review: alan alda and sweet liberty

By Dan Rattiner

Last Saturday evening, the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor presented a screening of the 1986 film SWEET LIBERTY, which was filmed almost entirely in and around Sag Harbor. It was followed by an interview with the director, writer and star of the movie, Alan Alda, who, for the last thirty years has made his home in Mecox. The price per ticket was $50, which benefited Bay Street. The place sold out.

The movie starred Alan Alda, Michael Caine and Michelle Pfeiffer. It was a hit at the box office that year, but it won no awards. It was interesting to see it again after all these years.

The movie is about the making of a movie, also called SWEET LIBERTY, which consists of a comedic retelling of the Battle of Cowpens during the Revolutionary War. Alda plays the history professor at the local college who wrote the book about this battle, called SWEET LIBERTY, which is what the movie is based upon. As the director of the movie within the movie (Saul Rubinek) says to Alda, in explaining why the movie script does not parallel the history book, “Movie-goers today are between the ages of 12 and 28. They want to see movies that defy authority, destroy property and where the actors take off their clothes.” Thus develops the main theme of the movie as Alda, who, by contract, can’t be thrown off the set, tries to set the history straight in the movie.

The battle scene in the movie takes place on a vast estate up in North Haven, which has since been torn down, and was a retreat of the Dominican Sisters. Much of the rest of the movie takes place on the streets of Sag Harbor, in some of the beautiful old whaling homes and in the American Hotel. Michael Caine plays the role of the British General in the movie. He is also a revered movie star and people are constantly seeking his autograph. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the wife of an American rebel that Caine lusts after.

It was nice to see Sag Harbor in 1986. It looks pretty much as it does today. I was an extra in a street scene in this movie, but didn’t see myself in the movie when it made the rounds in 1986, and again didn’t see myself in the movie at this performance. I apparently wound up on the cutting room floor. I was, however, as a real life newspaper reporter, up at the Revolutionary War battle staged in North Haven. And I remember the night when the movie people actually rented the entire length of Main Street, Sag Harbor, turning it into a stage set for the night. Nobody was allowed onto this set from midnight to 6 a.m.

I didn’t think, watching this movie again after twenty years, that it held up very well. Much of the culture has changed. Michelle Pfeiffer’s role called for her to chain smoke when she’s not in character. She also curses. Everybody else curses. People did curse in the 1980s, a lot as I recall. Much of the repartee between the actors, written by Alda, is witty the way repartee is witty in a Neil Simon play, rather than natural.

Afterwards, Alda remained on stage fielding questions from interviewer Jeffrey Lyons and the audience for more than an hour.

Alda, who is a great actor on both the screen and TV with many awards (M. A. S. H. is probably his best known work,) said that he hadn’t seen the film in about fifteen years either.

“I remember when it came out twenty years ago, I went to the premiere of the movie in about eighteen cities around the country and at each one I thought, ‘I hope they like it.’ Tonight, I thought ‘I hope I like it.’”

“Did you?” Lyons asked.

“I liked most of it. There were parts I thought could have been better. I noticed that you all found the spontaneous moments more amusing than the clever dialogue. At the time, clever dialogue was funnier. The reverse is true now.”

He talked a bit about the fact that two of the actors in the film were English, but both had to adopt accents to be in the film within the film. Michael Caine, who has a lower-middle class accent in real life, had to adopt an upper class British accent to be the actor who plays the British General. And Bob Hoskins, a Cockney, who plays the man who wrote the screen dialogue, adopted a Brooklyn Jewish accent.

“What made you think that Bob Hoskins could play a Jewish screenwriter?” Lyons asked.

“I don’t know. I wrote the part. I thought of him. And there he was. You know, he really had to work hard on this accent. Every morning, he would go to the same Sag Harbor deli to get his breakfast and he’d order it from the waitress as a Brooklyn Jew. One day he said ‘she believes it, she believes it.’ He had gotten it right.”

One of the funniest scenes in the movie within the movie, involves a swordfight between Alda and Caine. In the script, Caine is supposed to get the better of it, continually slashing Alda’s clothes until finally shoving him down a hill and then running after him to see that he’s all right.

“I studied how to swordfight for about two weeks,” Alda said. “Caine was supposed to, too. Neither of us knew how to do it. But Caine just never took his lessons, saying he only wanted to learn enough to LOOK like he was sword fighting. So I kept winning when we did the scene. I’d touch him on the arm. I’d slap him on the ankle. It made him mad. But we finally completed the scene.”

Lyons had brought with him twenty different magazine covers, all of which featured Alan Alda. He held them up. “Do you remember this one?” he asked Alda, showing him one from PEOPLE magazine.

“I remember that after it came out, I got a call from a dentist saying he saw PEOPLE Magazine and that I had a tooth in my mouth that was blue. He said ‘I can fix that.’ I looked at the picture, and sure enough I had a blue tooth. About five years later I did get that fixed.”

Alda told a story about the aging actress Lillian Gish, since deceased, who, in this film, plays Alda’s batty 85-year-old mother.

“She was filled with stories,” Alan said. “I recall a scene where she is in a bed in a hospital and everybody is getting ready to shoot it, the cameramen and the carpenters and the sound technicians, and while they were setting up, she told this most wonderful story about D. L. Griffith, the famous silent film director. It was something that happened in 1912, I think. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stood perfectly still and just listened to her. All these people in the hospital room were in the film business and knew film history. Here was this legend telling a story. And I only wish I could have remembered to say — guys, film this — but I didn’t and so now it is gone.”

After the interview, anyone in the audience who had been in the film with either a part or as an extra was invited onstage for a group photograph with Mr. Alda. After some hesitation, I decided to go. I’d been in it. In the end on the cutting room floor, but in it nevertheless. What a wonderful evening.