Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker

by Barry Sonnenfeld

I kept looking over at Phil, the founder of the company and earlier in his career Humphrey Bogart’s agent, who was growing impatient. He’d rub his face, then sigh in a “silent schmuckian” manner. I assumed that for some unspoken reason, he hated me. I hadn’t been doing much of the talking, so I wasn’t sure what his problem was. Finally, with a huge political grunt, he put his hands on his knees and in a typical old Jewish guy getting up way made a scary noise to help him rise, leaned forward within inches of my face, and said: “You can listen to my boys’ bullshit all you want, but I have a lunch date, so here’s the deal: we’ll either get you work or we won’t. And at the end of the day, you’ll get just as fucked over as everyone else does in this business.” I signed immediately.

Over the years Sweetie warmed to the idea of marrying me. In 1989, I was in New Orleans filming Miller’s Crossing. We got married at the movie’s wrap party, eleven days after Sweetie’s official divorce. The Coens hired a riverboat for the party. Sweetie and I took care of the band and catering. Two people wore white to the ceremony: Sweetie and my mother. The riverboat captain officiated our wedding, surrounded by grips, gaffers, the camera department, and actors from the show. A few friends and relatives came from out of town, including our parents. Rob Reiner and Michele Singer, whom Sweetie and I introduced on the set of When Harry Met Sally, were also there. They married a month later in Hawaii. When the captain turned in my direction and said, “Repeat after me,” I began to sob. I couldn’t get the words out. For literally two minutes, I wept. I was just so happy. The captain looked annoyed. Sweetie looked very, very worried. Behind the captain I was staring at a group of the manliest grips and electricians you’d ever want to work with. Their mouths were open in confusion, disbelief, and awe. “How could one man cry for so long without stopping?” they wondered. After the ceremony, one of the makeup women came up to me and said, “You could have any woman you want. Right now. That was amazing.” As dusk descended on the wedding, champagne glasses were handed out, and Albert Finney, one of the stars of Miller’s Crossing, made a speech full of metaphors. “Barry. Sweetie. As y...

Filming a scene with Civil War reenactors is always hard because they’re sticklers for reality. “We wouldn’t stand like that.” “We wouldn’t run; we’d march.” “I should say that line, not him. I’m a lieutenant.” The reenactors were driving me crazy with their regulations and negativity and, um, fellas, just in case you didn’t know… Wild Wild West is a movie with a made-up story that has an eighty-foot mechanical spider in it. Relax.