UNITED KINGDOM: GEENA DAVIS, SAMUEL JOHNSON AND RENNY HARLIN SPEAK ABOUT THEIR NEW FILM 'THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT'

Record ID: 336569

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: GEENA DAVIS, SAMUEL JOHNSON AND RENNY HARLIN SPEAK ABOUT THEIR NEW FILM 'THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT'
  • Date: 22nd December 1995
  • Summary: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (RECENT) (RTV) GEENA DAVIS SAYING IN A LOT OF WAYS IT REMINDS ME OF THELMA AND LOUISE, IN THAT MOVIE I ALSO HAD TO TRANSFORM AND HAD A GREAT ARC, I CHANGED FROM ONE PERSON INTO ANOTHER. I THOUGHT I COULD NEVER FIND A BIGGER CHANGE THAN THAT IN ONE MOVIE, BUT TO PULL OFF CHANGING FROM A COOKIE-BAKING MUM TO A SUPER-LETHAL SPY WAS A BIG JUMP (ENGLISH)
  • Embargoed: 6th January 1996 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM/ FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Reuters ID: LVA7K6B8YFSKDR9WTU9H2UWA3VOC
  • Story Text: Torture, sky-diving and freezing baths were not first on actress Geena Davis's mind when she agreed to make "The Long Kiss Goodnight" with husband Renny Harlin.

    But the Hollywood actress found herself thrown in at the deep end -- literally -- as she pulled off stunts a professional might baulk at.

    In the action/adventure movie, Davis plays the frumpy Samantha Caine, an amnesiac school teacher and mother mired in suburbia.

    Unable to recall much beyond the present, Caine starts experiencing disturbing flashbacks that reveal a woman with a penchant for extreme violence.

    When she's forced to kill an intruder in the kitchen, she decides it's time to leave the suburbs and discover exactly what sort of person she was before her memory loss.

    To help her, she recruits a seedy bent cop turned private eye, played by Samuel Jackson, and soon they're caught up in a government consipiracy run by Craig Bierko and Patrick Malahide.

    "In a lot of ways it reminds me of 'Thelma and Louise'," Davis said of "The Long Kiss Goodnight". "I thought I could never find a bigger change than that in one movie, but to pull off changing from a cookie-baking mum into a super-lethal spy was a big jump." Harlin confessed he only dared put female action hero Davis through nerve-jangling stunts because she was his wife. "I couldn't do it to any other Hollywood actress -- they would be calling the lawyers and managers pretty soon," he said.

    Action included leaping 50 foot (16 metres) into a hole on a frozen lake and an extended dip beneath icy water. Co-star Samuel Jackson also suffered at the hands of Harlin. Of his cold-water dip he said: "If you've ever eaten a bowl of icecream and got a real headache, multiply that by 200 and that's what happened." Worst of all for Davis was a scene where she is tied to a wheel revolving underwater -- a scene which took four days to shoot.

    "Torture(" she declared.

    Much hinges on the success of the movie -- Davis and Finnish-born Harlin's last joint project "Cutthroat Island" -- made and distributed at a cost of 121 million U.S. dollars -- was panned by critics and audiences alike.

    Davis shot to fame in the huge hit "Beetlejuice" in 1987. Other credits include "The Fly" and "The Accidental Tourist". The road movie "Thelma and Louise", in which Davis plays goofy housewife-turned-sassy fugitive, became one of the most talked about films of 1991.

    "The Long Kiss Goodnight" opened in Britain on November 29.
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