From `Fish lips' via the worst movie of the decade to `the new Raquel Welch' is quite a career
curve - it's been a crazy couple of years for Gina Gershon. Has her appearance in John Woo's
bodyswitching Face/Off - with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage - strangled the Showgirls albatross
and wrenched the Superglued rhinestones from her nipples once and for all? The answer is yes.
It can't be easy having starred - and been no less awful than everyone else - in the preposterous
Paul Verhoeven skinflick; it must be doubly difficult when your career owes so much to it.
Gershon's reaction to the Showgirls debacle has been contradictory: one minute she's extolling
the film's virtues (`There was a message in there that's relevant to women'), the next, she's
mortified (`Every night I'd sit in the bath tub crying'). When I meet her over a cuppa in the
Dorchester Hotel, I'm prepared to spare her blushes, but she raises the subject herself.
`Showgirls was good to me,' she purrs, curling up on the sofa. `Once you are - quote unquote - a
name, it becomes easier to get the independent projects you want to do. I was happy to do
Showgirls because it allowed me to do Bound.' Aha, Bound. Almost as notorious as, though
immeasurably superior to, Showgirls, this `lesbian film noir' cast Gershon as a Brando-esque
ex-con plumber who, after much Mafia bloodletting, scarpers with $2 million under one arm and
buxom gangster's moll Jennifer Tilly under the other. The film established Gershon's cred as an
actress unafraid to go out on a limb; and the more succulent that limb, the better. It also whipped
up a froth of interest in Gershon's sexuality. Her calculated playfulness (`I got really used to
kissing girls. They're much gentler and have sweeter breath') took blithe advantage. Later
revelations of a relationship with an irrefutably male LA restaurateur left not a dent in Gershon's
hefty gay following.
Part of the appeal, of course, is the pout. Both `Fish lips' - a childhood taunt - and the Raquel Welch
tag refer to Gershon's distinctive mouth. Perhaps, it hosts too many teeth. Certainly, if lips can be
bee-stung, it looks like a whole swarm got to this pair. The effect is a pugnacious beauty, albeit
one that's mellower in person than it ever appeared on screen.
She's got more of a sense of fun than her movies allow, too. Our meeting is part of Face/Off's
publicity drive. Her welcome - `John and Nic couldn't show up, so they sent me' - is difficult to
resist. It's 10am and she protests dizzy bewilderment. `I have to talk about Face/Off. You have to
ask me questions and I'll answer them. I'm not too creative on my own.' Describing her
experiences making the film, she says `there's so much mayhem going on, you see all those big
guys with machine guns running at you, you just want to start crying'. Maybe that's just part of the
patter, but it hardly tallies with the tough-girl image. This is a woman who practises martial arts
and kicks back at the Beverly Hills Gun Club for fun.
So who is Gina Gershon? She's the face you think you saw in Cocktail, copping off with Tom
Cruise; in Red Heat with Arnie; maybe even in Robert Altman's The Player. `For the first few films I
was in, people never knew it was me, or even that it was the same girl doing all those parts. Which
I loved.' During this period, fresh out of school, Gershon formed Naked Angels theatre company
with Rob Morrow and Marisa Tomei. I'd imagined questions about theatre - artistic freedom, and all
that - would animate Gershon. But at 31, it seems she's losing interest. Although she says that,
like Morrow earlier this year, she'd come to the West End `in a second', she admits, `I haven't done
a play in two years. I really, really love film.' She really, really loved Face/Off too. `I'm just glad to
be a part of it,' she says with apparently unfeigned appreciation. She discusses with customary
candour her on-set highs and lows: love scenes with the unshaven Cage she described as `like
making out with Fred Flintstone'. But working on the movie was a hoot because the thought of
Travolta and Cage inhabiting one another's bodies meant that `there were so many jokes {a
mischievous grin here} waiting to be told'.
Meeting John Woo topped even that. `I have to be honest: action films, I don't go see them.'
Notwithstanding this, and the fact that her role in his hi-tech epic - as the abandoned mother of
terrorist Castor Troy's five-year-old sprog - is a minor one, the actress was wowed by the Hong
Kong splatter-master's professionalism and personal charm. `He's so humble and gracious and
he's such an incredible film-maker. He shoots those poetic, balletic action scenes in real time!
People say, `Do you get tired doing it again and again?' I'm like, `What are you talking about? He
blows up the set and that set stays blown up." Gershon's face lights up: `I want to see John Woo
do a musical. His films are like musicals, completely choreographed. A John Woo musical, how
great would that be? It'd be pretty wild. I told him, if you do one, count me in.' Gershon gets
genuinely excited by the idea. I think she's got a vivid cinematic imagination; either that or a relish
of silliness. One conversation about Face/Off's outlandish premise leads Gershon off on one about
a movie she suddenly fancies making about genetic engineering. `Do you think they'll ever put
humans inside a sheep? That'd be a cool film, right? There's the perfect baby, and they're gonna
kill it because it's the last on the planet, so they hide the baby in a sheep. That'd be a cool story. .
.' To those unconvinced, I plead in Gershon's defence `a conventional Californian surfer chick'
background which her mode of expression hasn't entirely outgrown. And besides, she's spooked
by genetics, blaming an episode of the Twilight Zone about the cloning of teenage girls which `left
a very eerie impression on me when I was little'.
Sheep Baby Of The Apocalypse, however, will have to wait. Gershon's currently at work on the
script of a `true love' story with old pal Dave Stewart, of Eurythmics fame (`He's trying to get me to
do a country album with him too'). Stewart will be directing their brainchild, Love Is A Drug.
Gershon's own directing ambitions are more long-term; for now, she speaks fondly of how both
Woo and Robert Altman solicited her input. She's also busy: forthcoming film roles include the
third in her `trilogy of perversion', in which she and Billy Zane get incestuous; her `first adult love
story', a tale of romance and Nazism in Prague; and there's a Paul Auster project on the go with
Vanessa Redgrave.
`I don't consider myself a movie star. I'm not like John Travolta and Nic Cage. I think I will be,
though.' I ask how she feels about celebrity, and she's flummoxed - `I don't think I've dealt with it.
It's a weird question. I don't know how to answer it' - seeing it primarily in terms of the perks
(getting to the front of queues) and the pests (the paparazzi) it brings in its wake. Worst of all is
watching herself. `That's the one part that really disturbs me. It's weird to see your face so big. You
just look at it and think, `Oh, man, I should have become a psychiatrist'." It sneaks out. Gershon's
other obsession. Psychiatry. Or - let's be specific - dream psychology. It's refreshingly
down-to-earth, compared to the wilder extremes of Hollywood hokum - just ask her Scientologist
co-star - but Gershon insists that dream psychology `is the purest form of analysis I've
encountered. It sounds wooh! but it'll reveal stuff that'll take you 10 years on a couch with a shrink
to figure out'.
She appropriated the techniques from the woman who's taught her acting for eight years. They go
on `weird' (that word again) workshops together. One was in Scotland: `We lived in a castle, all of
us together. We'd go into the fields and do these weird rituals. We'd ride horses along the cliffs, it
was amazing. Cows and chickens. . .' she tails off, wistfully. Between the back-to-nature antics, the
workshoppers got down to the kind of `active imagination' which, ultimately, proved `incredible
both for my life and my work'.
So that's the secret, the only recorded incidence of someone dreaming their way to superstardom.
Can anyone do it? I never remember my dreams. `You're not trying hard enough to remember
them. Your conscious mind protects yourself, you're not ready to deal with it yet. . .' Crumbs. I've
been deconstructed by the star of Showgirls. A sex siren-cum-psychoanalyst with an unwitting line
in the surreal. Raquel Welch should feel flattered by the comparison. Fish Lips's time has come.
