The Prince of Tides
Opened December 25, 1991
“This is a story about a man's journey, a man who has to learn to grieve,” director Barbra Streisand said about her film The Prince of Tides. “It's a film about forgiveness, about saying, 'I need to love my mother and father in all their flawed outrageous humanity.' I chose to put that line at the end, because I felt this is the lesson of the movie.”
“Prince of Tides was sent to me by Mike Ovitz [founder of Creative Artists Agency],” Streisand explained. “I think [Robert] Redford had it for a while and I don't think they could lick the script so they sent it to me. I loved it. I loved that book ... I had Becky Johnson [screenwriter] move into my house for three weeks. I wouldn't let her out of my sight, we worked every single day. Pat Conroy is a delicious human being and he spent two weeks with me [working on the screenplay]. But mainly I wanted to hear about his life. I wanted him to tell me the real stories of his past. I wanted him to teach me the shag ... We had a great time together and it flavored the movie ... How do you condense that wonderful book into a movie?”
“At first,” Barbra explained, “it was supposed to be a $10 million movie with no stars, and I thought, I can't imagine. It came in at $27 million. Another thing, I came in 11 percent over budget on Yentl and less than 10 percent on this one. I'm proud of that.”
Nick Nolte was cast as the main character, Tom Wingo—but not before Streisand tried to reunite with her costar in The Way We Were, Robert Redford. “We always wanted to work together again,” Streisand told The Hamilton Spectator. “But he had problems with the book. And Warren Beatty wanted to do it, but he couldn't commit. Nick was the one who allowed himself to be the most vulnerable.”
Nick Nolte, who was critically praised for his portrayal of Tom Wingo spoke about working with Streisand on the film. “Barbra likes to explore,” he said. “We shot some key scenes in several different ways. We also had long discussions about male-female relationships. It was the first time I had worked with a woman director. In working with male directors I've found that the male actor and director have a kind of collusive attitude about the emotional points of scenes. With Barbra, there is a lot of continued exploration.”
Streisand told the press how she came to cast Nolte as her leading man: “This was attached to [Robert] Redford. He had it first, and we've always wanted to work together (again), so we talked first. He had some qualms about the book and stuff so we didn't quite see eye to eye about it. So we didn't do this one together. Warren Beatty was interested in it, but he didn't really commit. Nick was the one who would allow himself to be most vulnerable and still be macho, and he is macho—and sexy. The challenge was getting him to trust and be whole and be vulnerable.”
Only about 5% of the films directed in 1990 had female directors. Also, in 1990, only 12 women in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences were voting members in the director category — out of 281 members. Streisand's accomplishments with directing Prince of Tides were truly admirable. Besides being an artistic success-story—it was the second film Barbra directed—Prince of Tides was also a step forward for women in film.
A Fox executive told The New York Times: “Originally, Prince of Tides was to be released in September. In fact they had a Vanity Fair cover of Streisand timed to the release of the film. They couldn't pull the cover. So a little bit of their campaign broke early.”
Barbra on Directing
Streisand revealed her directing technique to writer Jeremy Paul Kagan:
“I like to know what I'm going to do, then to throw it away. Because I get bored easily. I don't like to do that many number of takes. A lot of the time I stage things in just one shot. I mean I just don't want to cover it because it's too boring. I kind of like that living on the edge of danger, the risk factor.
“I have a video 8 camera and I go around and I do the shots that I see in my head.
“I have also models near the sets. I like to know what I'm going to do. Does a wall have to move? What has to happen to get this shot?”
(Below: a page of the TIDES script with Streisand's notes)
“Tides” Poster Concepts
These are all mock-ups of the Prince of Tides advertising campaign. Three of them use Scavullo portraits. The bottom left photo is a color version of a Scavullo shot. [Courtesy of Brett Fox]
“Prince of Tides” Music Videos
“Places That Belong To You” and “For All We Know”
Barbra expained her choice of “For All We Know” on the Prince of Tides soundtrack CD liner notes: “One of the presents my son Jason gave me for my last birthday was a CD of the classic Billie Holiday album 'Lady in Satin'—it was one of the few albums I'd ever bought when I was 16 years old. I needed a melody for a scene in The Prince of Tides where Nick Nolte and I dance together at The Rainbow Room. One of the songs on Billie's record was 'For All We Know.' It was so beautiful and the lyric so perfect—as if it were written especially for the film...”
Next Page: “Prince of Tides” Cut Scenes & The Criterion Laser Disk
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