ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 28, 1995 TAG: 9512290006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KAREN HERSHENSON KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The opening of ``Waiting to Exhale,'' the film based on Terry McMillan's immensely popular novel, is just days away and the author is already fighting feelings of ennui.
She wrote the book about four attractive, professional black women in search of love three years ago, when she couldn't get a date and wondered why. But McMillan has a live-in date now (more on this later) and she's finding those women ``pathetic.''
We spoke in her Danville, Calif., home, a 4,700-square-foot abode with a turquoise study and raspberry bathroom, choked floor to ceiling with stunning primitive and modern art. Her hair is a tumble of tiny braids, and she has the energy of a woman half her 44 years.
McMillan lives on this quiet suburban street with her 11-year-old son, Solomon, a dog, and a trio of love birds belonging to her boyfriend, Jonathan (more on him later).
The fax machine is spewing nonstop, and McMillan admits she's started tossing some of her interview requests into the circular file.
Never mind that Whitney Houston picked this film as her follow-up to ``The Bodyguard'' and is part of an ensemble that includes Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon (``Boomerang'') and Loretta Devine, who starred in the Broadway production of ``Dreamgirls.'' Never mind that 20th Century Fox believes in the film so strongly they've made it their big Christmas release.
``It's sort of like overkill, you know?'' says McMillan. ``It's like you have a baby and after a while people think it's cute and you look at it and you think it's cute and then it's sort of like you don't care what anybody else thinks at this point in time.''
McMillan considers her books not autobiographies, but chronicles of her own personal growth. She can appreciate the lessons ``Waiting to Exhale'' may hold for her devoted audience, but she has moved on.
``That's the thing I love about writing, at least the way I approach my work,'' she says. ``Hopefully, when I'm dead it will make some kind of a statement about my own evolution. That it will say this is where I was then, but do I feel the same way now? No. That was three years ago, my attitude has changed. The bottom line is what I wrote, that's in stone. But I can still say, `Ooh, yucko.'''
All the men in ``Waiting to Exhale'' have major character flaws, yet the women keep pursuing them. McMillan says she set up the premise that way to illustrate the lengths some women will go in the quest for Mr. Wonderful. She was hoping they'd see the folly in that, and learn to love themselves in the process.
Her message now is more tolerant of the male species. ``We think we're perfect and we're not. As a result, we pay more attention to everybody's flaws than their virtues. And if that's the case, we're all going to be sitting in a rocking chair on our mama's porch 20 years from now.''
Charitable words from a very outspoken and formidable woman. But McMillan is not the person she was when she wrote ``Waiting to Exhale.'' Two things happened that changed her outlook profoundly: She lost her mother and, almost a year later to the day, her best friend.
The eldest of five children growing up in Port Huron, Mich., McMillan had always been close to her mother. Just weeks before she died, at age 59, the author had bought her a car, a house in Arizona and a mouthful of new teeth.
``For an uneducated woman, she's probably one of the smartest women I'll ever meet in my life,'' says McMillan. ``And I'm grateful to her for what she gave me. She taught me how to think, that's what she did. And to let people know what you think. And if you don't have an opinion about something, get one, because you'll need it.''
Her mother also pushed McMillan to succeed, and succeed she did. While a student at UC-Berkeley in the '70s, she held rap sessions for her fellow African-American students and her stories often ran on the front page of the campus newspaper, the Daily Californian. She originally wanted to be a social worker, but switched to fiction, working nights as a secretary to pay the bills. Her first novel, ``Mama,'' was published in 1987, followed by ``Disappearing Acts'' and ``Waiting to Exhale.'' It got so that her bookstore appearances had the crackling energy of a revival meeting.
But the deaths ``just sort of knocked the wind out of me,'' says McMillan. She was overcome by a deep sadness she couldn't shake. And she wasn't writing. Then she took a trip to Jamaica, where she met her current boyfriend and learned to apply the handbrakes.
``It's like you never reach a point where you're sort of satisfied for a minute. It's always more, more, more, more, more,'' she says. ``And sometimes you sort of have to exhale a little bit and realize this plateau is fine for now. Enjoy it. Appreciate what you have.''
McMillan has taken those words to heart. She's building a sprawling new house just down the street, full of earthy materials and jewel colors. The Danville lifestyle may seem tame for a woman of such bold strokes, but she's committed to st
Already 120 pages into one book, called ``A Day Late and a Dollar Short,'' McMillan suddenly plunged into another. It's called ``Stella's Got Her Groove Back,'' and it's about a woman who goes through a midlife crisis and has an affair with a younger man. And she's working on some children's books that read like True Tales from the Carpool.
McMillan's evolution in print continues.
And where are the four women from ``Waiting to Exhale'' now? She lets out a giggle, then a deep, hearty laugh. ``I think they'd all have younger men.''
LENGTH: Medium: 97 linesby CNB