am not very good at it. But I always knew from a very young age what I wanted to be when I grew up. And It was a beautifully written essay, if I do say so. I was in second grade. (laughs)

“Either do it with your whole heart or don’t do it at all.”

Is Beatrix like you?
No, she’s nothing like me in actual fact. I am not sad. I definitely know who I am, but the, the journey of Beatrix? Mm-hmm. The end, when she decides to use what she has to give herself; to become a muse for others to create art, that was all [writer-director] Alex [Farias], who is brilliant and wonderful. I said to her, “Okay, how do you envision it?” The ending. I told her, “You know what? You strip, get in front of a camera, and show me what you want.” And of course, she was too shy. But she got someone else, and she made a short little film, and then I in turn made a video. I’m not a Botticelli or Rubenesque type, more of an Erté, and so I’m thinking in Erté poses, and I did a video of me naked at 72, which I sent to my beloved Stephen LaManna, my close friend and agent, and I also sent it to Bruce Cohen, who is my very good friend. And I asked them, “Am I nuts that I’m thinking of doing this at this age? Because I’ve been naked before, but never like this.” Well, they both said yes, and they both said, you definitely, you have to do the nude scene. If you don’t do the nude scene, don’t do [the movie]. When Bruce Cohen says something, listen.

What did you want to give Beatrix?
She loves art so much. I want you to get that. I want you to get that she’s a nice person, she’s a good person, she’s a caring person. Like, she talks to that boy right before she throws all her emotions out in the car in the privacy of the car wash. She expresses all of her emotions, but doesn’t burden someone else with them, so in this way she takes care, and then again by becoming and giving of herself as a model to the artists who are drawing. What does she have at her disposal? If you are a cook, what do you have to use? Beatrix, at her disposal, what are her assets? She can give, she’s generous. She’s not eloquent and doesn’t perform, but what she has is a body and a presence, and she is unashamed. We think she’s gonna go to the artist class and be part of the artist’s drawings, but instead she becomes–I mean, that’s how I meant it–a muse.

Do you think of your career in this way when you look back on it? Was it a calling?
I don’t know if it’s a calling. I know I couldn’t do anything else. It’s organic in me. I had two homes starting out: Reno Sweeney, where I sang, and The Public Theater. I’ve been very fortunate to have great directors. All throughout my career, I’ve had great actors to work with, and I’ve had people, a lot of them who are no longer here, who believed in me. And when you have someone who believes in you… Like with Howard [Ashman], he… He just loved me, and he let me make Audrey. She was just brunette and just a sweet woman, and I made her something else, and every time something got added, he just laughed and he just loved me. It’s amazing when people believe in you, how far you can go. I was fortunate. I had so many different people who were kind to me because everyone who walked in the door at the Public left their egos at the door. Joe [Papp], after auditioning me several different times, took a chance on me. I know I was one of the few people who entered through the back door, so to speak, without a degree. That’s probably why I like working with young talent, because if I wasn’t given a chance…

You fought.
He kept saying, “Why should I give you the job?” And I said, “Because I can do it.” “But why should I give you a job?” “Because I can do it.”

You believed in yourself.
You have to have a belief in yourself. When you create, you have to, you know. Somebody once said you gotta want it more than your mother, so I don’t know, but you gotta want it pretty badly.

You’re so raw in Paul Mazursky’s Next Stop, Greenwich Village (Greene’s screen debut, from 1976-Ed.).
It’s funny you brought that one up. That was my first film. I was 24. I got that right after In the Boom Boom Room. I had a great review in the TIMES, and Paul [Mazursky] came. I had to do a nude dance at the end of that one, and Paul gave me the film right after the play. (laughs) To be honest, I have stage fright, and that’s because I know I’m about to open up, I think–to be vulnerable and on display. But that’s my job, the way I see it. I open up so you can open up. I show you my vulnerability so you can be vulnerable with me. I know not every part calls for that. I mean, Sarah in Next Stop, Greenwich Village was hard as nails, but I will say, in order to find the anger of a role, if that’s what’s required, you have to go to the core. Below anger is hurt. When you go to the bottom of a feeling and find what the core is, I think you find very often it’s pain. For me to do it, I need to know the essence of that character and the essence of the moment they find themselves in. But I do it because that’s my job and that’s my, I suppose, that’s where my talent is: I can overcome my fear and I can reach into the core of it. When I do it, I know when I sing, if I’m honest and bare when I do it, I can touch people, and I know sometimes I can even make them feel healed.

Do you feel any of that strength in return? Do you feel healed?
Oh my God, every fan I’ve ever met wants me to hug them, so I just hug them. My fanbase is very strong and very personal. In Judaism, there’s this idea that you give yourself. There’s only one way to do something, at least that I learned at the Public Theater, where I was under Joe Papp’s mentorship. I learned you do it all the way. You don’t leave it backstage. You don’t leave it behind the scenes. You give it your all, or you don’t do it. Even if some things are harder, like In the Boom Boom Room… I couldn’t do that part forever. It’s emotionally taxing, but even if I [don’t] have that strong support from my audience, I don’t feel regret or violated. I’m doing it of my own free will. I just know that that’s the job, and sometimes the job is hard. I mean, don’t do it half-assed. Either do it with your whole heart or don’t do it at all.