Play it again, Pam

Interview, Jan, 1998 by Michael Keaton

MICHAEL KEATON: So you know what's interesting? It's how everyone [at this hotel] knows you and is on first-name terms with you.

PAM GRIER: And hugs! [laughs]

MK: I remember when we worked together [on Jackie Brown], you got respect by not needing attention. If someone's real secure, they don't need to be doing stuff to make the spotlight come to them all the time.

PG: Mm-hmm. I think I've been given a lot, so I have a lot to give back to people, so we can really work well together. I don't think I'm a needy person. My needs are very few and simple. Right now I've got a TV and room service - lots of room service. What else? Cigarettes, condoms. [laughs]

MK: What does it mean to you that Quentin wrote Jackie Brown for you?

PG: Working on that set validated being alive for me. I was so excited - I mean, not many people write something for you and call you and tell you, "Hey, guess what I wrote for you?" And this is a director who could go out and do an eighty-million-dollar movie with anybody he wanted. I asked him, "Why you wanna do it with me? With Pam?" And Quentin said, "Because [in the films Grief made in the '70s] you were about courage, and it was so unique. You were a black woman in a world where there was always a fence. And you always found the fence and the place to jump over it - and then you jumped over it!"

MK: Damn right. And what's cool is that you didn't stop at playing the "black chick with a gun." You were in projects as diverse as Fort Apache, the Bronx [1981] and Fool for Love [play, 1986].

PG: Yeah, and I gained eighty pounds to do Frankie and Johnny [at the Clair de Lune, play, 1990]. That was hard because people have such a prejudice against overweight women. I have never been so ostracized and criticized as I was at that time, and some of the people who made fun of me were directors who knew I'd put the weight on for the play and could lose it in time to do the role that I was seeing them about. But they just could not stand looking at me. And guys I used to go out with wouldn't go on dates with me. Sometimes I'd go back to the theater in tears. The funny thing was, I really enjoyed eating - I ate things I'd never eaten before.

MK: Well, eating Is part of your life - I met your mom and she's big on cooking. You can put on fifteen pounds Just walking post your house.

PG: [laughs] Coming from rural Wyoming, there wasn't a lot of food around when she was growing up. Her great-granddad owned a hotel, called the Davis Hotel, for blacks and Chinese railroad workers. They'd have the same stew and potatoes every night. Food, to her, is the most precious gift you can give someone. When she visited people later on, she'd always bring a cake or a pie or some of the home brew that she was always brewing in the basement and that we used to nip off when we were kids. It'd get us so buzzed, we couldn't get back up the steps - it was some serious mash! Homemade bourbon, man. You'd see double for three days! Forget Mad Dog. [MK laughs] Matter of fact, you'd find kids lying all over our steps 'cause they couldn't get to the top. Food is a way of rewarding and being rewarded and sharing what nurtures you - it's more than money. That's what I love about my midwestern upbringing: the nourishment of the body, and therefore of your mind and your soul and your spirit. Especially if you know someone's been cookin' all day and sweatin' in the sauce - just to add that little kick to it.

MK: [laughs] Going back to Jackie Brown, you and I did a scene, and then i was off for a couple of weeks. When I came back, we had to do the scene again, and i said to Quentin, "Whoa. In that week and a half I was off, Pam made an Incredible leap." Because on those first couple of days shooting, you were kinda out of it, weren't you?

PG: I was gettin' kicked in the ass from life, man. Yeah, I didn't have a good start because I'd been through something so emotional, it was, like, killin' me. I was engaged and [my fiance] was very supportive, but stuff was coming up and it wasn't the right time for us to talk about the engagement thing - not when I was starting a movie with a tremendous amount of dialogue. My heart was getting broken, and I couldn't separate all that from the work. How do you separate?

MK: You should've gone down to the girls in the hair salon and asked their advice.

PG: Hey, I got their advice. And Quentin and Mira [Sorvino] helped me a lot. But then one day one of my dogs died, and it was luke, Ahh, man. What other shots you gonna give me while I'm trying to do Jackie? I don't think people really know what an actor goes through trying to do the work and deal with all the emotional shit that comes with your personal life. You're not a machine, and it's gonna come to the set with you, but you gotta keep tryin' to push it off.

There was this one scene I was doing with Sam [L. Jackson] just after my dog had expired, and it was a scene that carries a lot of information and moves the story along. I was ready the night before, and I felt so excited, but by the time I got to the set it was like, Psshh! I was trying not to cry, but tears were welling up. I needed to take half the day off to deal with it and then come back. But no, I thought I could do it. Wrong. You're a human being. You cannot do it. I couldn't get through the speech, and I knew. I said to Sam, "I'm so sorry. I'm just going through so much right now." And then the tears started coming out of my eyes. Sam reached over and wiped the tears from my face, and held his fingers on my face to give me that extra . . . support, energy, whatever it was. And he was going, "I know, baby, I know. We all go through it. It's just that today's your day. I'm here for you, whatever I can do." Quentin pulled me away and let me cry for a few minutes, and then everyone rallied 'round and helped me. It was just one of those days.