The limo ride from the Four Seasons Hotel to the Museum of Contemporary Art is a blip on the radar, blink and it’s gone. But for Illeana Douglas, the star of “Action,” the new, much-talked-about Fox network comedy, it’s a trip down memory lane.
“Look, that’s where we saw `Bride of Chucky,’ ” she says, pointing out the car window to the John Hancock building. “I liked it a lot, a friend of mine, Jennifer Tilly, was in it.”
That was a year ago, when she was in Chicago for a couple of months to film “Stir of Echoes,” an urban ghost story directed by “Jurassic Park” screenwriter David Koepp, which premiered as a benefit for the Great Books Foundation last Wednesday at the MCA and which opened in theaters Friday.
“Great steak town, Chicago,” Douglas says as the limo pulls up to the museum.
Leggy, almost spindly, Douglas is an unusual beauty: Soft chestnut hair frames an aquiline face whose most prominent features are lavish lips and simply enormous pale green eyes. For this, the local screening of Koepp’s film she wears a textured black knit dress, a slight velvet jacket and backless black pumps.
The granddaughter of screen legend Melvyn Douglas, Illeana — her mother named her after an exiled Romanian princess who founded a Florida convent — has crafted a career from independent films such as Alison Anders’ “Grace of My Heart” and David Salle’s “Search & Destroy,” balanced with choice Hollywood roles in movies like Martin Scorsese’s “Cape Fear” and Robert Redford’s “Quiz Show.” Among her TV credits are Garry Shandling’s girlfriend on “The Larry Sanders Show” and The Carrot Girl on “Seinfeld.”
At this night’s screening, she may be the star of the show, may in fact be on the cusp of breaking out into major celebrity because of the much-ballyhooed “Action” and Koepp’s “Stir of Echoes,” but as she steps out of the limo, there’s a slightly awkward moment when the onlookers stare, their puzzled faces trying to place hers. She quickly surveys the scene, looking for a familiar visage or an officious publicist to guide the way.
Then, instantly, it all falls into place: The publicists descend, the photographers blink their lights, the TV cameras flood with theirs. Obsequious TV interviewers flash their pearly smiles and Douglas, looking like a chagrined Olive Oyl, plays with the shiny rock on the third finger of her left hand, pulls on her sleeve, and shifts her weight from foot to foot. As she indulges each question, she picks at her nails, which are short and lacquered with a pale pink.
The cameras follow as she strolls gracefully across the sidewalk to the revolving door, where the TV guys get trapped for an instant, each in his own glass compartment, while Douglas steps inside the museum for her second awkward moment. Instead of parting like the Red Sea, the crowd merely draws back, like low tide at Fullerton Beach. Rather than stare, they glance, they peek over each other’s shoulders, unsure of whether it’s cool to look or not.
At first, everyone acts engaged, busy, sipping and chatting. Then a young fellow stretches his head from a circle of friends and, like a periscope, focuses on Douglas. “Hello,” he says, shyly. She turns to him and nods, her smile warm, almost grateful.
Then the dam is broken, and the deluge begins: Men who ask Douglas if their wives can snap their picture together, women from the benefit committee who want to pose with her too, well-wishers, men and women drawn to her by a quiet undertow.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” she says, doffing her jacket, handing it to a publicist who also carries her small, stiff purse.
“I saw `Grace of My Heart’ . . . You were wonderful.”
She demurs. “Thank you,” she says, languidly lowering her lids.
Then Douglas sees Koepp — tall, dishwater blond, bespectacled — standing in the center of the room, talking in the quick cadence of men who are witty and self-assured. They hug and kiss, Douglas placing her cheek on his shoulder. They talk about hotels and club sandwiches, about how loud the MCA lobby seems, about the plexiglass case by the screening room door — a piece by Erika Rothenberg called “America’s Joyous Future,” which looks like those signs outside churches that announce sermons and prayer services; this one lists daily meetings at an imaginary temple.
“What’s today? Oh, Wednesday, eating disorders,” says Douglas, disappointed.
“Yeah but Thursday’s Teenage Suicide Watch,” Koepp notes.
“That’s the sequel to `Blair Witch Project,’ ” she says.
According to Douglas, she and Koepp had instant chemistry when they met. “We had a two-hour meeting about the movie,” she says. “At that point, he hadn’t decided to cast me, but we had so much fun, at the end of it, I said, `You have to, otherwise I’ll be so depressed!’ “
He did (and thank goodness — she’d already passed up two offers to be available for “Stir of Echoes,” which also stars Kevin Bacon), and the friendship grew, at least in part because, at her suggestion they decided to research hypnotism, a critical element in Koepp’s scary story.
“Because I play a hypnotist in the movie, I wanted to know how it was done, what it looked like,” she says. “I wanted it to be accurate.”
While filming here, Koepp found a university-affiliated hypnotist. At the session, they discovered they both fell into the category of “highly hypnotizable,” although not the 8 percent of the population who are “deeply hypnotizable,” like Bacon’s character.
Following the hypnotist’s suggestion to take on only happy, positive subjects during their session, Douglas unearthed a memory of an early acting class, while Koepp hung out at a beach.
“It’s like having a daydream, only it’s directed,” says Douglas. “In my case, the hypnotist asked me to describe my teacher, the other people who were there. With David, he had him to go over to a couple he saw at the beach and talk to them for a bit. Then (the hypnotist) took us both back to high school and asked us what we looked like. Me, I was the same, really, except my hair was longer, I wore blue jeans and a `Young Frankenstein’ T-shirt. But I remembered the color of the lockers — yellow — and even my locker number — 10G. Afterwards, David and I spent the whole day talking about high school, just flooded with memories.”
In Koepp’s “Stir of Echoes” Bacon’s character is also taken over by memories provoked by hypnosis, suppressed memories of a psychic ability he didn’t know he had, a strange telepathy that allows him to communicate with a murdered girl. It’s a tense, thrilling mystery, but Wednesday night at the MCA, Koepp announces he’s not sticking around.
“I’ve seen it 27 times in its entirety,” he says. “I’m going to watch it for a little while and then . . . “
“Yeah, let’s step out, get a drink and catch up,” says Douglas, finishing his sentence.
