`I`m here-ere,” said a smiling Richard Gere, strolling into a New York hotel room. He was a few minutes and a few years late.
The 37-year-old, strikingly handsome, leading man was only minutes late for a scheduled interview about his latest film, ”No Mercy,” a Chicago-and- Louisiana-based cop thriller, co-starring Kim Basinger.
But Gere was a half-dozen years late meeting many members of the press, who regularly had pursued him for an interview, the decision always hanging on whether Gere liked the movie and his performance in it.
And although he had done an occasional national magazine interview during this period, Gere hadn`t held a series of press interviews, as he did this past weekend, since 1980, when he was earning rave reviews on Broadway in the homosexual drama ”Bent” while his first hit movie, ”American Gigolo,” also was in release.
Since that time, Gere has pretty much kept to himself, avoiding the media while making one smash hit, ”An Officer and a Gentleman,” followed by a string of well-intentioned but noncommercial movies, including ”Breathless,” ”Beyond the Limit,” ”King David,” ”The Cotton Club,” and ”Power.”
So why the coming-out party now for what is little more than a cheap, violent version of ”Witness” set in the Bayou country, as a tough cop is tenderized by a beautiful woman? Part of the answer had to be that Gere had a significant profit participation in the film.
”Yes, but basically my publicist said it was about time,” he admitted, settling down into a straight-backed chair and ordering a breakfast of cereal and fruit. (His preference: Shredded Wheat and raspberries.)
He was wearing a fashionable brown tweed jacket, a blue scarf, dark brown garbardine slacks, and no belt. His salt and pepper hair was surprisingly gray; his eyes are deep brown.
Only an ordinary striped pink shirt marred the fashionable image Gere inherited ever since he played a $1,000-a-night stud in ”American Gigolo,”
the film that made him a star but also tagged him as more of a sex symbol than an actor.
”It`s been that way ever since that film,” he said. ”I finally caved in a couple of years ago and gave an interview to Newsweek, and we talked about all sorts of serious issues, but their article was about the same old thing–a cover story on matinee idols.
”I`m used to it by now,” he said. ”People completely misunderstood
`American Gigolo.` They thought we were endorsing my character`s lifestyle
–particularly the clothes.
”But it wasn`t intended to be that at all. It`s one of my favorite and, I think, most sophisticated films. But it wasn`t opened in art houses as I had hoped it might have been. Instead it came out with a sexy ad campaign and a huge theatrical release. (Gere also cooperated with a fashion layout in Gentleman`s Quarterly at the time.)
”That obscured the point that (writer-director) Paul Schrader was trying to make by filming these materialistic images as sort of a two-dimensional magazine layout. We were putting down this aspect of this guy`s life: the clothes, the car, the furnishings.”
Gere`s character of Julian Kaye may have been lacking in depth, but audiences all over the world fell for him as a handsome hunk, and the imprint has stuck.
Actually a close viewing of the film reveals a much more serious theme that Gere himself agrees is fundamental to his work.
At the end of ”Gigolo,” Julian, the stud-for-hire, literally reaches his hand out for a woman`s love, and this isn`t the first time that Gere`s often-flashy characters have called out for emotional contact.
He searched for his father`s love in ”Bloodbrothers,” an underrrated Italian family drama. He searched for a father-figure as well as a woman he could truly trust in his biggest hit, ”An Officer and a Gentleman.” And even in ”No Mercy,” his latest picture, he plays an embittered divorcee who needs a woman to find his emotional way home.
”I think we all have these emotional wounds that we carry around with us all the time,” Gere said. ”It`s almost as if we have these bags that we constantly stuff full of our problems, and that`s why I think that some of us get stooped over when we`re old, `cause our bags are so filled with hurts and problems.
”The challenge in life,” he said, ”is to create sort of a hologram of a healthy person and try to make yourself fit into that hologram.”
Such personal speeches are rare for Gere, a philosophy major in college turned stage actor, who typically prefers to talk about his work more than himself.
Yet he agreed that he has accomplished his share of bag-emptying over the years, which accounted for his current good mood. He had just finished campaigning for two female Democratic candidates for Congress in his native New England (one won; one lost), and his ongoing travels on behalf of the beleaguered people of the Third World have taken him around the globe.
He also said, after being asked, that he has contributed ”tens of thousands” of dollars to each of such causes as AIDS and cancer research, as well as Tibetan and Central American relief.
Those efforts undoubtedly have helped Gere empty his problem-filled bag. He was also asked if he relied upon his parents, a psychiatrist and a women for help–he`s had an on-again-off-again relationship with Brazilian painter Sylvia Martins for many years.
”All of the above,” he said.
He also said that ”of course,” someday, he would like to have children. Loosened up now, Gere began bantering about a number of subjects, including the watch he wears–an inexpensive Rolex he foolishly accepted from a clever producer in lieu of $20,000 in overtime pay he was due on ”An Officer and a Gentleman.”
And then he confessed what he said was the primary reason he agreed to give this series of interviews right now.
”The movie (opening nationwide Dec. 19) can use some help,” he said,
”but the real reason I`m here is so that I can talk to a bunch a journalists about the crises in Tibet and Central America, which are causes I care very much about.”
Gere said he had made many investigative visits to Central America in the company of knowledgeable people.
In each case, he returned home condemning the U.S. government for what he considers its failure to support Tibet in its struggle against Communist China, and its active military interference in Central America, specifically El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
He said he plans to continue his efforts to bring the truth to the American public.
”The only reason I did the `Dick Cavett Show` recently, was to talk movie junk for five minutes and then bring on my friend Charles Clemens, who won an Academy award for his (Nicaragua) documentary, `Witness to War.` ”
Listening to Gere talk this way forced only one conclusion: You can challenge his opinions if you have better facts, but you have to admit there is more to him than his ”Gigolo”-inspired, clothes-horse image.
But what about his recent movies, none of which has rung the public`s bell. One industry colleague questioned Gere`s ability to pick scripts.
In response, the actor gave his rationale for selecting his last few films:
— ”Breathless”: ”What I like about this guy is that he was totally upfront about everything he wanted: the woman, the car, the money. So many people are so unknowing or afraid of going after what they want that this guy appealed to me.”
— ”Beyond the Limit”: This guy (a doctor) was just the opposite of the guy in `Breathless,` and I did these pictures together with just one week off between them. It was fun for me to go from playing this upfront guy (in
”Breathless”) to this totally mentally constipated man.”
— ”King David”: ”I thought the movie was important as an examination of what makes a leader, because we live in a time where there are no great leaders, and David was a great leader. Also, what I liked is that the film was trying to show that current problems in the Middle East are centuries old and are based basically on the worship of different Gods and upon their commandments. It all depends upon which God you follow as to what you believe should be done there.”
— ”The Cotton Club”: ”Unfortunately, that`s a very long story, but to make it simple we never had a script when we started filming. We did have about 70 percent of a satisfactory script at one time, but then it was thrown out (and was replaced with a Francis Coppola rewrite that Gere apparently found wanting). You can`t make a movie without a script; it`s the bedrock of communication with the audience, and we just didn`t have it.”
— ”Power”: ”That one (a story of amoral political consultants as hired guns) speaks for itself. It`s about a complex world of media
manipulators who exist and flourish because we lack real leaders.”
— ”No Mercy”: ”It`s not the kind of movie I normally do, but I was drawn to it as a classic mythic story. The hero (a Chicago cop played by Gere) has been hurt (by his ex-wife), and then his friend is killed by this monster (a Bayou mobster). The monster withdraws, the hero has to find him by crossing a River Styx, the bayou. He first must kill the monster, and, later, with the help of a woman he is spiritually reopened and only then can he go back home.”
Gere`s reference to his character`s spiritual reopening in ”No Mercy”
struck a chord as a major theme of his work. So often he has played men who find sex easier than love, action easier than understanding.
His characters have not been at peace at the beginning of his films, and, often, at the end they are healed.
”I think healing is what we`re all looking for,” Gere said, ” and I could live with that as a description of a lot of my films.
”You know, the biggest reaction of course has been to `An Officer and a Gentleman.` I hear about it everywhere in the world I go: in the Far East, in the jungle. People love that movie. And I think as much as the love story, what they tell me they like about the film is the guy`s story of conquering his past.
”We all,” said Richard Gere, once known as just a pinup boy, ”can relate to that.”
