BRUSH WITH GREATNESS SALMA HAYEK'S STRUGGLE TO PLAY ARTIST FRIDA KAHLO A PORTRAIT OF PERSISTENCE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

What was it about Frida Kahlo's art that so touched actress Salma Hayek she devoted more than seven years to getting a movie about the fascinating figure produced?

``I found it gross, weird,'' says Hayek - the star of such widely diverse films as ``Dogma,'' ``Desperado'' and ``Wild Wild West'' - about her first encounter, as a young girl in Mexico, with her nation's iconic self-portraitist's surreal, singular work.

``I didn't like it. And then I walked away from it and couldn't get rid of the images in my head. They haunted me, and I wanted to see them again. And I wanted to discover why they were haunting me. It took me many years to answer this question, and the reason is that she had such bold honesty about her intimacy that it was hard to take.''

That fascination has finally resulted in ``Frida.'' Hayek plays the artist from teenage schoolgirl through the horrible bus accident that left her deformed and in constant pain, her tumultuous marriage to the famed muralist Diego Rivera (played by English actor Alfred Molina), her many love affairs with men and women (including exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who took refuge from Stalin's assassins in her home) and up to her death, at the age of 47, in 1954.

Personal subjects

Directed by Julie Taymor (``The Lion King'' stage musical, the film version of Shakespeare's ``Titus''), the movie also tries to visually capture the spirit of Kahlo's paintings. Combining Mexican folk-art influences with the fact that the often-bedridden Kahlo had only her own mirror images for a model, she was prone to placing herself - usually with connected eyebrows and more than a hint of a mustache - at the center of nightmarish dreamscapes that reflected her inner conflicts. Marriage, miscarriage, death, transcendence - all were apt subjects for Kahlo's brush.

And those were just the paintings. Kahlo's life was a work of art in itself, involving as it did elaborate dress, equally complex braided hairdos, radical politics and large quantities of liquor, sex and, as the physical problems exacted a bigger and bigger toll, drugs.

Hayek wanted to get all of that into the movie, along with so many of the other elements that made the life of Frida Kahlo so fascinating. But above all, she wanted the film to express the subject's love for living and creativity in a way that was as unique to the ever-unconventional Kahlo as it would be to the generally desultory genre of tortured-artist biopics.

``She loved life,'' Hayek says. ``This is a love story between a woman who lived hard times and her passion for life. And the best way to tell that story was through her love story with Diego.''

Some Kahlo fans, of course, might find the film's focus on that central relationship hard to take. When reduced to its fundamentals, after all, Kahlo's reputation as a feminist pioneer seems to orbit a widely held image of her as the long-suffering wife of an incorrigible womanizer.

Hayek has no use for either simplistic stereotype.

``Probably, it helped me that I don't see her as a victim,'' says the actress, who underwent everything from unflattering facial hair applications to monkey bites for her performance. ``I don't think you're a victim when you have your husband cheat on you and you realize you're not going to change him, but instead of crying and becoming pieces, you say, 'OK, I'll just have romances with other people, too. Men and women, and sometimes take women away from him.'

``Is that a victim? That's not a victim!'' Hayek says in her dramatic Spanish accent. ``You can't be a victim and wake up in the morning and design what you're going to look like, spend so much time on what apron and blouse you're going to put with this skirt, the jewelry and the hair. How am I going to decorate myself, you know? If you are a victim, you don't want to come out of the house.''

Correctly or not - and the demonic amount of research Hayek has put into the subject makes one tend to concur - the actress's conclusions about Kahlo certainly reflect her own, do-things-her-way personality. Born in Veracruz state to a business executive of Lebanese heritage and an opera-singer mother in the late 1960s, Hayek dropped out of college to become an actress. Her intense presence and striking good looks soon made her a soap opera star. But despite little facility with English, she left sure success in Mexico City for the iffy prospects of an ethnic actress in Hollywood.

Hayek credits Texas filmmaker Robert Rodriguez with giving her a break in such productions as ``Desperado,'' ``From Dusk 'Til Dawn'' and the cable movie ``Roadracers'' (to return the favor, she reprised her ``Desperado'' role for Rodriguez's upcoming ``Once Upon a Time in Mexico''). Still, she admits that it's been a long, hard climb to legitimate American stardom.

``I am not your typical casting choice - for anything!'' Hayek acknowledges, laughing again. ``But this, fortunately, has pushed me to grow in different directions. I was not getting offered the parts that I wanted, so instead of complaining, I've tried to go out there and create my own films that meant something to me.''

Blank canvas

That kind of determination was crucial to surviving the long, frustrating process of getting ``Frida'' made. Time after time, deals fell through, sometimes when production companies went under, sometimes for more bizarre reasons. (Hayek recalls one go date that had to be canceled when the director's preceding film was delayed because a 100-year freak desert rainstorm produced vegetation all over its arid location.)

Of course, the fundamental difficulty was the subject matter. Internationally famous as Kahlo has become since her death, the particulars of her story did not conform to most film financiers' narrow concepts of commercial appeal.

``It was very tough trying to get the movie made,'' Hayek recalls. ``They'd say, 'C'mon, you wanna make a movie about painters that are Mexicans that are communists? Who's going to care?' ''

After all of that and more (rival Kahlo projects with Madonna and Jennifer Lopez attached to them arose and collapsed during the period), Hayek sold Miramax Films chairman Harvey Weinstein on a script draft that was primarily the work of Rodrigo Garcia, son of the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Taymor agreed to direct.

But somehow, something still wasn't right. So Hayek turned to her significant other, ``Red Dragon'' star Edward Norton (who plays Nelson Rockefeller in ``Frida'').

``I had a lot of external problems to make the film, but probably the biggest problem was myself because I was never completely satisfied with anything,'' Hayek admits. ``Edward had been hearing a lot about what I wanted the script to be like and volunteered to rewrite it. He collaborated very close with Julie to incorporate her vision into it.''

Adds Sarah Green, a producer who came to the project around the same time Taymor did two years ago, ``Edward did a page-one rewrite really focusing on character and dialogue. And he and Julie worked on all of the visual sequences that make the film so unique. It was considerable work, and the thing that made it as easy for actors to relate to as it is.''

Due to Writers Guild arbitration, however, neither Norton nor Garcia receive a writing credit for ``Frida.''

That wasn't the film's final birthing pain, either. Although the production in Mexico was by most reports a happy, if hard-working, occasion - ``Once I gave my child to Julie, I completely detached myself from it,'' says Hayek, who had to immerse herself in creating Kahlo. ``I shut up and obeyed'' - Taymor and Weinstein got into some very public conflicts once the picture began test-screening last spring.

``I made this movie the way I wanted, but obviously when you're doing a movie with Miramax, you're going to fight your battles,'' Taymor says of the company whose chairman's notoriety for editing (Weinstein is also the producer of Martin Scorsese's upcoming, long-wrassled-over ``Gangs of New York'') has earned him the nickname Harvey Scissorhands.

``What happens in post-production is they get, 'Oh, we smell crossover,' '' Taymor says. ``They didn't think that this could possibly be a bigger film, but they agreed to do it, and Harvey is very good at doing that, that's what he's known for. But then you smell, and then it starts to become a little more complex.''

So, what did Weinstein want changed?

``It's all about length, all about running time,'' Taymor says. ``And some other things, but at this point, I'm not going into it publicly. Let me put it this way: It was a struggle, we've acknowledged that, a huge one and a long one. But it's my cut, and he likes it. If I made compromises here and there, they were the kind of compromises where you go, 'It could be this or it could be that; they're both valid. I can live with that.' ''

At the Los Angeles premiere of the film last Monday, Taymor said the tight budget forced them to be creative. With the film being shot in Mexico, the filmmakers invented ways to simulate Paris and New York City.

Whatever it took, Hayek was apparently even more inspired than she expected to be by finally bringing ``Frida'' to cinematic fruition. Working with Taymor encouraged her to attempt film directing herself. The result, ``The Maldonado Miracle,'' starring Peter Fonda and Ruben Blades, airs on Showtime next year.

As for that other baby, born of so much struggle to celebrate life through so much pain, what does the birth mother think of her little, immense ``Frida''?

``I like the movie,'' Hayek says. ``It satisfies what I wanted to say about her. And it's not a matter of other people liking it or not liking it; I see people being thought-provoked by the movie, and I see it touching a lot of people.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) The making of Salma Hayek's `Frida' held almost as much intrigue as the celebrated painter's life

(2) no caption (Salma Hayek)

Mark Liddell

(3) Salma Hayek recalls as a child disliking Frida Kahlo's works. Yet, ``They haunted me, and I wanted to see them again.''