He’s Huge in This Town

Danny DeVito plants his fireplug body on a sofa and begins by telling a visitor what it was really like working with director Francis Ford Coppola on the set of their new film “John Grisham’s The Rainmaker.” DeVito lowers his head and stares at the floor.

“I was very disappointed when I first started working with him,” DeVito says in a subdued voice. Then he straightens and delivers his punch line.

“He was on a diet!” DeVito says in mock disbelief. “Can you imagine working with Francis--a couple of Italians--and the guy’s on a diet? We lost a few pounds, [but] I didn’t know when I took the job he was going on a diet.” DeVito pauses a moment and grins. “Other than that, it was pretty good.”

To meet Danny DeVito is to shake off the cobwebs of the crank persona he has so often exhibited in his 35 feature films and on television. It is a persona as richly textured as any Damon Runyon character, whether it’s the wisecracking Louie De Palma in “Taxi,” the thief huffing and puffing his way through “Romancing the Stone,” the childish man with a vicious, overbearing mom in “Throw Momma From the Train” or the memorable loser in the aluminum-siding business he played in “Tin Men.”

This fall, DeVito is receiving strong notices for his performances in two major studio releases: Coppola’s tale of corporate villainy, “Rainmaker,” which opens Friday, and director Curtis Hanson’s film noir police thriller “L.A. Confidential.”

In “Rainmaker,” DeVito plays a self-styled “para-lawyer” named Deck Shifflet, a Sancho Panza-like character who befriends a young, idealistic law school graduate; together they battle a big insurance company that is denying benefits to a dying leukemia patient. In “L.A. Confidential,” he plays Sid Hudgeons, a sleaze-mongering journalist who edits a celebrity tell-all magazine of the 1950s called Hush-Hush.

“I’ve been lucky this year,” DeVito said with a touch of humility. “Two really nice, good experiences. I’ve had some good fortune.”

Few actors today are as adept at scene-stealing performances as this balding, 5-foot-tall son of an Asbury Park, N.J., luncheonette owner who once attended hairstyling school and never listened to people who said his height would be an impediment to a successful show-business career.

“I think it really doesn’t have anything to do with anything, whether you’re real, real tall or real, real short,” DeVito said. “It’s got to do with who you are and your ability to snow people into giving you work.”

At 53, DeVito today is not only one of the world’s most recognizable actors, but he has emerged as a force behind the camera as well.

The production company he co-founded six years ago, Jersey Films, has released 10 films, including Quentin Tarantino’s seminal work, “Pulp Fiction,” and the John Travolta gangland comedy “Get Shorty.” Two new films are on the way: “Out of Sight,” starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez as a bank robber and federal marshal who fall in love (like “Get Shorty,” it’s based on an Elmore Leonard bestseller), and “The Kiss,” starring Holly Hunter as a divorcee who lives in the building where DeVito works as an elevator operator. Jersey Films is also executive-producing a made-for-TV comedy called “The Pentagon Wars” for HBO in February and has other projects in development.

“What he is doing with Jersey Films is quite amazing,” said actor Michael Douglas, DeVito’s friend of three decades, whose own company, Douglas/Reuther Productions, produced “Rainmaker” for Paramount Pictures. “I laugh because I’m kind of kicking back and he’s going full tilt right now.”

Besides Douglas, DeVito’s friendships extend to many other key players in Hollywood, including Jack Nicholson, with whom he worked on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and Arnold Schwarzenegger, with whom DeVito co-starred in “Twins” and “Junior.”

In his personal life, DeVito is a devoted family man whose marriage to actress Rhea Perlman has produced three children--Lucy, 14, Gracie, 12, and Jake, 10. It is in the role of dad, DeVito says, that he finds the greatest pleasure, noting that he is currently building a large remote-controlled airplane with his son.

“I’m blessed with Rhea and the kids,” DeVito said. “That is truly what I spend most of my time thinking about and celebrating. The work is the work.”

Still, not everything has been rosy for DeVito. He endured a testy dispute with the former regime at Sony Pictures Entertainment and left there in January 1996 to sign a deal at Universal Pictures.

The dispute caused some in the industry to think of DeVito, at times, as an angry man. DeVito acknowledges that his relationship with the old Sony hierarchy was difficult, but he still isn’t sure what caused the relationship to sour.

“All I know is one day things were going along, we were developing projects, and the next day, whatever we brought over, the door was closed,” DeVito said. “I don’t know when it happened.”

At one time, sources say, DeVito had been treated like a prince at Sony.

“I really liked the Sony lot,” DeVito said. “It’s beautiful. I really enjoyed being there.” But he quickly added: “You know, it’s not the paint job. It’s what’s under the hood that counts.”

To hear some tell it, DeVito’s problems at Sony Pictures Entertainment stemmed, in part, from an unstable studio environment that continued for years and ultimately led to the installation of new executives by the parent firm.

Former TriStar Pictures Chairman Mike Medavoy said his relationship with Jersey Films deteriorated because of problems he was having with his boss, then-Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Peter Guber. It was during this tumultuous period, Medavoy said, that TriStar took a pass on “Pulp Fiction.” The film was eventually released by Miramax Films.

“When ‘Pulp Fiction’ came in, my relationship with Guber was so bad I didn’t think I wanted to take him on on a picture that basically had so much violence,” Medavoy recently said. “So rather than stand in his way of making it, I figured they would set up the picture elsewhere and I told [Jersey] to go ahead and do that.”

Guber declined to be drawn into the old dispute, saying: “I’ve been out of there three years and two months.” He did stress, however, that he views DeVito as “a talented man and a good influence on the business.”

It was Sony’s handling of “Matilda,” a movie based on a Roald Dahl story that DeVito’s oldest daughter brought to his attention, that still upsets DeVito, who produced, directed and starred in it. The movie has proved to be a surprising success, earning about $100 million for Sony--$73 million in worldwide box office and sales of 5 million videocassettes in the U.S. alone.

Columbia green-lighted the film for $28 million, but the studio’s mood darkened when the budget climbed to $41 million, sources said. Jersey co-partners Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, however, strongly dispute that figure and repudiate the implication that the movie had a runaway budget.

“That’s simply a lie,” Shamberg said. “It went over budget, but it was in the low 30s. A lot of the money in the film was in turnaround costs.” Sher said the turnaround costs amounted to between $7 million and $8 million.

For his part, DeVito said he and the studio simply were “thinking about different movies.”

DeVito takes pride in the fact that the new brass at Sony is talking about a sequel to “Matilda.” “I’m very gleeful at the fact that the movie has done very, very well,” he said.

DeVito said he has been treated well at Universal, noting that the studio will be releasing “Out of Sight.” But negotiations broke down over a $13-million deal that would have had him direct and star in another producer’s film, called “Mystery Men,” because of a misunderstanding that developed over who would produce the soundtrack.

“It was a big deal for me,” DeVito said. “I really wanted it, so I walked away from the project.”

Soundtracks released through Jersey’s record label have become big business for DeVito and his partners. Sales of the “Pulp Fiction” soundtrack, for example, have exceeded 3 million.

Like other production companies, Jersey Films has had its ups and downs at the box office. Its current release, the sci-fi themed “Gattaca,” has had lackluster results this fall, but Shamberg and Sher say hits and misses come with the territory.

“If you aim high,” Shamberg said, “you can miss.”

“Danny actually said something great for me once, and it’s been a way to look at things as we proceed,” Sher added. “He said, ‘Failure is part of the creative process. If you’re afraid of it, you can’t really create.’ ”

But while he has found much success, DeVito said, aggravation is a common byproduct of Hollywood.

“I enjoy the film business from top to bottom,” he said. “I like the people in it. I like going to movies. I don’t miss a day when I don’t see something flickering on a screen. . . . If you enjoy what you’re doing, boy, then it’s really a blessing--and I do. Not that it’s easy. Not that it’s not aggravating sometimes. Not that you don’t go crazy and flip out. All those things are part of it. . . . You just hope you don’t get dragged down by that other side. You just pray to God that you try and keep your head above water in that respect.”

For “John Grisham’s The Rainmaker,” DeVito had been asked by Coppola to go to Memphis, Tenn., to perform the pivotal role of Deck Shifflet, the paralegal who befriends a young lawyer named Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon). Baylor aspires to become a “rainmaker,” one who drums up cash-rich clients and billable hours for the law firm--in this case, a firm headed by an ambulance chaser with underworld connections named Bruiser Stone (Mickey Rourke). As he prowls hospital wards looking for clients, Deck is not above inserting a business card between the fingers of a recovering accident victim.

Together, Deck and Rudy strike out on their own and do battle with a big life insurance company that has allowed a leukemia patient to die in a fight over medical benefits.

Coppola said he chose DeVito for the role because of another film he enjoyed--”Tin Men,” in which DeVito starred opposite Richard Dreyfuss. “I thought he was wonderful in that,” Coppola said.

“The first thing I learned about Danny is just that . . . he’s an incredibly intelligent person who sizes up situations,” Coppola added. “He’s an excellent businessman and I know he’s a fine director and producer. As an actor, he has wonderful emotional depth.”

As a fellow director, DeVito enjoyed watching Coppola at work:

“Francis is a very detailed filmmaker. All the little nuances that are in the movie, he brought to it--the script, the direction, the scenes. Layered. All nice things to fill it out. I saw it with an audience, and it was pushing all the right buttons.”

But DeVito is not above poking fun at Coppola: “I asked him once, ‘Will you please go in the trailer once and direct me from the microphone? Just one time?’ He was always on the set. It threw me a little at first, but then I got used to it.”

DeVito said it was fascinating to contrast Coppola on “Rainmaker” with Hanson, his director on “L.A. Confidential.” Hanson was “very prepared,” DeVito recalled, where Coppola was “more theatrical.”

DeVito says life couldn’t be sweeter than it was growing up in Asbury Park in the ‘50s:

“It was really a great town--a beautiful jewel on the Eastern Seaboard,” DeVito recalled. “At least it was when I was growing up. At least until all the riots hit in the ‘60s, when the civil rights movement was firing up--literally--but even before that, the town was kind of slipping. Politicians weren’t taking good care of it, and then it was pretty much burnt to the ground in the civil rights riots.

“But growing up, it was a great place to be. It was a shore resort. Summers were filled with people from the city. There was always activity on the boardwalk. My first job was on the boardwalk when I was 14--I put the kids on the rides. And then in the winter, it was like a Bergman movie. Beautiful seashore. Waves. Empty parking meters for miles. Nobody down there.”

After high school, DeVito took a sister’s suggestion and studied hairstyling. “This is great!” he told her. “There’s like 30 girls there and there’s three guys!”

DeVito later moved to New York and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

“I’d only seen one play up until then,” he said. “That was out at Neptune [N.J.]. They had this tent and I think I saw ‘Mr. Roberts.’ My father got some tickets and I went to see it, and I got hooked.”

In 1966, while touring in a play at the Eugene O’Neill Theater in Waterford, Conn., DeVito was working on some sets when someone suggested a beer run. A hippie-looking guy on a motorcycle rode up to volunteer and DeVito hopped on the back. It was Michael Douglas.

The two became friends and DeVito eventually traveled to Southern California, where he and other young people crashed at Douglas’ house, which hugged the hills of Santa Barbara.

“He had this big house with a swimming pool that looked like the Creature From the Black Lagoon lived in it,” DeVito said as the memories flooded back. “Bunch of college kids living in this really big, empty house with fireplaces. It was very bizarre. There were a lot of people there. There was a guy who lived in a bomb shelter in the back.”

Douglas agreed that the pool needed cleaning. “Nobody knew about chlorine,” he recently joked. “You walked into that pool and came out with a slime line.” As for DeVito, Douglas described his friend at the time as “a nice Jersey boy who never saw so many naked people.”

The two later shared an apartment in New York, splitting the $150-a-month rent 50-50. “Then he went away and did ‘The Streets of San Francisco,’ ” DeVito said, “but he kept paying the rent. He’s a good guy. Know what I’m saying? A really good guy.”

DeVito met his future wife while performing onstage as a demented stable boy. Perlman had come to the theater with a friend.

“When the lights came up,” DeVito recalled, “I was leaning over the edge of the stage spitting into the orchestra pit, holding a rake over my shoulders, and a little cute girl comes out and she says, ‘Hiya. What are you doing?’ And I say, ‘I’m spitting on the swans.’ ”

DeVito and Perlman went to a nearby jazz hangout for a cup of coffee, ended up talking all night and exchanged phone numbers. Two weeks later, she moved into his Manhattan apartment. The year was 1971.

They married 15 years ago while DeVito was doing “Taxi.” As he recalled it, they were married by a French horn player from the L.A. Philharmonic, and the ceremony included a recording of the Little Rascals’ Alfalfa crooning “I’m in the Mood for Love.” DeVito said his late mother heard that and asked someone: “What are they, nuts?”

DeVito’s big break came after Douglas and director Milos Forman saw him perform the role of Martini in an off-Broadway production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” He was the first actor chosen for the film version, which Douglas produced.

Soon, DeVito was teaming with Jack Nicholson in “Goin’ South” and then landed the Louie role in “Taxi” when he tossed the script down and demanded to know, “Who wrote this [expletive]?”

He would go on to appear with Douglas and Kathleen Turner in “Romancing the Stone” and “Jewel of the Nile,” as well as such films as “Ruthless People,” “Wise Guys” and “Tin Men.” He directed and starred in “Throw Momma From the Train” and later helmed Douglas in “The War of the Roses” and Nicholson in “Hoffa.”

Douglas said what he likes most about his friend’s performance in “Rainmaker” is that DeVito was able to bring a sweetness to the role that people often overlook in him.

“We know the other character he’s got,” Douglas said. “But this one was so poignant, so honest. It’s one of the best performances I’ve seen.”

DeVito says there is no single role through the years that he considers his favorite.

“I just do ‘em,” he said. “It’s not like I’m blase. I care about each one. But putting one as my favorite is really hard.”

He pauses.

“I like acting a lot.”