LET'S get this over with right away: Has John Cusack, who plays
a professional hit man attending his 10-year high school reunion in
Grosse Pointe, Mich., in the new movie "Grosse Pointe Blank" (see
review elsewhere on this page) ever actually been to Grosse Pointe?
"Uh, I think I went through it once," says Cusack
noncommittally. "But I had definitely been to Detroit."
There had been a plan afoot to lunch in Grosse Pointe when
Cusack came to Detroit last week to talk up "Grosse Pointe Blank,"
which opens today. But he didn't arrive from Chicago, where the
actor keeps an apartment, until early afternoon and was scheduled
to fly to Toronto that night, so it didn't work out.
At this point, Cusack, who co-wrote and co-produced the black
comedy, is more interested in selling "Grosse Pointe" than touring
its inspiration.
"I would have given anything if we could have made the movie
there," says Cusack, sopping the last bite of the Ritz-Carlton's
roasted red pepper and celery root soup out of his bowl with a
piece of focaccia.
"But it was all number crunching. We only had so much to spend"
- $15 million, give or take a million - "so we spent it on the
movie instead of the location."
A crew spent five days shooting some establishing footage in
the Grosse Pointes and Detroit last year, but everything else was
filmed in Southern California, with Monrovia, Duarte and even
Pasadena impersonating what the film's press notes describe as the
"posh, old money" enclave. Cusack says that he never considered
switching the locale to somewhere more familiar because he always
loved the idea of Detroit.
"It had to be the Midwest, and to me, Detroit is just cool. The
great carmaker, the 20th century. And for this movie, we needed to
convey the idea of an America that didn't start in 1979."
"Grosse Pointe Blank" itself started as a fairly simple "high
concept" comedy written by native Detroiter Tom Jankiewicz, then a
California advertising copywriter.
"When I read it, I thought it was good, fertile, getting to the
heart of the American dream stuff," says Cusack. "It was about
going home and about real American values. By that, I mean the very
flexible and convenient morality people adopt when it suits them.
About how we can rationalize any kind of behavior if we try hard
enough - even murder.
"I wanted to get inside that merciless, win-at-all-costs
mentality. I love the idea of the warrior's caste. I was always
fascinated by the idea that these big military guys or cutthroat
executives all had baby pictures, all went to their prom. Killers
at the office, good Christians at home."
Not that Cusack's character in the film, Martin Q. Blank, is
much of a Christian. When the CIA assassin-turned-killer-for-hire
gets an invitation to his high school reunion, it prompts him to
reconsider the direction in which his life has gone since he
mysteriously disappeared from Grosse Pointe a decade before,
leaving his girlfriend (Minnie Driver) waiting in her prom dress.
So at the urging of his secretary (played by his actress sister
Joan Cusack) and a shrink played by Alan Arkin ("Go, go. Just don't
kill anybody,"), Martin returns to the Pointes and his past, only
to discover that his present isn't taking the weekend off. …
