Holly Hunter agrees it was weird.
"Very weird, weird," she was saying yesterday with a chuckle. She was talking about casting a movie in which the three most important roles were played by her, Danny DeVito and Queen Latifah, with important support work from Martin Donovan and Hunter's dear friend, Canadian Elias Koteas.
The film involved is the poignant human drama Living Out Loud, which made its world premiere last night as a gala in the Toronto film festival.
Weird doesn't matter, says Hunter. What matters is that everyone was perfect for the role. Hunter plays a woman dumped by her rich, philandering, doctor husband as the story begins. This is no victim's tale, however.
As she begins to reconstruct her fractured life, she befriends DeVito, an elevator operator with gambling debts, and Latifah, a silky-smooth blues singer with a gay boyfriend. Koteas plays a man who kisses Hunter in a surprising, exhilarating scene.
"I think he's so special," Hunter says of Koteas, whom she met on the set of David Cronenberg's Crash in Toronto and who will soon star in Lost Souls, the directorial debut of Hunter's Oscar-winning cinematographer husband, Janusz Kaminski. "He's got such a special original intensity that I knew that scene would not be suburban," says Hunter. "It would be a contact that would be profound if Elias were doing it."
"Danny DeVito," says Hunter, "is one of the easiest people. He is who you think he is. He's extremely gregarious. He loves people. He's very comfortable. Danny brought an ease to the part too, you know."
As for rapper Queen Latifah, "she's a lovely person, really kind and really easy to work with too. Latifah was also the right person to play that part."
The movie, written and directed by The Fisher King screenwriter Richard LaGravenese, was inspired by two short stories by playwright Anton Chekhov, The Kiss and Misery. The contemporary story takes Hunter's character on an arc from anguished, angry loneliness to a kind of dignified, self-confident aloneness at the end of the film.
"It was a very subtle journey," says Hunter, "and perhaps that is what drew me to the script most of all, that shift in her. Because it was a shift that I normally wouldn't see in an American script. It seemed more European to me. It wasn't obvious and it wasn't really 'high concept'. I was just fascinated by the story."
Hunter was apparently less fascinated by LaGravenese. There are rumors of friction between them. However, the highly polished and professional Hunter was diplomatic yesterday as she sat talking, a sleek vision in her new hair color, a wine shade.
"I have worked with directors with whom I have felt spiritually bonded," Hunter explains. She cites Cronenberg. "Then, if I'm working with a director who is a stranger to me, what I end up doing is more insular work, which is also very interesting." LaGravenese's Living Out Loud is an example, she says.
"This is one of the great discoveries of the last few years for me personally, because I have been a completely sharing actress with directors in the past. Now I can have my private thoughts and impulses and desires for a character. If I keep them secret, it enriches it. Having secrets no one else would know is very, very provocative."
Meanwhile, last night's gala was shared -- with her husband, not her director, although LaGravenese is here too. Kaminski put aside his pre-production work in Los Angeles to ensure he would squire Hunter into Roy Thomson Hall for the Toronto gala. "We put a tremendous effort into being here together for this," he explains as Hunter beams approval. There's nothing weird about that.
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