"Eyes" Has It

Violence in fashion---or violence made fashionable, whichever way you want to look at it---is the mysterious moving force unleashed in Eyes of Laura Mars, a psychological suspense drama that promises to be a mind bender made to order for escapists on a hot midsummer night. At least that's more or less the plan hatched under a shroud of secrecy by producer Jon Peters, who was---among other things---Barbra Streisand's favorite hairdresser before he left the beauty salon to join his lady in bringing forth A Star Is Born. Peters' first film venture, though generally spurned by critics, was a showbiz El Dorado (to the tune of $60,000,000 in film rentals, plus $80,000,000 in album sales, according to Peters). Hairdresser, schmairdresser---in Hollywood, when a neophyte hits the jackpot on such an epic scale, he has earned the right to be listened to.

Until recently, Peters was keeping mum about Eyes of Laura Mars, no doubt hoping that the suspense would kill us. A few things were known: For starters, (continued on page 186)"eyes" Has It (continued from page 98) the movie has Faye Dunaway in it, which never hurts. Faye plays Laura Mars, a famous fashion photographer, and the film boasts some strangely decadent, subtly erotic photographs in the modish manner popularized here and abroad by Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Ara Gallant and other lens superstars. Newton himself did some of the freaky photographs that ostensibly represent Laura's far-out inspirations, though the bulk of the work was shot by New York-based Rebecca Blake. "Up to now, I've always done more romantic things," says Blake, "so this assignment challenged me. They said they wanted some murders photographed as if they were fashion. So I tried to create fashion photography with a strong emotional content. Of course, I was also intrigued by Faye's image in the film, as top woman in a field formerly dominated by men."

Cast in key roles opposite Dunaway are Tommy Lee Jones, René Auberjonois, Brad Dourif and two reigning cover girls, blonde Darlanne Fluegel and dark, sultry Lisa Taylor. Both make their film debuts as top models whose assignments with Laura attract the unwanted attention of a psychopathic killer.

Darlanne and Lisa, both hired by Peters, may be shivering on the threshold of movie careers, if director Irvin Kershner is any judge. Best known for Loving, Streisand's Up the Sandbox and The Return of a Man Called Horse, Kershner is the seasoned pro chosen by George Lucas to direct the sequel to Star Wars. Meanwhile, he stays high on his gorgeous earthlings. "These girls are such great models, they naturally do their own thing very beautifully. But we asked a lot more of them and they were tireless, uncomplaining . . . just superb."

Kershner would only hint at the content of Eyes. "In a ridiculous world, fashion is decadence---calculated to make people feel less beautiful, less young, less wealthy than they should be. Modern consumerism tends to push you into a state of gracelessness if you're short, or aging, or your hair is wrong. Which does not mean we're delivering a message. We're telling a story that's romantic as well as enticing, but primarily a melodrama with a psychic aspect."

Finally, we decided, nobody but Peters could describe in detail what his film actually was. Young, bearded, rich, frank, sure of himself and well turned out in the choicest Beverly Hills-casual threads, Peters talks a damned good movie---with contagious exuberance. "Convincing Faye to do Eyes was difficult, because it's not a safe film. We took chances. So much of it is visual stuff that you can't immediately see in script form. She was very brave, but she's so talented and savvy she became a collaborator in every sense.

"The story's about a fashion photographer who becomes extremely successful when her work changes---through a series of premonitions, or dreamlike states---into the Helmut Newtonish style of photography you see in the film, with dead bodies and jewelry and beautiful clothes, that whole shtick. In one scene, Tommy Lee Jones, as the detective, comes to Faye with two photographs: One is a picture she did for Vogue, showing a black man who's been shot and a girl strangled with a telephone cord; the other is a police photo that is virtually identical but with two different people, taken at the scene of a crime two years earlier. 'Can you explain how you did this?' he asks her.

"What we find out later is that she has a psychic connection to another, unknown person, which develops into what's called a linkage with the eyes of a killer. When he's moving onto a victim, she virtually goes blind, enters a sort of trance and sees through his eyes. It's like an erection, when you get that particular sensation---the coming is the completed action, the killing. Afterward, she gets her sight back and retains certain images but doesn't know what she's been through. Ultimately, the communication becomes so strong that it takes physical possession of her. She has the vision while driving a car and goes crashing into things. Whatever he sees, she sees---so that if he should pass in front of a mirror, she'd be able to recognize and identify him. This becomes very frightening as they start moving toward each other; several people are murdered before they meet."

Peters grins boyishly. "That's our story. It's based on an idea of my own that I worked out with a writer named John Carpenter. We showed the movie to eight or nine psychiatrists and psychologists in L.A. and they were blown away. It's a kind of realistic fantasy, mostly entertainment, drawn not from fact but from the infinite possibilities of the human mind. Who knows what can happen?"

After a session or two with Jon, the suspicion grows that what's really happening in Eyes is the emergence of Jon Peters as a major showbiz entrepreneur, a creative producer like those we knew in the good old Hollywood days of Goldwyn, Selznick, Zanuck, et al. "Barbra's done a single," he says, "a song called Prisoner, written for the movie as the theme from Eyes of Laura Mars. It's woven into the sound track throughout, which is very powerful and unexpected. It's going to be a number-one record." And he briskly sings a sample phrase: "I'm a prisoner, captured by your eyes-----"

An air of disarming innocence brightens Peters' eyes when he divulges, in the same breath, that he has concluded a multiple-picture pact with Orion Pictures and really knows very little about the business. "I don't know anything. But because I have no past knowledge of the movie industry, I might dare things that other people wouldn't. I came into the movie world five years ago and learned what I could on my own. Still, I was a great bullshit artist as a kid, always a good storyteller.

"I'm off and running now, with about 12 movies planned. The next project I'm gonna tackle is a comedy, a thing we're doing a rewrite on called The Lady and the Boxer, about this woman fashion designer whose business manager absconds with all her money. She finds out that the only asset she has left is a nothing boxer she acquired as a tax write-off. She goes to find him and set him up for a comeback. It's for Barbra and Ryan O'Neal, if Barbra doesn't change her mind."

Among other Peters properties in the planning is a remake of Clare Boothe Luce's bitchy classic, The Women. "I've got Polly Platt working on a sort of adaptation for today. I'd like to do it with Barbra, Faye, Jane Fonda, at least five big female stars, though I still don't know who will play which part. I'm also thinking about Raquel Welch and Diane Keaton."

Riding herd on a management firm (he guides Geraldo Rivera's career as well as Barbra's), a music company with several promising new rock groups under contract and a residual share of the Jon Peters Salons keeps Peters too busy to worry about the public's unflattering image of him---either as an upstart who hitched his wagon to Streisand and A Star Is Born or as the prototypal, horny Hollywood hairdresser portrayed by Warren Beatty in Shampoo. Jon seems unfazed by his detractors. "Star Is Born was the most personal thing I'd ever done, the most creative experience in my entire life, though I took a lot of flak because I'd never done anything like that before. I'd read in the papers that I was a pimp or a jerk or whatever. It's true that at one point I was planning to direct the movie. I convinced Barbra I could direct it, but I didn't convince myself. She's the real director in the family, a brilliant lady. She can do anything; she's a total perfectionist. I'm not like that. I'm a gut guy, with gut reactions. I either get a chill from a scene or a song or an idea or I don't get a chill, and that's that.

"As for Shampoo, I loved the originality of it. The sets were modeled after my Beverly Hills salon, so I guess the common journalistic prototype of the heterosexual hairdresser was me---though the real-life counterpart was Gene She-cove, a hairdresser I apprenticed under in L.A. The sad part of Shampoo got to me, however, because I ran a very successful business. I'd been married first when I was 15 and blew my second marriage to Lesley Ann Warren. I knew every morning I'd make a lot of money and meet a lot of women and fall in love five times that day, which I thought was great. The point about the character I identified with was his inability to communicate, the fact that he'd cheerfully fuck four or five women a day but couldn't communicate with one. That's the part of my life that changed when I met Barbra. Of course, we have a very volatile relationship, off one day and on the next. But we've been together five years and it's better than ever."

Running a hair salon, in Jon's opinion, is in some ways the ideal preparation for a would-be film producer. "In the beauty shop, you can always tell what people want to see by what movies they talk about, what books they bring in to read. It's great research. What's relevant to me is that 99 percent of the audience works hard all week and they go out on Saturday night wanting to be excited, to be taken away for a while and put in another place, another world. That's the kind of movie Eyes is meant to be. Yet it says a lot about violence. The character Faye plays is like Roman Polanski; violence and tragedy ultimately manifested themselves around him, just as they did in the films he made. There are lots of jolts in my movie, things that come on you when you're not looking---and one scene that's gonna make people scream. It's fun."

"'In a ridiculous world, fashion is decadence---calculated to make people feel less beautiful.'"