Blind is an indie movie with an original screenplay by John Buffalo Mailer and directed by his older brother Michael Mailer. It stars Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore, and the cast includes yours truly. Personal feelings aside, and from all reports and rushes, this is going to be a really good one. Alec Baldwin is an old pro at this game, and his advice has been immeasurable and very much appreciated. I’ve never seen a more contented cast, with a brilliant Polish cinematographer whose sensitivity shines through the drama.
Obviously I will not give the game away, but it’s a hell of a story: A writer who is planning to ask his wife for a divorce has a terrible car accident in which she’s killed while he goes blind. In a parallel story, a big-time hedgie, master of the universe, is finally nailed and sent to jail. His wife, Demi, is given community service. While performing it, she meets the blind Alec and the inevitable takes place. They fall in love. But the hedgie still has some tricks up his sleeve, and his team of slick lawyers discovers some irregularities during the discovery period of his conviction. The bad guy’s out and you will never guess what happens next.
My own scene was shot last night at the Boom Boom Room, a place I know well but had never seen sober. I use the word “uxorious” and spar with writer Gay Talese about who invented sex, the Greeks or the Romans. (The Greeks, but the Romans included women.) Three takes was all it took. The director, Erich von Mailer, yelled cut, and that was it. I then shot another scene with the beautiful Cristina Cuomo, sister-in-law of the governor of New York, who asks me on camera how old I am. “Younger than Socrates” is the answer.
But I’m giving away all the secrets. In the greatest movie ever made, Seduced and Abandoned, I got a great review from the great Deborah Ross. This time I predict the big shots will get an Oscar, as will the screenplay and Erich von Mailer as director. Last week, while on location in the Bronx, I felt that the place where we were shooting deserved an Oscar because of its uniqueness: A copy of a Renaissance Italian palazzo was built in the early part of the last century by a man called Andrew Freedman. It is located right smack in the middle of the Grand Concourse, a couple of hundred feet away from Yankee Stadium, and the purpose for it—now, just get this—was to provide for his well-to-do friends who had fallen on hard times.
