Granddaughter of humorist Cliff Arquette ("Charley Weaver"). Subject of Toto's million-selling pop song "Rosanna." A memorable pair of bits in S.O.B. The wayward girl friend of Gary Gilmore in The Executioner's Song. Jewish princess pursued by Italian stallion in Baby, It's You. Soon to be seen in three films: The Aviator, Desperately Seeking Susan, and then this fall, After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese. The following conversation comes with a dedication to her and apologies to Bud and Lou. Hosanna, Rosanna!

JAY. I think we should talk about what we always talked about, a year ago last summer. Our desert idol.

MARTY. Our desert idyll.

JAY. Our little desert fury. You and I were writing a script in the desert.

MARTY. And by the desert we mean Palm Springs. We're not Bedouins.

JAY. No, we were living in the lap of luxury—but in no one else's lap. This was celibate luxury. Which contributed to our developing obsession with this desert madonna who would appear to us.

MARTY. There we were, after work—or sometimes, let's be honest, during work—asking each other things like, "Do you think Rosanna would like this flavor of ice cream?" Thus did we muse on the mythic attributes of Rosanna Arquette.

JAY. Two obsessed guys far from home, dwelling on a vision of unbounded carnality.

MARTY. Those are Mr. Cocks' words.

JAY. 'Cause Marty would never use words like "unbounded carnality." When I'd try to get words like those into his scripts, they'd be stricken.

MARTY. Well, they're more than one syllable.

JAY. You wouldn't even accept "unbounded fuckin' carnality." But that certainly describes our Rosanna. First encountered by us in The Executioner's Song.

MARTY. I didn't know her name at the time. I saw the movie on television, and I thought she was excellent. Then I saw her in a few other things, and thought she was terrific and beautiful, but I still didn't know her name. A bit later, I saw her in a restaurant in Los Angeles. I was frozen. I said, "That's the girl in the movies!" She and her agent came over to our table, and we were introduced. And later I got a meeting with her. Now it happens that, in the pictures I was doing at the time, there was absolutely no role for her. But I liked her and I wanted to use her.

JAY. You wanted to use her.

MARTY. And when After Hours came up, one of the reasons for doing it was that there was a very good role in it for her. so I could actually work with her.

JAY. That's where I met her: on the set of After Hours, at the 1 A.M. lunch break in a Blimpie's converted into a cafeteria. You, you bum, you got to eat in the trailer.

MARTY. I was depressed enough—who wants to go to a Blimpie's? But she was good to work with. A nice sense of humor.

JAY. You get a certain recklessness of spirit with her. A certain daring....

MARTY. Which makes it easy to try anything with her on the set. The way I work with people, it's usually 15 takes, 17 takes. But with her you could get the right thing on the first or second take. I also liked her improvisations.

JAY. There's a moment when she's talking with Griffin Dunne at the door.

MARTY. We improvised that—not the dialogue but the undertone. I saw her doing this in rehearsal, and I said, "Do more of that. Go over the top. Do more than you think is right." She's telling him, "I had a great time tonight, I feel great tonight," and she's giggling and laughing, and you know—from the way she's doing it—that something is not quite right. It's not psycho time, but it's...very odd.

JAY. How could Griffin turn down this invitation?

MARTY. He doesn't turn it down. He can only take so much, and then something goes awry....

JAY. Readers will have to see the movie to find out why Griffin Dunne does what no right-thinking man would ever do: pass up an open invite from Rosanna!

MARTY. And her mythic attributes!

JAY. How would you define that quality?

MARTY. Very fresh, very alive, very unpredictable and exciting.

JAY. Try-anything-once.

MARTY. I remember when we saw S.O.B. out in the desert. She had only one line, but that line was good! It's hard to do one line well in a movie. Of course, that's also the scene where she took her shirt off. But I insist, I liked her line reading—and the line came before the shirt!

JAY. I first saw her in The Executioner's Song. I still wonder why NBC played down the combustible elements of this film. I have images of her shinnying all over Tommy Lee Jones. Really atomic material. Highly radioactive.

MARTY. She's very sexy. But the thing is, she's a damn good actress.

JAY. A deadly combo. The big combo.

MARTY. I used to go around Hollywood saying she's the best actress in town. Now I see that she's in a lot of movies, and a lot's being written about her....

JAY. She doesn't belong to us anymore, Marty.

MARTY. She belongs to the world.

JAY. Don't say that—or it means the next time we go to the desert, we can't....

MARTY. No, we can't. It's different now. We have to grow.

JAY. Without Rosanna, can we grow?