#THE MASK CHER MOVIE#

#THE MASK CHER MOVIE#

One day he said, 'Just remember, this movie isn't about the woman. 'At the time, I was so unsure of myself, and he wasn't very nice. 'Peter Bogdanovich was my worst,' she said years later, while discussing the directors she's worked with. Cher claimed that the director would go into great detail over how she should play every scene, then she'd simply ignore him and do it her way. '(Rusty) had to be free, outspoken, tough,' he later said, 'but also a lot more vulnerable than she lets on, which I think is also true of Cher.'Д«ogdanovich may have seen a connection between his star and the character she was going to play, but that still didn't stop him from trying to choreograph her every move. From the moment I read it, it just seemed very real.' Bogdanovich felt Cher was perfect for the part. Then I went back to the middle, finished it, and I mean, I was hysterical. So I went upstairs and started to read it and when I was halfway through I was so upset that I went right to the ending, and I was a mess.

She later recalled her initial, highly emotional reaction to Phelan's screenplay: 'I got the script along with this really wonderful letter from (producer) Marty Starger saying that they (Starger andД«ogdanovich) wanted me for the movie and they hoped I liked the script as much as they did. Screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan claimed to have written the original version of Mask's script with an 8 x 10 photograph of Cher on the wall for inspiration, so it's fortuitous that Cher eventually wanted to play Rusty. He and Cher both give beautifully measured performances. This character study is especially successful when you consider that Stoltz, who is covered in facial prosthetics, has to convey his emotions via his eyes. One of Rocky's goals in life is to meet a girl who will fall in love with him despite his disfigurement, and he gets the chance when he meets Diana (Laura Dern), a beautiful blind girl. When Rocky isn't busy watching after his selfish mother, he attempts to live a normal life.

Rocky's mother, Rusty, is a classic drug-abusing 'biker chick' who hangs out with a bunch of motorcyclists led by Gar (Sam Elliott). Mask is based on the true story of Rocky Dennis (Eric Stoltz), an exceptionally kind, sensitive teenager who suffers from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a condition in which calcium forms on the skull and causes it to grow to an unsightly, abnormal size. His resurgence would turn out to be short-lived.

In fact, by the time it was completed, he had alienated an entire film studio, and Cher was willing to tell anyone within earshot that she hated his guts. The film may have done well at the box office, and it may have helped solidify Cher's standing as a legitimate screen actress, but it was far from a breeze for Bogdanovich to make. It was something of a shock, then, when Bogdanovich scored a critical and commercial hit with a 1985 tear-jerker called Mask. A major round of industry schadenfreude ensued. Bogdanovich's reportedly enormous ego, a very public breakup with his wife, financial problems, and a couple of irredeemable box office bombs starring his semi-talented new squeeze, Cybil Shepherd, all helped turn the boy genius into a laughingstock within the film community. In other words, the studios could go to hell.

Bogdanovich even joined Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin in forming a company that would give them complete control and financing for any pictures they wanted to make. Then came the popular screwball comedy, What's Up, Doc? (1972), and the Howard Hawks-inspired Depression-era road picture, Paper Moon (1973). After directing a remarkably inventive, no-budget thriller called Targets (1968), Bogdanovich graduated to the majors with The Last Picture Show (1971), one of the more evocative ruminations on small-town American life ever committed to film. By Hollywood standards, Peter Bogdanovich was riding about as high as you can get in the early 1970s.

The mask cher