THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW SUSAN SARANDON
Dreifus, Claudia
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Susan Sarandon 'I don't pick issues. They pick me.' BY CLAUDIA DREIFUS If Jane Fonda was the political actress of the 1960s and 1970s, then the title passes to Susan...
...Sarandon: Not so much now...
...Q: One of the things that brought you to the attention of these information gatherers was your involvement in Central American issues...
...But no, I can't think about things like that...
...And of course she was right...
...I ended up bringing baby food and milk to mothers through MADRE...
...I was just going to walk in memory of my friend...
...I'd rather not have a tranquilizer...
...Q: Did you worry at all that if you went to Nicaragua, you'd be dismissed as just another actress with a bad case of Radical Chic...
...I'm not an expert on anything, and I don't pretend to be...
...Q: And if that's true, you could never picture yourself telling Barbara Walters that you take it all back...
...Gregory Peck probably knows as much as Reagan, and he might have been more honorable...
...A reporter chasing Sarandon can catch her in dirty warehouses packing up supplies to help Nicaraguan hurricane victims, handing out food to the homeless, speaking at poorly attended rallies for political candidates...
...You can move them...
...Sarandon: No...
...Sarandon: Whenever anybody asks me that, I always say, "It's a little like worrying whether your slip is showing while you flee a burning building...
...His journey to truth is facilitated by Sarandon's character, a South African reporter for the late Rand Daily Mail...
...It's a risk-filled place in the public square that Susan Sarandon has chosen to occupy, one that leaves her open to ridicule and criticism...
...You can make them laugh...
...I saw some people bitching about the government, the way they do here...
...The movie centers on the fate of a white male Afrikaner (played by Donald Sutherland) who comes to see the truth about his culture...
...It got to the point where you thought, "Why don't they get Gregory Peck to be President...
...Some years ago, I was contacted by people from the ACLU and told they'd found out there was a group called Western Goals that was collecting and computerizing and making available to anyone who wanted it information on people it deemed to be "un-American" or "communist...
...You can challenge their perspective...
...Q: Your newest film, A Dry White Season, is perhaps the most political movie we've seen in years...
...I saw the oil depots that we had dropped bombs on, without even disguising our planes...
...For instance, while I was there, Corinto Harbor was mined [by CIA operatives...
...The issue of contention was that the FDA was not making important drugs available to people who need them...
...I just went because I thought it would give me much more insight into what was happening...
...Sarandon: Yes...
...Also unlike Fonda, she has functioned within political organizations merely as a member, not necessarily as the celebrity with heavy-duty power, money, and influence...
...Euzhan Palcy, a black woman from Martinique, directs—and manages with great intelligence to get into the heart of a white-supremacist culture...
...And Bella Abzug and Mario Thomas were telling me to speak...
...I never hated them...
...I mean, being an actor is an extraordinary opportunity...
...Finally, Mario said, "Come on, it doesn't matter what you say...
...It must have been...
...Q: Isn't that the group that does civil disobedience as part of its AIDS consciousness-raising...
...Sarandon: Well, I don't pick issues...
...They were given misinformation...
...If this disease had first become apparent in the affluent white heterosexual—and especially male—part of the population, everyone would have gotten mobilized...
...People just want to be pacified...
...It's about South Africa, but it is also broader...
...They pick me.' BY CLAUDIA DREIFUS If Jane Fonda was the political actress of the 1960s and 1970s, then the title passes to Susan Sarandon for the late 1980s...
...This was...
...It's not like being an athlete and you're the fastest...
...Your kind of involvement is rather rare...
...The fact that I get more attention asking people to ask questions is just one of those ironic happenings in a time that seems such a total triumph of packaging...
...In a few years' time, it's gone from that kind of apathy to something else: fear, hatred, backlash, and also genuine concern...
...Q: Is that why you are probably the most politically active of all the working movie stars these days...
...I always felt that the soldiers were in more trouble than we [antiwar protesters] were...
...It's a very subjective business...
...Q: You don't buy that...
...I said, "No...
...Q: Name one area where you feel personally touched...
...I think I said something like, "I hope people start to understand 'Why shouldn't I have the right to be outspoken about what I consider my own survival?' what's happening—and start supporting each other—because to have to deal with AIDS in isolation and secrecy at a time when you are needing just the opposite is even more of a tragedy than dying...
...This was another example of, "If it doesn't concern you, don't worry about it...
...You know, I was embarrassed...
...policies in Central America, speaking up for choice on reproductive-rights issues, and demanding adequate funding for AIDS research...
...Because that's what it's about...
...Sarandon: I went to Nicaragua in 1984 with a group I'm active in called MADRE...
...It was great, great company...
...I can't dwell on it...
...I saw bombed-out day-care centers that we had bombed...
...But it's been slow...
...Now I happen to think it is a wonderful thing to be a film actor, that one is privileged to be doing this kind of work because you can give things to people that are very much needed at this point in history...
...After he died, I went to one of the first anti-AIDS marches from Sheridan Square to New York's City Hall...
...Well, I'm very fortunate to have access to information just because I happen to be in movies...
...But she shrugs off such things...
...I also wasn't prepared for the differences between what I saw and what was reported...
...Q: It sounds like you were quite eloquent...
...I went, again, thinking I was just going to be there as a demonstrator...
...Her last interview for The Progressive was with Alice Walker in the August issue...
...Sarandon: I think it was a civil-rights march...
...You can allow them to go into a darkened room and feel something they can't feel at home...
...He wasn't even very good at debates...
...At the particular moment I went there, the U.S...
...And I was the only woman there...
...Somebody said to me the other day, "Why is it that the veterans are the new heroes...
...So back to the question of "Why should people listen to me...
...Didn't you hate them when you were a Vietnam war protester...
...Q: But there are lots of other actors who are not active...
...This was all being done with my tax money...
...It doesn't concern us...
...Or George C. Scott...
...It only affects gays and IV users and people who deserve it...
...I was confused...
...Maybe being outspoken can cost you work...
...We had, for eight years, a President who was in the White House because he was an actor...
...Q: Having spent a few days walking around town with you, I sense you are quite ambivalent about your fame...
...Sarandon: No...
...I didn't go so much to get a message across, but more to humanize the issue of Nicaragua and to inform myself as to what was going on...
...The movie is about how people ignore political realities to go on living their lives—but sometimes they just can't...
...Sarandon: It does lots of things...
...I happened to be at a party where I ran into the New York Times person in Managua, and I said to him, "Why haven't you covered this...
...Most people thought, "It doesn't affect me...
...I mean, it doesn't seem fair...
...He didn't want people to know about this strange rare disease that he'd contracted...
...And the students were saying, "It's not our problem...
...You just have to get up there to be on the news...
...The cast, which also includes Marlon Brando, Janet Suzman, Zakes Mokae, and Jurgen Prochnow, plays together brilliantly...
...This was for the Equal Rights Amendment, at the New York Public Library...
...If you believe in something, it's just hard to keep your mouth shut...
...Turn on the television any day of the week, and there is Sarandon, star of such hits as Bull Durham, Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, and Compromising Positions—protesting U.S...
...There was real fear as this disease began to go into other segments of the population...
...When we got down to City Hall, they asked me to speak...
...Richard and I were the only actors...
...I gave a speech at Harvard in 1983 and tried to talk about the war in Central America...
...No one is getting below the surface of things...
...It buys air time on television: That's why celebrities are present at rallies...
...Q: You don't pick safe issues, though...
...The Sutherland character cannot go on with his Claudia Dreifus is a free-lance writer in New York City...
...she appeared in Washington at the abortion-rights march in April, extremely pregnant and proud of it...
...Unlike Fonda, she has not made any major faux pas—no posing with enemy weapons, for example—and she has maintained an admirable political consistency...
...I talk about specific things that touch me personally...
...You should do something else...
...Government was most active in destabilizing the Nicaraguan government...
...The issue [for protesters] was with our Government to get out, not with the poor guys who were stuck over there...
...If you feel that way, why are you doing it...
...You can give them hope...
...But I do have a point of view...
...Sarandon: No, I don't think I'll ever say that...
...I don't know...
...Just stand there and say anything...
...This was very early, when most people didn't know about AIDS yet and when it was still called "the gay cancer...
...I don't believe people in this business when they say they don't like it...
...I do what I can because I think it's important...
...She said, via Barbara Walters, "I'm sorry if I caused you any pain...
...These are things that you can't not be involved in, that's all...
...Q: You said a friend's death pushed you to act on AIDS...
...And the answer was, "Well, we're supposed to be up at the border and we don't know if there really was an explosion...
...All they do is show the picture for two seconds...
...Q: Are AIDS issues an area where you can successfully use your celebrity to raise questions that other people are afraid to touch...
...Maybe it has...
...The money would have gotten out there...
...I was a student at Catholic University in Washington, D.C...
...Sarandon: Well, I don't think you have a choice, really...
...like 1964...
...When I first decided to make the trip, I decided to go and do something specific...
...I've lost good friends to AIDS...
...she works for AIDS victims by protesting with the radical New York group Act Up...
...I understand that, for a while, you were under surveillance by some kind of strange right-wing group...
...I'd rather know exactly what's happening...
...But finally he got his character together and he played "President...
...Q: How do you feel about Jane Fonda's televised apology to Vietnam veterans...
...Sarandon: I don't know...
...Susan Sarandon: I don't mind being asked for autographs...
...The news reporters don't even tell what you've said half the time...
...if people misunderstand, that's their problem...
...it's a powerful tale of pain and conscience...
...About five years ago, you made a well-publicized trip to Nicaragua...
...You can encourage them to reach out to other people...
...Because once they ask one question, it will cause a chain of events that will make it impossible for them to go back to their lives the way they were...
...An actor died a terrible death, all alone and isolated, in the early 1980s...
...And there really was a long period when nothing was done...
...I wanted to know, "What does that mean...
...It could have been an implosion, and blah, blah, blah...
...You did it for comparatively little money...
...Sarandon: AIDS...
...It publishes all the facts people need to know about possibly beneficial anti-AIDS drugs: which drugs are available and which are not...
...I work with a group called Act Up...
...It's about people not wanting to see the truth because it will completely inconvenience them and change their lives...
...I knew that lives were being lost in a war that wasn't even being called a war...
...Everything is about superficial presentation...
...With my own eyes, I got to see that it meant women and children were being killed...
...That sort of thing doesn't bother me at all...
...But the first time I had to do it, ever, I panicked...
...They reminded me of people of my parents' generation—the post-Depression attitude, you know-just get yourself your car and your house...
...I've read elsewhere that you have trouble with public speaking...
...We can't be interested in this rinky-dink country...
...The Government didn't seem to be doing all that much to provide education, so luckily a lot of private-sector groups mobilized...
...Certainly the ones who went voluntarily didn't understand what was going on...
...I mean, one of the truths about this time is that everything is about style...
...It's about anyone—South African, American—who's in a situation in which they refuse to deal with a piece of information that would force them, morally, to take a stand...
...Q: Getting back to your own political development, were you active during the 1960s...
...Sarandon: I think that's what being an American is really about...
...She became the butt of a joke in Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills, when a Hollywood agent looked at a derelict and said, "Hey, didn't I see you last year at Cannes with Susan Sarandon and the Sandinistas...
...Q: Some of your activism has cost you...
...No one's listening to issues...
...With it, the actress has finally found a way to blend her public and professional concerns...
...So, strangely enough, actors and actresses, who are pretty straight about what they do, have been given more respect...
...Joan Baez, Richard Dreyfuss, Studs Terkel, several church groups...
...How could they...
...And I remember I didn't have the faintest idea what to say...
...And to me, it seemed like a normal thing...
...At a time when celebrity appeal is one way of selling social issues to the public, Sarandon has done her share—and she's done it with a fair degree of equanimity and grace...
...But why shouldn't I have the right to be outspoken about what I consider my own survival...
...Sarandon: Well, I felt it was an important story...
...If you're an actor, it's real subjective what makes you hot or cool...
...People these days don't trust doctors, lawyers, politicians—with good reason, I think...
...At any rate, I believe the story has a wider application...
...Q: Do you ever worry that your outspokenness will leave you without work...
...Q: What was the first political thing you did at college...
...You know, Vietnam and civil rights were simultaneously going on, and it was pretty hard to ignore either of them...
...I saw people there from all over the world building churches...
...Sarandon: Yes...
...When necessary, the group does civil disobedience—such as, recently, taking over the offices of the Food and Drug Administration to make it clear to the FDA that if it can't run things smoothly, someone else will...
...But because of who it was hitting, nobody cared...
...I saw that everyone was armed...
...I don't say, "This year, I'm going to be interested in this...
...Now comes Sarandon's latest movie, A Dry White Season, one of the most overtly political feature films in years...
...I remember everyone was quite shocked to see me there...
...was this part of your commitment too...
...As I traveled around the United States, I could see that a lot of Americans didn't know what was happening in Nicaragua...
...And it's not a hobby...
...It meant that we were strangling this tiny place the size of Iowa...
...You can introduce new ideas...
...I didn't question it for a second...
...I guess that's the way a lot of people protect themselves from the possibility that something like that might happen to them...
...comfortable and happy life once he learns who really murdered the son of his black gardener...
...She says she does what she does because it makes her feel like a good citizen...
...I mean, it's not an intellectual choice...
...In the beginning, in the early 1980s, you couldn't talk to people about AIDS...
...I saw people that never had been able to read or write learn through a national literacy campaign...
...Sarandon: Well, I can kind of understand that...
...None of it has won her much in the way of glory...
...To be a film star, you must want love, you must want approval...
...Like Fonda in her pre-fitness-business days, Sarandon tackles high-risk causes: She went directly to Nicaragua to bring food and medicine to women suffering the effects of civil war...
...And I was one of the people listed...
...Sarandon: Sure...
...I spoke with Sarandon at her Greenwich Village home shortly after she returned from Zimbabwe and the filming of A Dry White Season...
Vol. 53 • October 1989 • No. 10
