On the first day directing my first film came my first communication error. I’d asked the costume department to take a man’s shirt (which the lead character had stolen after a one night stand), and fashion it into something she fixes around her cat to stop it picking at its surgical stitches. Expecting it to look like a striped cotton bandage, I was presented with a cat wearing an immaculately tailored miniature button-down. In the end I took it off the cat, but I wish I’d made that work because, when I’ve occasionally daydreamed about the etymology of phrases, I’ve always felt drawn to “the shirt off my back”.
At the end of the shoot, my lead, Jemima Kirke, slipped off a diamond and ruby fox ring and handed it to me – the ring off her own finger! I was touched by the gesture and by the echo from a woman I’d cast as “me”: I’d done this same thing myself to friends when I felt they needed moral support, unhooking a bracelet or brooch and pressing it into their palm. It’s never the value of the jewellery that matters as much as the instant decision. Maybe it’s a sense of memory conversation with the ancestors who sewed valuables into their clothes as they fled expulsions, pogroms and ghettoes; letting the past know I feel safe enough in my own life to give my precious things away. I’d say I’ve lost three pieces of jewellery this way, but they’re the opposite of lost.
Though Jemima and I come from different tribes, we are both autodidacts who watch old movies late at night. And we both learned select behaviour from the great actor Ruth Gordon.
Gordon’s iconic role of Maude in 1971’s Harold and Maude would not in a million years be greenlit by Paramount today (Gordon’s little old lady and Bud Cort’s death-obsessed teenager become first unlikely friends, then lovers). This is without mentioning the eccentric rhythms of Hal Ashby’s edit, which ebb and flow like the waves the lovers gaze out on in the key scene that validated the impulsive part of me.
As they sit on the beach at night, Harold gives Maude a stamped coin – a token of devotion. She clutches it to her chest, then throws it into the dark waves. He looks at her, startled. There, she smiles: “So I’ll always know where it is!” In another scene where they’re sitting by the ocean, we catch a glimpse of Maude’s wrist – and you can only just see what you’re meant to – the numbers tattooed on it. It is a life-affirming lesson for Harold, but what I felt then, watching Ruth Gordon, and what I see even more in middle age: the intertwining ribbons of sorrow in the world. Choose someone and make a beautiful dance from it. Throw your treasures into the ocean, so you never throw yourself in.
Having perfect things taken or lost is too heartbreaking. I’d rather give them away. Giving you the ring off my finger and the shirt off my back is how I try to balance being bad at day-to-day life. Not being able to cook or drive and getting the rubbish collection day wrong. We are standing in one spot, covered in flies I attracted because I didn’t put out the trash, but now you are wearing my pink angora sweater and it looks good on you!
It’s important that the shirt off your back not be an imposition. Those are “tannis root gifts”, a term I derive from Rosemary’s Baby, for which Ruth Gordon won an Oscar in 1969. Within Polanski’s flawless two hours 16 minutes, Gordon’s nosy neighbour gives the horrid smelling tannis root necklace to Mia Farrow. Rosemary doesn’t want it but Minnie insists, cudgelling. This is clearly a template for 2017’s Get Out – the idea first portrayed so brilliantly by Ruth Gordon of an evil that is also banal and annoying, one that openly flicks through your mail and asks how much your sofa cost before it impregnates you by the devil.
Though Mia Farrow got the style notice for her Vidal Sassoon pixie cut, to me Ruth Gordon is the real fashion icon, the starting point that gets you to Iris Apfel and the whole concept of “Advanced Style”, these templates for old ladies not fading away. A look so bold, even Satan listens.
When Ruth Gordon won the best supporting actress Oscar at 72, she said in her thank you speech: “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is … ” In over 50 years in the business, the Massachusetts-born iconoclast had been an extra in silent films, a stage star through the 30s and, after she married the writer Garson Kanin, written screenplays with him for some of the most beloved Hepburn-Tracy pictures. In the 50s, she adapted her play The Actress as a film in which Jean Simmons played her. Through the late 60s and early 70s she was in the compellingly odd, very sexy Inside Daisy Clover and the fully bonkers Where’s Poppa. The former in particular is a wonderful place to go for her scratchy brilliance, if you’ve worn out Rosemary’s Baby and Harold and Maude.
Ruth Gordon’s marriage to Kanin, her writing partner, was lifelong. She died at 88, with him at her side. Kanin said she spent her final day on walks, talks, working on her new play and running errands. This touches me deeply as I believe it’s part of the creative process, especially for disordered creative minds – taking care of the humdrum is key to unlocking the wild. When the 4ft 10in Gordon had a cinema in Massachusetts named after her, she stood on a bench in the lobby on opening day so she could be seen. Sadly, the cinema no longer exists. You could stand where it used to be, bittersweet to know it was there. Just like remembering how you were once deep inside someone, after they have left or been taken. There! So I’ll always know where it is.
