Entertainment

Meet the women behind the big-screen version of contest winner's tale

06:03 PM CDT on Thursday, October 13, 2005

By PHILIP WUNTCH / The Dallas Morning News

"In this business, we're always dependent on the kindness of great people who have power," says Jane Anderson, who makes her feature-directing debut with The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.

In the case of Ms. Anderson, who visited Dallas recently on behalf of Prize Winner, the kind, great and powerful person was Robert Zemeckis, director of Forrest Gump, Cast Away and the Back to the Future trilogy.

Oscar-winner Zemeckis had purchased rights to Terry Ryan's memoir of her mother, Evelyn, with plans to direct. Evelyn Ryan, played by Julianne Moore in the film, had 10 children and an alcoholic husband, played by Woody Harrelson. Set in the 1950s, the book's tone was humorous. Evelyn winds up supporting the family by winning jingle contests that were the rage half-a-century ago.

Ms. Anderson had worked in cable TV (Normal, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas-Cheerleader-Murdering Mom) and on the strength of that work Mr. Zemeckis asked her to write the screenplay.

Then came Mr. Zemeckis' moment of truth.

"He came to me and asked me to direct it. He said he couldn't face directing all those kids."

Twenty young actors, including a set of 6-year-old twins, played the Ryan children at various ages. But children didn't faze either Ms. Anderson or her star. Ms. Anderson and her companion of 23 years, Tess, adopted a boy from Paraguay 10 years ago. Ms. Moore and her husband, director Bart Freundlich, have a 7-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter. Both Ms. Moore and Ms. Anderson interviewed all of Ms. Ryan's 10 children.

"Evelyn died in 1998 at the age of 85," Ms. Moore says in a recent telephone conversation. "She always loved her children and left them a great legacy of laughter. They all know how to simply have a good time, and they're gracious, loving adults."

Ms. Anderson says Evelyn's daughter Terry, who wrote the memoir, feels no anger toward their alcoholic, raging father.

"Terry is so joyful, just like her mother," says the director. "She said her mom taught them how to laugh through all those dark episodes with their father. She never thought of her father as being an evil man or inherently mean. He was just a broken man, who had been in an accident that ruined his dreams of becoming a singer. He worked in a factory."

For both Ms. Anderson and Ms. Moore, the biggest challenge was to make contemporary audiences understand the restrictions placed on women in the 1950s and to grasp why Evelyn never left her husband.

"She was a devout Catholic and didn't believe in divorce," Ms. Moore says. "And in those days, women were supposed to endure an unhappy marriage. She always had affection for her husband, yet she had a feminist spirit. She took care of the children and supported the family."

At a recent screening in South Philadelphia, Ms. Anderson felt waves of empathy from an audience that felt a connection with those 1950s families.

"We had a Q&A, and it was such a great experience. One woman asked if Evelyn truly loved her husband, and a group of feisty Italian ladies all answered, practically in unison. They shouted, 'Of course she loved her husband. That's what you did back then. You loved your husband. You had no choice.' "

But women were not the only ones affected by the film.

"So many great working-class men in South Philly came up to me after the Q&A and said, 'That was my dad.' They all had memories of fathers with broken dreams and drinking problems."

Ms. Anderson's own family also influenced her crafting of the film. She says she has happy memories of her parents and credits her mother with instilling in her an observing eye.

"When we were traveling, we would sit in the airport waiting rooms and just watch the great parade of humanity," she says. "Then my mother would ask me what I had noticed about the people. And I'm still noticing things today."

E-mail pwuntch@dallasnews.com