Title: Body of Proof
The lady decided to share some new info about the upcoming weeks!
“I will be in Chicago on the 17th. And then I’m off to Europe for the Monte Carlo Television Festival and press in London. I’m planning on making a stop in Paris also with my sister. Then a vacation just for me on a beach somewhere with a lot of good books. I need it! By the way, I spent my first night in the New York apartment and I love it!”
Now time to explain why she’ll be at each place:
Chicago, 17th May: More Magazine event.
6 – 10 June: Monte Carlo Television Festival. She was there in 2008 and I swear I almost died every single day. She’s going to be there to represent Desperate Housewives, but you see… Castle’s also gonna be represented by Nathan Fillion – reunion anyone?! – AND! Dexter will be represented by Julie Benz, too! Anyone follows my traint hought here or am I alone?!
Now the London press bit is something that caught me off guard so I have no idea what that will be for, maybe to promote DH some more, or Multiple Sarcasms opening there or to promote Body Of Proof if it’s picked up.
Dana Delany’s kooky and entirely crazy ‘Desperate Housewives’ character, Katherine Mayfair, may currently be ensconced in France with her new lesbian lover, but we may not have seen the last of her. Delany is waiting to find out if her new show, ‘Body of Proof,’ will be picked up, but she isn’t closing any doors to Wisteria Lane. PopEater caught up with Delany to chat about ‘Housewives,’ as well as the ‘Body’ pilot and her new movie, ‘Multiple Sarcasms’ with Timothy Hutton, where she gets the chance to act like a grownup while the men behave badly … quite the role reversal.
In ‘Multiple Sarcasms’ Timothy Hutton plays your hubby, who is going through a midlife crisis. That had to be a switch for you, allowing someone else to bring the crazy for once.
Yes, on ‘Desperate Housewives’ it is the women who behave more like children, and we’re the ones who are having the midlife crisis.
Timothy’s character in the movie is trying to find himself. Don’t you think it’s a pain for women to constantly deal with men who can’t just grow up?
It’s the classic thing that women constantly have to play the mommy. I don’t want to be in that role in a relationship. The minute I become someone’s mother in a relationship, it becomes so unsexy to me.
Why did you choose to do ‘Multiple Sarcasms’?
A lot of it had to do with Timothy. He called me and said there is a script you just have to read. I grew up in the seventies and this script has that kind of feel to it. It was a film about human beings that was both dramatic and funny.What can we as concerned citizens do to eradicate this epidemic of toxic man-boy syndrome?
It is what happens in real life. I’m not a mother, but I would urge all mothers to raise their sons differently and tell them they need to take responsibility for their actions.Your character Katherine has gone crazy on ‘Desperate Housewives’ and headed off to Paris with her lesbian stripper lover (that’s a mouthful). Is she gone for good? That will make us sad.
I just finished a new pilot for ABC, so I’m waiting to hear whether or not I’ll be doing my own show. It’s very different. Very different. I’d be playing a medical examiner. But there is always the opportunity of bringing Katherine back, and Mark Cherry has been really open to the idea. It would be great have her come back at some point as a changed person.You play crazy so well on ‘Housewives.’ Is there a trick to getting crazy just right?
I do go looney toons. The trick is to keep is real. The danger would be playing to the snake pit, because then you lose the audience’s sympathy. The second you go too Joan Crawford they stop relating. I wanted women viewers to realize that any woman could be Katherine, given the circumstances.
So last night was the premiere on LA, which had a pre reception – why am I not surprised to see Dana with a drink? 
– followed by a screening of the movie and later a Q&A panel.
I’m still like in love with those Louboutin boots… My birthday is next week, anyone wiling to get me a pair? Just kidding… Mostly.
On TV, Dana Delany is well known for portraying a desperate housewife. In her new film, Multiple Sarcasms, she’s still playing a housewife, but her character, Annie, is far from desperate. In fact, she’s quite the opposite; sensible and strong.
Those traits come in handy because thanks to her husband’s midlife crisis, her marriage is unraveling. Gabriel was a skilled architect and loving family man, but now he’s entirely consumed by unwarranted sadness as well as his new obsession, writing a play. While Gabriel is busy searching for a new sense of self and toiling away at his typewriter, Annie is left to care for their daughter and try to hold the family together.
Not only was Delany on hand to enlighten us on her character in Multiple Sarcasms, but on her Desperate Housewives character as well. Constantly switching from TV to film is no easy task, but Delany has the details down to a science and is able to embrace the best of both worlds.
So tell us what you like about your character.
Oh gosh. I grew up in the ‘70s so I, first of all, loved that the whole movie had that feeling, that kind of ‘70s, Paul Mazursky movie. I remember An Unmarried Woman just had a huge impact on me when I was getting out of college. What I loved about the movie was a similarity in terms of the way Mazursky’s movies used to go from screaming to laughing to crying; it would take emotional left-turns all the time. So I think my favorite moment in the movie is when Tim [Hutton] and I are fighting and then I just start laughing. And I really fought for that because I thought this is what we do in life but we don’t see that in movies anymore.How was it working with Brooks Branch as a first time director?
Obviously you don’t know going into it what it’s going to be like, and you are thinking, ‘Wow, he’s never made a movie before,’ but it was so relaxed. What I really like about Brooks and why we’ve remained friends is he’s very collaborative and he’s got a great sense of humor. He likes the messiness of life and I do too, so he accepts that things are odd or weird, and I like that. He mixes odd choices and he goes with it and I think it’s funny, it’s good, it’s human.Since you’ve had your stint on Desperate Housewives, what do you look for now when it comes to projects? TV is such a huge commitment.
Whether I can fit it in my schedule. That’s the main thing right now. For instance, I think I’m really only going to get two weeks to myself this year. I’m not complaining, it’s been fantastic, but my agent keeps saying, ‘I want to find you a movie,’ and I keep saying, ‘No. No, I’m going on vacation. I’m taking two weeks and doing nothing.’ I think once all this TV stuff is done I’ll be back to it.Different people have ways of contrasting the experience of doing TV and movies; how would you describe them for you?
Everything has its own tone. Desperate Housewives is such a beast unto itself. There’s nothing like it. I don’t even know how to describe it; that takes on a whole other life of its own. I feel like this movie is a little more real and smaller. It’s not so over the top. For me, every project, it’s finding the tone, which is hard.It’s funny because your characters in this and that are so similar in ways, but the show and the movie are so drastically different. This was a problem you’d except to see on Desperate Housewives.
Yeah, but on Desperate Housewives it would have been about the woman having the midlife crisis. [Laughs] So that’s what’s nice about it, it’s about women because we often see the man having the midlife crisis.Timeline wise, where did this film and starting Desperate Housewives fall?
I owe it all to Tim Hutton. We had just finished working together on Kidnapped and that got canceled, and then this came up and he suggested me to Brooks and I think I left two days later to start shooting. And then Desperate Housewives came up I think a month later.Was this at all good preparation for that?
Was it? No, I don’t think so. [Laughs] No. Very different.What do you like about your character, Katherine, on Housewives? Do you relate to her?
Oh god no. I always have to find something, but on the outside, no. I think I’ve been lucky on Housewives because I wasn’t one of the original four women and so because of that, my character is not so iconic. I get to do all the weird stuff that Marc Cherry wouldn’t let any of the other women do, like have a nervous breakdown, stab herself and become a lesbian. If that happened to any of the other women I think people would be very upset.I imagine Desperate Housewives is heavily scripted as compared to this film. Did you get much freedom to improvise here?
Yes, which I loved. I would like to say, when I’m allowed to improvise, I don’t take it lightly and I know what a privilege that is, so I’m very serious about it and I think that I help when I do it. It’s not about me looking better; it’s about helping the story. Brooks was great with that.You seem like a really self-possessed person who likes to get to know yourself. How does that affect your attitude towards the industry?
I think I’m at a place in my life now where I know none of it really matters, so I always remind myself of that. I don’t take anything personally. I feel like I’m on my own path, and whether that involves acting, great, if it doesn’t, fine, because there are so many other things I’m interested in – just living, traveling, being – that I have a certain healthy sense of detachment from all of it.
Now, is this me reading too much into it or did Dana just confirm in her own way that Body Of Evidence – or whatever other title it gets in the end – is a complete go and so we’ll see her on her own show?!
In separate interviews recently conducted at Seattle’s Sorrento Hotel, actress Dana Delany and filmmaker Brooks Branch — star and director, respectively, of the drama-comedy “Multiple Sarcasms,” opening Friday — spoke with great fondness about Paul Mazursky’s 1978 Oscar-nominated “An Unmarried Woman.”
It was no coincidence. “Multiple Sarcasms,” starring Delany as the estranged wife of a would-be playwright (Timothy Hutton), is set in the late 1970s and shares more than a Manhattan backdrop with Mazursky’s hit vehicle for Jill Clayburgh. As with other relationship movies for real grown-ups from that era (Mazurksy’s “Blume In Love,” Alan J. Pakula’s “Starting Over,” Blake Edwards’ “10″), “Multiple Sarcasms” has little connection with today’s by-the-numbers, contemporary romantic comedies.
” ‘An Unmarried Woman’ had a huge effect on me,” says Delany, who moved to New York to begin a stage career in 1978. “It felt like real life. I love the messiness, the way relationships are captured, the way characters have to face themselves and figure out who they are. There’s no good guy and no bad guy in our film. It’s just sad.”
Hutton plays Gabriel, an architect whose midlife crisis is not so clear to the naked eye. Though good at his work, he spends weekday afternoons in movie theaters. He is loved by his beautiful family, has a couple of live-wire best pals (Mira Sorvino, Mario Van Peebles), yet is possessed by an inner disquiet. A friendship with a supportive theatrical agent (Stockard Channing) proves fortuitous, given his decision to map out his problems in a play.
As Gabriel writes, he realizes he has lived an ideal adulthood, yet has never caught up with who he was before adulthood really began.
“In most movies,” says Branch, “it’s easy to point to the cause of a problem. But in real life, cause and effect isn’t always obvious. Gabriel’s grateful for his life, but he hasn’t had the luxury to make decisions. That creates torment.”
Branch has a long background in the film business, though one unique to segueing into directing.
“I ran a creative division of licensing for Paramount,” he says. “I got burned out leveraging films for merchandising. I really was influenced by movies from the ’70s: ‘Harold and Maude,’ ‘Ordinary People.’ Films where the plot meanders a little in interesting ways.”
Though there is nothing visibly Pacific Northwest-like about “Multiple Sarcasms,” the film’s production was launched by a team of investors from Seattle, led by executive producers Patrice Auld, Martha Moseley and the late Keith Grinstein.
Auld, a longtime patron of Seattle arts, says she met Branch on a marketing project. Branch learned Auld had served as executive producer on “Expiration Date,” a 2006, prizewinning festival favorite by Seattle filmmaker Rick Stevenson, co-founder of TheFilmSchool. Auld sits on the board of that institution.
“I dabbled in film years ago,” says Auld. “Then I moved to Seattle, had a family and did nonprofit work. Then came ‘Expiration Date.’ It was a small way to get back in, feel creatively involved.”
Branch introduced his project to Auld, Grinstein and Moseley, and while the team raised “small amounts of money from a lot of investors,” says Auld, she worked with him on polishing the script. Later, she was involved in making a distribution deal, perhaps the toughest challenge these days for independent cinema.
“It’s a funny climate right now,” says Auld, who is currently working on a film written by Seattle-based actor Tom Skerritt. “There is a vibrant community here excited about supporting great scripts, but it’s hard to make money back.”
For Branch, the Seattle connection proved a far warmer experience than one typically hears about getting films made.
“I care about everyone who helped,” he says.
Kathy in Bel Air, Calif.: Please tell me we’ll see Dana Delany back on Castle soon! She was so great in that dramatic role.
She was pretty darn spectacular, wasn’t she? And you’re not the only one begging for more Dana Delany. While nothing’s been decided yet, besides the fact that she’s working on another ABC pilot as we speak, Castle‘s Nathan Fillion is down for more D.D., too. “She set this place on fire,” he tells us. “Those two episodes were huge! If she’s got some time in her busy schedule, we’d love to have her back! I’ve worked with her now three times! I’ve got the Dana Delany trifecta…not a lot of us can say that.” You lucky dog, you!
I just found a few more, so here they are.
Last we saw of Katherine on Desperate Housewives she was ditching Wisteria Lane and heading to Europe to have some alone time with her new gal pal, Robin (Julie Benz). So what’ll become of the show’s new lesbian lovers? Katherine herself, Dana Delany, doesn’t even know!
While promoting her new film Multiple Sarcasms, Delany revealed that she honestly doesn’t know when or if she’ll be returning to the show. “I could. It’s all up in the air; I’ll know in a month.” When asked about the details of her deal keeping her attached to the show, Delany explained, “It’s one of those they have a contract that all works in their favor. I have a contract with them, a six-year contract – actually, we added a year, so a seven year contract, I’ve done three of them, so they have the choice of bringing me back, but I don’t have the choice of whether I stay or not.”
Just in case they opt to ditch her character’s scenario entirely, Delany has a back up plan. “I will either have a new show on the air that I’ll be starring in, I’ll be back on Desperate Housewives or I’ll be out of a job and look for something else.” That new show is what Delany calls a “procedural with character.” She revealed, “I play a medical examiner on it.”
And, of course, there was no escaping without getting hit by a question regarding the whole Nicollette Sheridan vs. Marc Cherry situation. According to Hollyscoop, as of yesterday, the suits at ABC were in talks with Sheridan trying to get her to exchange her $120 million lawsuit for some sort of “peace package.” For those of you out of the loop on the neighborhood gossip, Sheridan is suing the show’s creator claiming he slapped her during an argument and when she proceeded to complain about his behavior, was booted from the show. Delany’s take on the whole thing? “Kind of baffled by it. I certainly didn’t see that behavior.” She added, “I hope it works out for her, I hope everybody gets what they want, but yeah, that was puzzling to me.”
So far this is just the only list I gathered so if any of you lives close to any of these places, maybe you could try to get tickets for the movie!
8th April – Dallas International Film Festival, 7 pm screening
9th April – Dallas International Film Festival, 4.15 pm screening
10th April – Phoenix Film Festival, 7 pm screening
It’s been more than 20 years, but “Desperate Housewives” star Dana Delany still won’t spill about her date with Sen. John Kerry – a night so strange it could have happened on Wisteria Lane!
“Oh, it’s ancient history,” Dana demurred yesterday when we again tried to get her to give it up. “And it wasn’t really a bad date – it was just a good story.”
The Phillips Andover alum met Kerry, then a bachelor, at a veterans event in D.C. when she was starring in the Vietnam-themed TV drama “China Beach.”
he senator invited her to dinner then back to his apartment to see his “war films.” (Why, oh why, did Kerry bring a video camera to war, Dana wondered . . .) Apres screening, the senator attempted to, shall we say, storm “China Beach.”“We’re all friends,” Delany laughed. “I know his daughter, Alex . I supported him in 2004. People have such mouths!”
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