Film provides path to fulfilment for Cannon

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 23

Film provides path to fulfilment for Cannon

By MATTHEW HELLER NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles Dyan Cannon has ridden an emotional rollercoaster unusual even by Hollywood standards.

The actress-filmmaker survived a stormy marriage to Cary Grant and experimented with every thing from primal scream therapy to voluntary celibacy in her search for spiritual harmony. Along the way Cannon was nominated for Academy Awards for her performances in “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice” and “Heaven Can Wait,” as well as for directing the short film, "Number One.”

But at the age of 51, she says, she has finally achieved enough “inner peace” to take on the challenge of starring in, directing and writing the full-length feature, ’’One Point of View'.”

“I guess now in my life,” she said in an interview, “I was ready to accept the responsibility of maintaining that kind of atmosphere that would enable everyone to work and still have a good time

... and not have it all crumble around me.

“Fve been working on getting myself together so I could do it and have a good time doing it. That’s what I accomplished.” Cannon is putting in long hours editing the film in a small Los Angeles studio decorated with what she says are the essential components of her life — pictures of her family, a Los Angeles Lakers basketball schedule and an exercise machine.

The low-budget movie, scheduled for release later this year, tells the story of a woman played by Cannon who trys to rebuild her fragile ego in a rehabilitation centre.

“I’m learning so much and I must say it gives me tremendous compassion for every producer I’ve ever worked for,” said Cannon, still looking glamorous in a sweatshirt and a black leotard.

She said she had been offered eight or nine features to direct since “Number One,” but “I turned them down because it was never the right time. They never wanted to give me the time ... to facilitate what

I felt needed to be done with scripts.” But Cannon, who is now married to a Los Angeles property executive and has a daughter by Grant — the Hollywood star who died in 1986 — also admitted she mhy not have been emotionally prepared to take on such a challenge. “I think emotionally I’ve always been an extremist and I’ve been working on balancing out my act, so to speak, for a long time ... I wouldn’t have been ready to have accepted the responsibility and done it just on my own.

“To me it’s not just directing a film or writing a film or acting in a film. That’s really not what it’s about. It’s how you do those things. It’s the harmony that’s maintained while you’re working with all these people. “There were days when I’d get a little nuts but not for long, not long enough to disrupt the harmony.” Cannon said the idea for “One Point of View” had been percolating in her mind for some time. But it took two months in Florida filming “Caddyshack II,” in which she had a cameo role, to get her to put it down on paper. “I went away on location, stayed at this spa,

got massaged, wrote this movie and got paid a tremendous chunk of change to write it,” she said, dissolving into laughter.

The struggle of the main character, whose self-esteem hinges on other people’s opinion of her, mirrors much of Cannon’s own experience. “I’ve spent so much of my life trying to be loved by everybody. It doesn’t work,” she said. “You can’t please every body in the world, so get on with doing your own higher sense of right, hoping you won’t tread on anyone else’s beliefs and get on with your life.

“That’s what I’m doing now and it feels like I’ve had 500 billion pounds lifted off my back. And life has never been better.”

Cannon admits the pressure of making “One Point of View” sometimes surfaces at "three or four in the morning when it wakes me up and I think: What have I done? What am I doing taking people’s money?” But whatever the film’s commercial success, she said, "It can’t take away the fulfilment I got from doing it. I’ve finally come to the place where I’m just making a movie and I hope people like it.”