THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 4, 1995 TAG: 9511030048
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
``A FAMILY IS like a bunch of people you get stuck in an elevator with,'' Jodie Foster was saying. ``You didn't choose them. You're stuck in that elevator with them for pretty much the rest of your life,''
It's pretty level-headed, almost bitter, talk to be coming from someone who has directed a movie called ``Home for the Holidays.'' The title might suggest a warm, sweet trip into Norman Rockwell's America.
Instead, it's sardonic. ``Home for the Holidays,'' the second film to be directed by the two-time Oscar winning actress, deals with a family, but it's a laughably inept and largely dysfunctional family.
Foster calls it a ``human comedy.''
``It's a character-driven movie,'' she said as she sat in the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills on the morning after the film was unveiled for the press. ``It's totally different from `Little Man Tate,' my first directorial effort. That was a pretty linear movie. I wanted to make a more spontaneous and passionate film this time.''
Foster, who won her first Oscar for playing a rape survivor in 1988's ``The Accused'' and her second for playing special agent Clarice Starling in ``The Silence of the Lambs'' in 1991, would seem to be an odd choice to direct a family comedy.
She began her career at age 3 in a television commercial for Coppertone suntan oil. She made her first movie, Disney's ``Napoleon and Samantha'' at age 8. At age 14, she won an Oscar nomination for playing the streetwise prostitute in Martin Scorsese's ``Taxi Driver.'' It's hardly proper preparation for directing a typical family comedy.
``I had a fear as a child that my parents were getting worse,'' she said. ``It was like I was judging them. The fact is that my entire life has been chronicled in one way or another - closely watched. It's not the ordinary way of life. But family is different from friends you seek out.
``For example, my friends know not to call me until after 10 o'clock in the morning. My friends accept that. Family, on the other hand, is an exception to all requests. Family is another breed. You have a lot more to learn from people you can't change. That, in a way, is what this movie is about.''
Foster, who plans to direct a film every three or four years, said: ``The best thing about having two careers is that I don't have to just wait for what is offered to me. The director is the real force in a movie.''
At age 30, Foster had no trouble running a movie set. ``They respect my experience,'' she said. ``I've been around movie sets for a long time. I had a few more women on the crew than usual, but most of the crew were guys. We got along OK.''
She admits that she was worried about the all-star ensemble cast, which includes Oscar winners Holly Hunter and Anne Bancroft and Oscar nominees Charles Durning and Robert Downey Jr.
``If they didn't bond, it wouldn't work,'' she said. ``I decided to use a method that I remembered from `Hotel New Hampshire,' a movie in which I appeared. We got together for two weeks of rehearsal before filming began. The cast shared a lot of family stories - remembering aunts and uncles - all kinds of things. It worked.''
The film stars Holly Hunter as a single mom who flies to her family home in Baltimore for the Thanksgiving holiday. Claudia, the character played by Holly, is not in the best of moods. She's lost her treasured job at a Chicago museum. Her teenage daughter (Claire Danes) announces that she plans to lose her virginity to her boyfriend while mom is gone. Claudia dreads returning to the home where she is still treated as a child.
``For this generation, now, to return home is probably less of a threat,'' Hunter said. ``I was once away from home for 17 years. The chasm between parents and children still exists now, but it isn't as important, maybe, because they weren't that close in the first place.''
Hunter won her own Oscar in 1993 for ``The Piano.'' Her thick southern drawl is a bit subdued as she talks about her character's identity crisis.
She identifies with Claudia, though, ``because she's been away and made her own way. She thinks she isn't that person anymore, and then she returns home and she's that person all over again. Our parents always think we're the children.''
She thinks Foster's main contribution to the movie was that ``she didn't judge any of the characters. She brought a sense of compassion to them all. That's what was most needed.''
You hear Robert Downey Jr. before you see him. He's loud. Maybe he's still in character as Tommy, Holly's mischievous brother in the film.
``It's a great part,'' Downey said. ``Tommy is the most flamboyant character in the family. He just can't help himself. He loves doing things that other people would disapprove.''
Tommy and Claudia are soulmates. As brother and sister, they stick together against the rather flaky family. ``The best thing about the film was the red sports car I got to drive,'' Downey said. ``It was hard to handle. I have to whiz into this tiny driveway. Holly was riding with me and kept saying, `Robert, don't kill me.' ''
Downey was nominated for an Oscar for playing Charlie Chaplin in ``Chaplin,'' and he will soon undertake his own directorial debut. ``If it doesn't work, I'll just say `I don't have the vision' and go back to acting,'' he said.
Anne Bancroft, an Oscar winner for ``The Miracle Worker' and a nominee three other times, plays the clan's chain-smoking, coupon-clipping, pantry-packing matriarch.
``It's a good part, otherwise I wouldn't have been tempted,'' the actress said. ``Work is not my favorite thing. I can live without work. I'm not thrilled about getting up at 5 a.m. and going to a movie set. It has to be a good part, and this one is. Once I got this woman's red-headed wig on, I was half way to getting the character.''
Bancroft said: ``I thought of Holly as my daughter, not as an actress. That scene around the table was messy. It's always difficult to work with a bunch of people.''
The scene required Downey to flip a turkey into the lap of his stuffy sister.
Cynthia Stevenson, who plays Hope in the NBC-TV comedy series ``Hope & Gloria,'' has the role of Joanne, the bitter sister who stayed at home to take care of her parents, while her brother and sister went away to have careers.
``She has middle-child syndrome,'' a laughing Stevenson said of her character. ``And, ugh, wears that horrible green dress all the time.''
Stevenson, in the film, is married to an equally stuffy banker played by Steve Guttenberg.
``I based him on my father and my uncle,'' Guttenberg said.
To Guttenberg, ``Home for the Holidays'' is something of a comeback after a fallow period since his big hits, the ``Police Academy'' series, ``Three Men and a Baby'' and ``Cocoon,'' plus their sequels.
``As a director, Jodie was very prepared,'' he said. ``It was a very businesslike set - not much time for fun. She doesn't talk a lot about the character because, if she's hired the right actors, that takes care of itself. But she's open for after-school help. She always urged everyone to come on in if they wanted to talk.''
Charles Durning, who got the role of the family's quiet, uninvolved father only after Robert Duvall had conflicting scheduling, said that Foster is ``wise beyond her years as a director. She likes actors.''
Durning, who won Oscar nominations for ``Best Little Whorehouse in Texas'' and ``To Be or Not to Be,'' had highest praise for Hunter.
``I've found that young actors are often very selfish,'' he said. ``They tend to not let you have your turn. Holly isn't that way. She's always there for you. I don't tend to do much research for a role. If it's not on the page, it's not going anywhere. This was on the page.''
The family's handsome visitor is played by Dylan McDermott, who first drew attention as Clint Eastwood's partner in ``In the Line of Fire.'' He had the romantic lead in last season's doomed ``Miracle on 34th Street'' remake. Here, he's the rather ambiguous friend of Downey's.
``As an outsider, I can be something of an observer at this wacky family,'' the actor said, ``but Holly emerges as a romantic actress. She's really quite a sexy woman. That should show up later in her career.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos from Paramount Pictures
Photo by BOB MARSHAK / PolyGram
Parents Adele (Anne Bancroft) and Henry (Charles Durning) are
horrified when son Tommy (Robert Downey Jr.) flips a turkey into his
sister Joanne's (Cynthia Stevenson) lap in ``Home for the
Holidays.''
by CNB