A Conversation with Actor Kevin Harry

—AN "ULTIMATE 'MIDNIGHT' SITE" EXCLUSIVE—    (9/8/97)

While fans of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil  may be most anxiously awaiting the big-screen debut of the book's break-out heroine–The Lady Chablis, don't be so sure hers will be the only star-making performance in the movie version of Midnight, due out later this fall. Expect to see sparks fly as she takes to the dance-floor with dashing young newcomer Kevin Harry. Originally from Maryland, the 28-year-old Harry makes his "speaking-part" debut in Midnight, directed by Clint Eastwood, and also starring Kevin Spacey, John Cusack and Alison Eastwood.

"The Ultimate 'MIDNIGHT' Site" web-host, Max Movsovitz, had a chance to speak with the cordial young actor, now living in Atlanta, about his acting career, his time on the set in Savannah, and his "steamy" first encounter with Director Eastwood.

MM:  Is this your first movie?

KH:  Well, I had an opportunity to do what they call "extra work" for the movie "Miss Evers' Boys." If you slow the film down enough, you'll see me in there. It was on HBO. And I did a police-station scene on the TV show "Savannah", which by the way never was filmed in Savannah. I found that out later. They filmed all over Atlanta and in Lithonia.

This would be my first film. I started off in the stage. Most of the stuff I've done is musical theater, that kind of stuff.

MM:  So how did this come about?

KH:  Well, I had moved down to Atlanta back in November. I'm originally from the Maryland-D.C. area. Like I said, my first love was musical theater. I was doing a musical called "Sweeney Todd", and weird as it may sound, an agent was out in the audience, and she saw it. She was actually there to see someone else, one of the other cast-mates, and she kind of asked him to have me call her, and one thing led to another. We hit it off really well. And she is just one woman by herself--it's not like a major agency or anything like that.

She started sending me off on a couple of auditions, and then I was just going to a ton of auditions. Atlanta's a small town— there's really not that much here as far as the film department is concerned. Eventually this opportunity landed on my lap, and I went for it.

It was weird because they were looking for an 18 year-old (laughs)—I'm 28, so you can imagine. And I was the first one to audition that day. I went in—they had sent me a scene from the script—and I had no idea what was going on. I was thinking "I'm the only one in America who has not actually read the whole book, cover to cover."

MM:  Still?

KH:  No, I have read it now. But when I got on the set I hadn't read the book, so I went into a book store and looked up the scene and realized my lines are almost word-for-word straight from the book. So I just read it, and found out a couple weeks later I got the part. I was pretty fortunate. I felt really lucky, and then other things kind of fell into place once I found out Clint was directing it and who else was going to be in the film.

MM:  Where did you film your scenes?

KH:  We did the Cotillion ballroom scene, where Lady Chablis crashes the party. We filmed that out on Wilmington Island.

MM:  Oh, at the old Sheraton?

KH:  Yes, I can't believe that place is closed down.

MM:  I used to go there when I was a little kid. I have such fond memories...

KH:  Yeah, and I thought, "This place could make a killing if they could just open it back up." So I came in on a Friday or Saturday, and we stayed at the Desoto Hilton (downtown), and went down on the set and filmed out on Wilmington for two days. I had been on other film sets before, but this was different because you get a trailer. (laughs) A big difference, you know. The star treatment, which I wasn't quite used to.

MM:  Wow! I figured maybe Kevin Spacey and John Cusack would have a trailer but not everyone else.

KH:  They did, too. We all had trailers. All of the people that have speaking parts had a trailer in the compound. Kevin Spacey wasn't around when I came down. As far as I know he had finished all his scenes in Savannah. I came down the last 3 or 4 days they were in Savannah before they were flying out to L.A., so the only people that were on the set were Cusack and Lady Chablis, and Clint directing.

Generally when you're doing extra work, you're kind of corralled in a room, and I'm so used to working in a theater environment; it was really different. I had a lot of apprehension at first, but Clint runs the show kind of like a theater. He's very laid back; he doesn't scream or yell. You barely even know he's in the room. It's like "OK, Kevin, this is what you're going to do..." And he gives you a little nod when you're done. He doesn't say "cut" or anything like that.

Mind you, I had never really gone through all this stuff before. Generally when you do extra work, you just roll up on the film set, put your costume on, and whenever they want you, you just do your thing and then go back into a room. This was set up a little different. Everything was laid out for me in wardrobe, and they put me in make-up, and I didn't realize I didn't have to put my wardrobe on—but I did anyway, really early. Three or four hours earlier than they needed me on set. So finally—I guess they felt sorry for me—they brought me on set.

So, I was following the executive producer, and she said, "Have you met Clint yet?" I said "no," and as soon as she said that, he was standing like right beside me. So I'm sitting there talking to him and he turns to me, and they wanted me to watch a rehearsal of the scene before I jumped in. They were doing like a masquerade type of thing and they wanted me to see it before I entered the scene. And he looks at me and goes, "So what do you think of this shot?" And I'm thinking in my head, "I'm not going to sit here and tell this guy, 'Uh, I think it sucks, Clint.'" You know? It was just kind of a thrilling experience.

Now mind you, it's an old hotel and has an old, just classic decadence, and it set the scene perfect, and they had these big, huge Hollywood lights all over the place; there's no air, and it's hot. As soon as he looked at me and asked me that question, the sprinklers went off and just soaked all the camera equipment and delayed the filming for 3 or 4 hours. We were soaking and everything. So I met Clint, and before I opened my mouth, the place was flooded.

We took about two days to film my scene, more or less. The first day was 14 hours. But it was a lot of fun, because Lady Chablis was just a riot. Just absolute riot.

It was funny, because the whole time I was there, from the minute I got wardrobed, she refused to see me. She refused to look at me because she wanted to make this grand entrance, which is cool. I wanted to go over a few things with her because we were supposed to dance and we never choreographed it. Nobody mentioned what kind of dance--nobody said anything. All they said was that we "were going to dance."

But anyway, when I was getting fitted, every time somebody found out who I was on the set, they started giggling. They snickered, "So you're the one who's going to dance with Lady Chablis," and it was making me kind of nervous because all I had to go on was interviews, and I read a few things about her on the 'net. But I didn't really know what to expect. Even Clint was making some cracks.

When she walked in, we actually hit it off pretty good, and she kept the cast and crew in stitches, and Clint even danced with her one time.

It was a lot of fun. We did our scene, and we did the dance sequence in one take. It was the longest take of the day, and the weird thing was that it was the one shot that he never said "stop." He just said, "Go. Dance."

Clint's style of directing is just really complementary because he allows the flexibility to almost just do what you want, and he never gave me any direction except, "there's the set."

MM:  So he never said, "let's back up and do this differently?"

KH:  No, I never once heard him say that. Cusack was running around and he had asked to do a couple of takes over and over because he wanted to try it a couple of ways...different camera angles...

Clint was very open to that . He even asked if we wanted to rehearse, and Cusack looks at me and says, "You want to rehearse?" and I said "No." I mean, I had John Cusack next to me and I'm thinking, "I don't want to look stupid." I'm like, "Let's just roll it."

But it was one heck of an experience. I actually had more fun just being in the town itself than I did on the film set, because it was kind of nerve-wracking. Fun and nerve-wracking at the same time

MM:  So had you been to Savannah before?

KH:  No, it was my first and only time.

MM:  What did you think of Savannah?

KH:  I loved it. I think the thing I liked the most was the houses. My relatives all live in New Orleans, and it reminded me of a miniature New Orleans.

I went down on River Street--I went down there with my fiancee--and we did the whole bit, like with the bicycle-cab. We had a ball.

Mind you, I hadn't read the book; I was on this real tourist-y kick, and I got souvenirs of this and souvenirs of that. We went out to Bonaventure Cemetery, and we spent about two hours looking for the Bird Girl (laughs).

MM:  Oh no!

KH:  Nobody in the town had told me that it was not there. (Editor's note: The Bird Girl statue, featured on the cover of the book, was removed by its owners because of the crush of gawking tourists trampling nearby lots after the book's publication.) I'm looking all over, backing the car up, and I could not find it to save my life. Even the lady giving tours--there was a tour bus--wouldn't tell me. She was like "Oh, I think it's around here somewhere..." (laughs)

MM:  Did you get to see any of the other "Midnight" sites?

KH:  I went into a couple of the houses. I went into "Mandy"'s house, the Hamilton-Turner Mansion. I didn't get a chance to go on a "Book" tour. Went to Club One. That was an experience.

And we found "The Book" Gift Shop, and we walked in the door and there was only one lady in there, and she comes up and says, "Hi. Can I help you?" I said I was looking around, and I wanted to get a t-shirt and a mug and etc., etc. So we get to talking, and I'm walking around the shop and the next thing she says is, "Well, have you gone on a book tour? Would you like to buy an autographed book?" and I said "Well, I'd like to get one autographed by the people in the movie," and at this point I had not told anybody I was in the movie or anything like that. And she said, "Well, how are you going to do that?" and my fiancee says, "He's in the movie." And the next thing you know she's asking me to sign her book and this and that and snap a picture so she can put it up on the wall.

And as I was talking to her, one of those tour buses pulled up and a whole boatload of people got off and came in. Now, I'm from a small beach town where nothing real exciting happens, and this is all happening, and I didn't know how to react. People were asking me for my autograph. So these people came in, and for like the next hour, I'm taking pictures with everybody in the store, and it was wild because we had just bought about half the store out. I was grabbing t-shirts and key chains for friends, because all my friends wanted to know about it. But it was great.

One thing that really struck me the most was that Savannah is the only place in the South where we've experienced Southern hospitality. True Southern hospitality.

MM:  So do you think you'll go back?

KH:  Yeah. I loved it. I'd love to go down there again. I was thinking about it: I'm a singer too, I write music. If you ever wanted to write anything, that would be the perfect spot to be. There's so much to inspire you there. And I just had a ball.

MM:  Who was the most famous person you had worked with before this crowd?

KH:  I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of famous people, but it's usually just under different circumstances. I was in a touring show-band for five years. Traveling around we got a chance to meet Genesis, Bon Jovi, some of Prince's musicians.

On the set of "Miss Evers' Boys", I was working with Obba Babatundé, Laurence Fishburne, and Alfre Woodard. Alfre is just an amazing woman. It's amazing what the woman can do.

But I would say this "Midnight" thing was what I would say was my professional debut. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better deal: you come in for your first film and you get to work with Clint.

MM:  Who would you say is your favorite person out of this whole group on the set of "Midnight"?

KH:  I'd have to say Lady Chablis. If she doesn't become a star from this movie, somebody needs to get shot, because she definitely stole the show. I just say, "Move over, RuPaul," because she's just that witty. It's very hard to dislike her. As much as her role comes off as a diva-ish role, she really, truly is a very sweet person. She really impressed me the most. She really helped me out a lot, made me feel comfortable, and she just made my job a lot easier because she was just a riot. I'd do another project with her if she was doing another one.

I mean, Clint was definitely up there, but she was just my favorite.

MM:  So, what's next for you?

KH:  Well, it's kind of hard because I can only do this on a part-time basis because I have a full-time job. I work as a recruiter. But, I'm still pursuing my theater stuff. I'm working on a show right now that's going to be at the Fox (in Atlanta). A Broadway review type of deal. I want to pursue just about every avenue I can because I act, I sing... Actually I was singing long before the acting thing came along, and it just kind of went together.

But I'd like to keep pursuing the film thing, whenever it comes around. It's definitely slow , but it's definitely a growing industry here in Atlanta. And every now and then something comes across my plate.

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