Gina Gershon’s dream still rocks
The only thing worse than a waiter who wants to be an actor is an actor who wants to be a rock star. It’s regarded as a self-indulgent fantasy, exceeding even that of an actor who wants to be a political pundit.
“People want to rip actors apart for doing music,” says actress Gina Gershon. “I think that’s a given. I don’t know why. It’s just the way it is.”
Gershon has had a lot of opportunity to think about this issue, because in September she went on the road with a pickup band to promote an independent film she starred in called “Prey for Rock & Roll.” Doing so, she got “rocked,” as she puts it, which also happens to be the name of a six-episode documentary about the tour: “Rocked With Gina Gershon,” which premieres tonight on the Independent Film Channel.
“The title might sound a little pretentious,” Gershon allows.
On this particular day, Gershon is seated in a lower Manhattan hotel lobby looking like a rock star who wants to be a movie star. She’s got the raccoon eyes, the generous mouth, the layered hair and the lithe figure. Most of all, she’s got the attitude ... almost. She’s tough, but there’s also something touchingly eager about her.
Tonight she will be performing yet again with her band -- Girls Against Boys -- at actor Chris Noth’s nightclub, the Cutting Room, to wrap the tour. She’s also editing the final two episodes of the series. She is, in short, exhausted, but it’s easy to get her going. Clearly, the tour, the series and the movie they were meant to support have consumed her.
“It’s been a big ‘Why not?’ year,” says Gershon, 41. “You’ve never been a producer. Why not? You’ve never been on tour. Why not? Plus people close to me have died recently. And people are afraid to do things that are out of their realm. They want to categorize you, put you in a box. You’re an actress; you’re not a rock singer.”
In fact, she says, she’s always been a bit of both. She was raised in the San Fernando Valley and at 15 sang in a band called Fellah Johnson, which she describes as a bunch of white guys trying to be black. She says she’s been a closet singer ever since, so much so that high school classmate and rock singer Lenny Kravitz, who appears in “Rocked,” told her when she was touring, “It’s about time you’re doing this.”
Initially, however, Gershon concentrated on being a serious actress. The results have been mixed. A founding member of the theater troupe the Naked Angels, she has appeared in such prestige projects as John Sayles’ “City of Hope” (1991), Robert Altman’s “The Player” (1992) and Michael Mann’s “The Insider” (1999).
On the other hand, she is best known for her work in Paul Verhoeven’s camp classic “Showgirls” (1995) and Larry and Andy Wachowskis’ “Bound” (1996), a noir thriller that made Gershon a pin-up girl in the lesbian community.
More recently, Gershon began testing the waters musically. She appeared as Sally Bowles in the Broadway revival of “Cabaret.” And, more significantly, she was a producer on and star of “Prey for Rock & Roll,” in which she played a thinly veiled version of real-life punk rocker Cheri Lovedog and in which she did her own vocals.
A performance at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival with former Guns N’ Roses members Slash, Duff and Matt Sorum convinced “Prey” distributor Mac Releasing that she should go out on the road. It was an idea that she had been entertaining anyway, but it was presented to her as an ultimatum.
“The distributors said, ‘If you don’t go on tour, we’re going to open this in three theaters,’ ” she says.
In other words, they were going to dump the film. Although this arm-twisting may not have been necessary, she did need a lot of convincing when the idea of documenting the tour came up. Initially she refused, because it was pitched to her as an unscripted series. Gershon says she hates unscripted television because she considers it “mean-spirited” and “sensational.”
She was won over when IFC promised her complete control. It would be a video diary rather than an unscripted show. (Also, she admits, the tour needed IFC’s financing.)
“It’s rare to see a celebrity in a program like this,” says IFC executive Debbie Demontreux. “It’s usually supposed to be funny. I hate to say the stupidity of Jessica Simpson, but it’s often like that.”
The series details how Gershon was “rocked,” which implies that she was battered by the experience but still left standing. The challenges started with her musicians: three members of the noise rock band Girls Against Boys.
They had to get comfortable with her and she with them, and together they had to learn songs from the film and songs she had written. Amazingly, she says, they had no trouble deferring to her, a neophyte.
“I had no trepidations other than would we be able to get it together,” says the group’s drummer, Alexis Fleisig. “I always love hanging out with famous actresses. And I’d heard the music [from the film], so I knew she could sing.”
Their first gig was at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, an unmitigated disaster on the order of “This is Spinal Tap.”
Their first real performance, however, was at L.A.’s House of Blues. So many people showed up that the fire marshal threatened to shut the place down.
“Enormously ridiculous naive mistake” is how Gershon describes the show. “I thought we were going to start in the Viper Room or some grungy place, but House of Blues helped sponsor the tour, so we had to play there. It’s like going out on Broadway with a day rehearsal. It was a little overwhelming. It was just too much.”
Things got better -- and worse. Their second show, in San Francisco, was warmly received, with a large contingent of Gershon’s gay fan base showing up to support her.
As the tour proceeded -- Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Philadelphia, Boston, New York -- the group became more cohesive and Gershon became more comfortable onstage. At the same time, however, she contracted Epstein-Barr virus, which caused a debilitating disease, and the distributor reneged on its promise to open the film. According to her, after all the press she did -- the tedium of which is documented in the series -- the distributor dumped it.
She says what made all these “rocked” moments tolerable was the thought that they would be good for the series (though she ended up firing the series director, whom she won’t name, because he was using a hidden camera that threatened to turn it into an unscripted show).
“I think the underlying theme [of the series] is that you can plan something, but it never ends up that way,” Gershon says. “If you go along with the ride, something else shows up that may be even better than what your original plan was. I went out to promote a film and ended up loving music, and now I’m playing it.”
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‘Rocked With Gina Gershon’
Where: Independent Film Channel (IFC).
When: Premieres tonight at 7:30. Repeats at 10:30 p.m.
Starring...Gina Gershon