ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 16, 1996 TAG: 9611190032
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: ALLAN JOHNSON CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Bob Saget directed a movie. Are there any shots of cats taking a fall or kids bopping themselves in the head?
That may be what a lot of people will think when hearing the host of ABC's long-running ``America's Funniest Home Videos'' is behind the camera of ``For Hope,'' an ABC movie premiering Sunday night at 9 (on WSET-Channel 13).
``This is the first thing that I've ever been proud of promoting, because nobody gets hit in the crotch, and I'm not playing a nerd,'' Saget said recently at a restaurant overlooking North Michigan Avenue.
No, the topic that Saget - who also played top dad Danny Tanner in ABC's hit series ``Full House'' - has chosen is a serious one, even though the movie is laced with humor.
``For Hope'' stars Emmy winner Dana Delany (``China Beach'') as a schoolteacher who suffers from a potentially fatal disease called scleroderma, a chronic, degenerative autoimmune illness that strikes the body's connective tissues. It disfigures, thickens the skin, and affects internal organs like the kidneys, heart and lungs.
An extremely tough topic for someone best known for comedy. But Saget has a personal stake in the story: His sister, Gay, a Philadelphia schoolteacher, died from scleroderma two years ago at the age of 47. ``For Hope'' is loosely based on her and how his family coped with her illness.
Henry Czerny plays a ``hack sitcom writer/producer'' character based on Saget in the movie; pictures drawn by Saget's daughters are in it, as well as a photograph of another sister of Saget's, Andi, who died from an aneurysm years ago.
``We all went through a denial, but we're a Jewish family, which is very comedic,'' said Saget, 40. ``We would crack very sick jokes. We went to the deli after [Gay] died and said, `Too bad she's not here, we should just put an Hawaiian shirt on her like `Weekend at Bernie's' and just have her sitting here.' And we kind of put that kind of comedy in the movie.
``It's not done in distaste, it's done in how people deal with it.'' In fact, he said, ``For Hope'' had a ``lightness a sweetness'' despite its somber topic.
The movie is ``a tearjerker,'' he said. ``But I don't call it sad. It's just a gamut of emotions. It's just what you go through.''
Saget, who is an executive producer of ``For Hope,'' had been a champion in the quest to find a cure for scleroderma even before his sister was hit by the disease. It started several years ago, when he performed at a benefit for the Scleroderma Research Foundation. According to Sharon Monsky, chairwoman of the organization, Saget made an ``unsolicited'' call to perform stand-up for free.
Saget, a comic for 20 years, did the benefit a second year, and announced to the audience that his sister Gay ``has something, we don't know what.'' The next year, Saget told the crowd that Gay in fact had scleroderma. She was in the audience in Saget's fourth year on the benefit stage.
The fifth year she was absent. Gay had passed away.
``Your vascular structure dies,'' said Monsky, 43. ``You become hardened like stone. The organs don't work. Most people with this disease in that form die within seven years. It's crippling, it's sickening, it's ugly, it's painful. No cure, no drugs to treat it very well.''
Monsky knows whereof she speaks. She's had scleroderma for 14 years, and has a cameo playing herself in ``For Hope.''
Saget hopes that ``For Hope'' will touch a nerve with the audience, even though the director - who won a student Academy Award in 1978 while at Temple University - is known for making goofy jokes while silly videos are playing.
``I walk down the street, and all people say is, `Who writes your stupid jokes?' That's all they say to me or, `I watch you, but my husband won't, he turns the sound off.'''
But his perceived reputation wasn't Saget's concern. He had to make ``For Hope'' partly because he was ``furious'' about his sister's death.
``I thought with the way medical science is today, why the [expletive] does no one know about this,'' he said. ``Why hasn't anything been done, when I start meeting 10 people a day that tell me they know somebody'' who has it.
``This is what I'm saying: I'm in a position where I can do something,'' Saget continued. ``The network's letting me do it No matter where my career's at in a dream world situation, [there's no] better place to do it than television. It's how you reach the most people. And I'm angry because Gay didn't have to die, as far as I'm concerned.''
Saget put the number of the Scleroderma Research Foundation at the end of ``For Hope'' (1-800-441-CURE) so that people can call about the disease, which Monsky said affects mostly women, and that possibly hundreds of thousands are afflicted.
``What we're doing is we're having a phone bank, 400 operators when the movie ends,'' Saget said. ``They'll call in, they'll order the Time-Life clock no, they can call up, get information the goal is to raise consciousness and to try to help somebody. It's what my sister would have wanted. She would be very proud.''
Saget said ``the network was very gracious'' about the whole ``For Hope'' project. ABC is allowing the movie to be replayed Friday on the Lifetime cable network at 9 p.m. so more people will be made aware of the disease.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. (headshot) Saget. 2. Dana Delany (center) stars as aby CNBschoolteacher stricken with the degenerative illness scleroderma in
``For Hope,'' airing Sunday at 9 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13. Polly
Bergen and Harold Gould play her parents. color.