Sex, life and flirting with disaster

Thursday, April 4, 1996

By Dina Gachman

Daily Bruin Contributor

Most of the time, reality is the strangest place to be,
something the recently released comedy, "Flirting With Disaster,"
proves. Sex, marriage and family take on many strange forms in the
film.

Written and directed by David Russell, "Flirting With Disaster"
follows Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) as he searches for his biological
parents. It seems like Mel’s mid-life crisis has hit him a bit too
early, and his neurotic confusion only escalates as he dives into a
familial abyss. The film, which is picking up momentum and
screening in more theaters since its release, also stars Patricia
Arquette and Tea Leoni.

All of the cast members were drawn to the project for one reason
­ Russell’s talent as a filmmaker. His award-winning debut,
"Spanking the Monkey," about a young man’s frustrations and an
incestuous relationship with his bed-ridden mother, was a far cry
from the more lighthearted content of his second effort.

Russell’s diversity is what initially impressed Arquette, who
plays Mel’s wife, Nancy.

"When I got this script, I thought ‘my God, this is so totally
different than that,’" she says. "That is a mark of somebody who’s
really talented. They can take one genre and explode, and then go
to a completely different kind of film."

Russell’s talent was realized in 1994, when "Spanking the
Monkey" garnered the Audience Award for Best Picture at 1994’s
Sundance Film Festival. Before beginning his film career, Russell
attended Amherst College, where he excelled in creative writing.
After graduating in 1981, he became a union organizer in a small
mill town on the East Coast. Later, Russell discovered a love for
documentary filmmaking, which eventually led to his burgeoning film
career.

"Flirting With Disaster" reveals Russell’s ability to make the
serious things in life seem funny, while the comic aspects are
packed with larger meanings. Especially important to the story,
believes the director, are the female characters. What baffles
Russell is the fact that one studio rejected the script on the
grounds that it was misogynist.

"In the original, all the women were shot, so maybe that’s what
they were referring to," he jokes. "I don’t know what they were
talking about. I really don’t. What I love is that you have two
completely different kinds of women. They’re sexual in completely
different ways, and both of them are equally interesting."

These opposite types of women are played by Arquette and Tea
Leoni, who stars in the television comedy "The Naked Truth." The
filmmaker describes the appeal of Arquette’s character as a
"beautiful earthiness," and Leoni’s as "kineticness and wiriness."
In the film, Arquette’s character seduces Mel by placing flower
petals in her pastel teddy, while Leoni simply, and ferociously,
attacks him. Russell’s script impressed Arquette with its realistic
female characters, and she easily identified with her role.

"I knew she wasn’t like the pinball character ­ all
flashy," she says. "But I knew that she was the core, or the base
of the movie so you could believe everything else."

Arquette dismisses the studio’s claim that Russell’s script is
misogynistic, and believes that it is instead an honest look at
human relationships and emotions. "If you’re in for the long haul
in love," she says, "sometimes you get taken for granted. Sometimes
that temptation is always around the corner."

The film is not just about Mel’s temptations and needs, and
Russell gives all of the characters humor and depth ­
especially the parents. He recruited George Segal and Mary Tyler
Moore to play Mel’s neurotic adoptive parents, and Lily Tomlin and
Alan Alda are the biological parents who whip up LSD in their
basement, and practice Kama Sutra in front of their younger son,
Lonnie. Russell says that placing the veteran actors in these roles
was "a great lesson in casting against type," but working with them
was difficult at first.

"I was deeply intimidated," says Russell. "I can’t imagine that
any film will ever be as hard for me as this one, but it didn’t
stop me from bossing them around."

Arquette experienced similar feelings as her director when they
began shooting, because she grew up watching these actors on the
screen.

"I was in a cold sweat" she says. "I had sweaty palms, white
knuckles. They put the camera on me and I’m baby wrangling, and
these people are probably like ‘Can’t we go home? What happened to
doing things the old way?’"

This intimidation quickly faded, and the result is a film full
of chaotic, quirky humor that is oddly reminiscent of everyday
life. For the director, it is the absurd parts of life that are the
most realistic.

"As Fitzgerald said," says Russell, "’the good things in America
all go crazy.’"

From left: Mary Tyler Moore and George Segal play psycho
parents.

David Patrick Kelly (left) and Ben Stiller star in David
Russell’s familial comedy, "Flirting With Disaster."