Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [72]
Quincy Jones wrote in his autobiography that Tina Turner’s reaction reflected the attitude of Hollywood at the time. “Nobody wanted to make a black movie,” he said, explaining the resistance he had to overcome to get the film made in 1985. Statistics backed him up. During that summer’s release of teenage films, there had not been one black female face onscreen. So Jones decided to pursue the popular mainstream director of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, whose magic made millions believe in the humanity of a wrinkled rubber alien who looked like Elmer Fudd. The producer then had to convince Alice Walker that Steven Spielberg was the right person to make her book into a major motion picture. Reluctant at first, Walker finally came around. “I guess if he can make people believe in Martians, he can do the same for our folks,” she said.
Decades after writing the novel that brought her wealth, acclaim, and international recognition, Alice Walker maintained that The Color Purple was a gift given to her to give to others. Her lack of ego about writing the saga of a poor country girl’s life of physical and sexual abuse by men elevated the process of filming for everyone. “We all wanted to make Alice proud,” said Margaret Avery.
Oprah said that being chosen for the role of Sofia was the single happiest day of her life, and filming the movie was “the only time I ever felt part of a family surrounded by unconditional love.” She recalled the experience with near-worshipful awe. “It was a spiritual evolvement for me,” she said. “I learned to love people doing that film.”
She forged strong friendships on the set, but few survived the passage of time. She fell out with Whoopi Goldberg, who would later compare her to Lonesome Rhodes, the power-hungry monster in A Face in the Crowd; she tangled with Akosua Busia, who also appeared with her in Native Son and wrote the first screenplay for Beloved, the movie Oprah felt would make her a film legend. She pulled away from Alice Walker and offended Steven Spielberg, but she held tight to Quincy Jones. “I love him more than any human being in the world,” she once said. Revered for his musical genius, “Q,” as his friends call him, opened his influential Hollywood circle to Oprah and made her part of his celebrity world. She once sent him a T-shirt that read: “Oprah Loves Me Unconditionally. I Can Never Fuck Up.”
Later she would say that it was divine destiny that she got the role of Sofia in The Color Purple. “I wasn’t really, really, really surprised,” she said. “It’s exactly what was supposed to happen. To me.”
Whether from God or good luck, her casting could definitely be credited to her girth. In the spring of 1985 she had gone to a fat farm to try to lose weight and win the bet she had made with Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show. While pounding the track, she received a call from the casting director, Reuben Cannon, who warned, “If you lose one pound, you lose the part.” She immediately packed her bags and hightailed it to the nearest Dairy Queen.
At that point, the thirty-one-year-old talk show host was riding a comet of local fame across Chicago: “I could practically do no wrong,” she said. She knew that a major role in a Steven Spielberg film could throw her star into the stratosphere. “I wanted that role more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life,” she said. When she found out she was in the running, she begged her lawyer not to negotiate too hard. “He was pushing, pushing, pushing. I said, ‘Jeff, I’d do it for nothing—please, please don’t ask for any money money.’ He said, ‘You’re not doing it for free.’ ” Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg had already accepted scale ($84,000 apiece), and so had the rest of the cast ($35,000 apiece). “It was a labor of love for everyone,” said Oprah.
She auditioned on April Fool’s Day of 1985, with Willard Pugh, who was to play her husband, Harpo, in the film. “After we were through, Steven said he’d like to see us upstairs in his office,” she said.