Feminist filmmaker tackles project celebrating life of stay-at-home mom
Feminist Jane Anderson decided to direct “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” for an unexpected reason. The 51-year-old filmmaker responded to the uplifting elements in the script about a stay-at-home mom from a half-a-century ago.
“I’ve never seen a piece of literature or film that celebrated the life of a housewife,” Anderson said at her Philadelphia hotel during a publicity stop for “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio,” which opens Oct. 14. “For my whole life as a feminist, I’ve always assumed that anyone in the 1950s who was stuck in the house and had any intelligence or ambition must have been miserable.
“I was astounded to read this memoir and see it was possible for someone full of life and wit to live a fulfilling life (at home).
“I found her very brave.”
Based on the book by Terry Ryan (a daughter of the subject), “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” stars Julianne Moore (“The Hours”) in a factual story of perpetually optimistic Evelyn Ryan, who supported her 10 children and alcoholic husband (Woody Harrelson of TV’s “Cheers”) by winning commercial-jingle contests. To keep a roof over her family’s head, Ryan had to keep entering the national contests due to her husband, whose erratic behavior continually caused the family to be on the brink of bankruptcy.
Despite personal ups and downs, Evelyn Ryan never lost her enthusiasm for life or wished that she had pursued a writing career instead of having children.
“I found Evelyn’s philosophy close to Buddhism, because she understood that you cannot meet rage with rage or sorrow with sorrow,” said Anderson, who previously directed cable films such as “The Baby Dance” (with Laura Dern in a story about class and adoption in America) and “Normal” (with Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Lange in a drama about a married man who stuns his family by wanting a sex-change operation). “She found joy in life’s simplest things and lived for the moment, and that requires enormous discipline.”
Anderson readily admitted that she has embraced the positive outlook of Evelyn Ryan.
“To me, the premise of Evelyn’s thought process was that pain is inevitable but suffering is an option,” said the filmmaker, who has a 10-year-old son. “It’s a philosophy that I’ve been adapting.
“Ever since Sept. 11, I view the world with a much darker eye. We all walk around with this unnamable dread. This new millennium isn’t the 1990s, ’80s or ’70s.
“We’re looking at very difficult times, and all of us can slip into paranoia that can result in rage. The only way to survive with grace during times like these is to fiercely hold on to the sweet moments in life and to love your kids.”
For Anderson, the leads in “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” held the key to the film’s success, since the wife’s constantly sunny attitude and the husband’s drunken actions could easily turn off some viewers.
“Optimists are often dismissed as not very bright or in denial, but Evelyn was neither of those,” said Anderson, who will next direct “The Wife,” based on Meg Wolitzer’s book about a woman who’s married to a famous novelist and wants to explore her own literary gifts. “Julianne is such an intelligent actress that she knew instinctively how to handle the role.
“Evelyn made a conscious decision to always take the high road and deliberately went about finding joy in her daily life, because, otherwise, she knew she would crumble.
“Her whole objective was to get those 10 kids out of the house whole, sane and with love in their hearts.”
Anderson and Harrelson also discussed how they could prevent the husband from becoming a villain of sorts due to violent outbursts in which he frightens his children but only hurt himself.
“Woody and I talked at length about not making the husband a monster,” Anderson said. “He worked in this miserable factory, which was just an awful place, and his wife outperformed him (monetarily), and for a man in the 1950s, that was a form of death.
“The husband, who loved his family, was proud of his wife and jealous at the same time. Woody was able to walk that line.”
Casting calls
– Thanks to the $100 million success of “The 40 Year-Old Virgin,” Steve Carell has discovered that his career is on fire.
He will fill in for Jim Carrey on “Evan Almighty,” a sequel to “Bruce Almighty.” According to Film Journal International, Carell will reprise his newscaster character from the original film. In the big-budget comedy, Carell’s character must prepare for a coming flood.
Morgan Freeman has agreed to reprise his role as God.
– Carrey apparently sidestepped the “Bruce Almighty” follow-up to appear with Ben Stiller in “Used Guys,” a comedy about a future in which men have become extinct. The characters played by Carrey and Stiller are clones worried about better-looking competitors with superior bedroom skills.
Jay Roach, who teamed with Stiller on the mega-hit comedies “Meet the Parents” and “Meet the Fockers,” will direct.
– According to Boxoffice magazine, Angelina Jolie (“Mr. & Mrs. Smith”) has signed to play the Queen of Darkness in “Beowulf,” being directed by Robert Zemeckis, who’s using the motion-capture computer process he perfected on “The Polar Express.”
Also appearing in the medieval fantasy epic about the quest to kill a monster will be Ray Winstone (“King Arthur”), Anthony Hopkins (“The Silence of the Lambs”), Brendan Gleeson (“Gangs of New York”) and Robin Wright Penn (“Forrest Gump”).