The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene

“Honey. Are you in New York? We just got a call that Anthony Minghella would love to meet you for a project he’s working on, but he’s in a time crunch. Can you do today at one? The office is in midtown.”

“Of course, Perri.”

“I’ll call you right back with the address.”

I hung up and thought about Minghella. He’d made a fantastic movie called The English Patient that was an adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s brilliant novel. The meeting was a mystery, but rushed meetings with directors meant a project was in play, close to its start date, and there was a last-minute casting issue.

My manager, Perri Kiperman, called back with the address, and I took off to an building off 57^th Street where a secretary told me to wait, that Mr. Minghella would be out in a minute.

Moments later, Anthony appeared from the hallway and said, “Mr. Logue, such a pleasure.”

He had such a self-possessed comfort and warmth about him, I was immediately put at ease. “Come in, come in.”

Anthony ushered me into an office and indicated for me to sit. “You’re probably wondering what this is about,” he said.

I smiled and nodded.

“I’m starting production soon in Rome on a film called The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s based on a fantastic novel by Patricia Highsmith about a young man who is sent from New York to Italy to try to convince the son of a wealthy shipping magnate to return home. It’s dark. The man he sends, Tom Ripley, a pathological liar, murders, and assumes the identity of the man he is sent to retrieve.

I laughed. “Wow, heavy.”

“Yes, it’s a fantastic world set in the late ‘50s.”

“Rome in the late ‘50s? Reminds me of my favorite film, La Dolce Vita.”

“Yes, precisely, one of mine, too. I want to be very honest here. We’ve offered the part of Freddie Miles to Philip Seymour Hoffman, but he is working on a film in North Carolina and the dates might not work out so we need to know we have someone in the wings who can cover just in case.”

“Absolutely.”

By the mid to late ‘90s, Philip Seymour Hoffman and I had been in this casting scenario more than a few times. Since his turn in Boogie Nights, his star was on the ascendent, and I was definitely assigned the role of his junior varsity backup. Which was precisely as it should have been. A friend had worked with Philip on Twister some years earlier and said he was complicated, but brilliant. I didn’t know anything about the former, but I agreed with the latter. His turn in the Todd Solondz film Happiness made me so uncomfortable (in the best possible way), I squirmed watching him. In fact, every character Philip played had such nuanced and dark internal lives there was nobody who could do it at his level.

“Maybe you’d like to read the script to get a sense of the project.”

“Absolutely.”

Anthony handed me a script and said he was going to make some phone calls about pre-production issues and to just let the secretary know when I had finished.

I tore through it. It was a fantastically tragic journey that starts the way a lot of them do—with a lie. Tom Ripley, a struggling piano player, fills in at the last minute for an injured musician at a wealthy family’s private party. He borrows the musician’s Princeton blazer for the gig and is asked by the host, the wealthy shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf, if Tom knew his son Dickie at Princeton.

Caught like an insect on a pin, he makes a fateful decision, and says “Yes,” an answer that spins into all kinds of bad for a lot of people. The die cast, the remaining drama is merely a question of how fucked up things go from there— how many lies and prevarications have to be told and sins committed to mask the initial deception. Herbert Greenleaf gets down to brass tacks. He wants to hire Tom to go to Italy to convince his wayward son to come home.

I finished the script in less than an hour. Anthony came back into the office and asked, “What did you think?”

“I just went on a heavy journey.”

“What do you think about Freddie Miles?”

Freddie, a heavy-set, epicurean, crude, obnoxious, wealthy, American ex-pat was the part Philip Seymour Hoffman had been offered to play. In the script, he’s the first person who sees through Tom Ripley and serves as his chief antagonist.

I leaned forward. “When he’s first introduced, as the ultimate ugly American, all dancing and ‘Ciao bello,’ parks like a dick at their table and makes a crude remark about a passing woman, you get who he is immediately. He reminds me of Frankie Stout in La Dolce Vita when he rolls up to the party to sweep up Anita Ekberg and bum out Marcello Mastroianni— just like Ripley is disappointed when Freddie appears on the scene.”

Anthony sat back. He was pleased. I could tell I’d landed precisely on something he was inspired by when he wrote the screenplay.

“Exactly! That was the scene I was thinking of when I was adapting the script. Even how Ekberg yells out ‘Frankie!’ the way Dickie says ‘Freddie!’ It was a tip of my hat to Fellini.” Anthony glanced at his watch. “Would you like to take a walk and get some coffee? You’re not pressed for time, are you?”

“Not at all. I’d love to get some coffee.”

Anthony and I took the elevator to the ground floor, set out on 57^th Street, and grabbed coffee and pretzels from a street vendor. I remember looking at my Anthora cup, the ubiquitous, blue, white, and gold, Greek-style design, paper cups that every diner and bodega in New York serves take-away coffees in and thinking, there must be a billion of these in landfills.

We talked about our lives. Anthony had grown up on the Isle of Wight with his siblings and Italian immigrant parents where they managed a small ice cream shop. He asked me about my name, and I explained that it was Irish, that there weren’t that many Logues, and that they can mostly be found in the north of Ireland, specifically Donegal.

“Have you ever been?” asked Anthony.

“To Ireland?”

He nodded.

“Dozens of times. My mom and dad were the only two to come over to the US. The rest of my family is still in Ireland and England. I’m one of those people with a zillion first cousins. I even went to school in London for a spell until I got kicked out.”

He laughed. “Why’d you get kicked out?”

“This sounds like an asshole-y, self-aggrandizing thing to say, but I believe I had audacity to be American and not stupid.” I told Anthony a story about a clash I had with my Classics professor my first day of sixth form and he laughed.

“Oh, I think you are probably spot on.”

Anthony told me he had assembled an amazing cast for the movie, including Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Jude Law, an English actor he said was incredible. “I can’t wait for the world to see him,” he said.

It was getting late and I could sense Anthony needed to get back to the office, so we said our goodbyes. I disappeared into a subway station while he waved.

A week later my agent Perri called to tell me that the dates had worked out for Phillip Seymour Hoffman to be in The Talented Mister Ripley. I wasn’t disappointed. What I got out of the episode was a chance to walk around New York City with Anthony Minghella, a man as kind as he was brilliant.

When The Talented Mr. Ripley came out, I saw it in the theater. It’s one of the few films I’ve watched where I’d been close to a role I didn’t get it. I don’t mean that in a bitter way, but there always lingers a feeling of what might have been. The list of actors I’ve lost out on parts to is a murderers’ row of the best: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Donnie Wahlberg, Frank Whaley, Kevin Corrigan, even Matt Damon himself. My friend Bob says, “Always be spiritually generous. A high tide floats all boats. There’s room at the table for all.”

The lights in the theater came down and the film started. The scenes I read in the office came to life in front of me, and although I knew the trajectory of the film, I suspended my disbelief entirely and enjoyed the unfolding as if I didn’t have a clue. Waiting to board the Cunard Line to Italy, Matt Damon meets Cate Blanchett who introduces himself as Meredith Randall. He lies and says he is Dickie Greenleaf. She asks why she saw him checking in his luggage under “R” and he says that he prefers to travel incognito due to his family’s wealth and name recognition.

Cate leans in and says conspiratorially, “The funny thing is, I’m not a Randall. I’m Logue.”

Ripley says, “As in the…”

She nods. “The Textile Logues.”

I was stunned. Hearing my crazy and rare surname, one held by long lines of fishermen and farmers, being thrown out like it was a catchword for old money was odd but thrilling. Meredith’s surname certainly wasn’t Logue in the version of the script I had read. I felt Anthony was saying thank you to me for what hadn’t been. The character of Meredith wasn’t even in the Highsmith novel but was created by Minghella for the film.

It was a confirmation of a suspicion the afternoon with Anthony had meant something. I imagined him going through the script and doing a search and replace with the name ‘Logue.’ Maybe it helped with legal clearance issues because ‘Logue’ is so obscure, but it didn’t matter. My thumbprint was on the film, and I felt honored.

Just like Anthony had said, Jude Law was an inferno of new talent being introduced to the world. And Philip Seymour Hoffman kicked ass as Freddie. Years later, wandering through the West Village, I passed Philip on the street. We stopped and laughed about being on each other’s radar for so many years while never having officially met. We sat down on a stoop and talked for an hour and a half about life, sobriety, mutual friends, our children, art, theater, and Anthony Minghella, who had recently passed away unexpectedly.

I left Philip feeling the same way I did when I left Anthony — buoyant, optimistic, and with the knowledge I had made a new friend.