Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 24, 1995 TAG: 9511240073
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BIBBY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
The two-time Academy Award-winner and CEO of a film production company that commands millions of dollars to make movies of her very own liking, a woman who can produce, direct or act in just about any project she chooses, has been defeated.
And just what has done her in? A sly piece of technology - a fax machine!
A radiant Foster relaxes in the plush digs of the Rihga Royal hotel to tout her latest movie, ``Home for the Holidays,'' which she both directed and co-produced. At this very moment, however, she's hunched over the obstinate fax machine, trying to feed it a simple, slim piece of paper. But every time she dials the number, she gets a very rude busy signal.
Who in the world, one wonders, demands Foster's undivided attention, requiring the star herself to interrupt a complicated schedule to tend to such a clerical chore?
Would you believe her mother? Foster was trying to fax her mom two glowing reviews of ``Home for the Holidays,'' produced by Foster's Egg Pictures and co-distributed by Paramount Pictures and PolyGram.
It seems apt, this sweet gesture that's the adult equivalent of running home with a straight ``A'' report card. For three decades, Brandy Foster has helped shape and mold her daughter's film career.
And it's apropos of the film, a story about family ties that can sometimes choke but invariably knit its members closer together.
``Home for the Holidays'' is the second movie Foster has directed, after her directorial debut in 1991 with ``Little Man Tate.'' A year later, she signed a deal with PolyGram, the music and entertainment group, to finance six films at Foster's film company, Egg Pictures. ``Nell'' was Egg's first film and ``Home for the Holidays'' its second.
With the Egg deal, Foster became one of the few women in Hollywood with the power to green-light her own projects. Part of the reason the industry has so few women in positions of authority, she says, is because not many men in the movie business see women as peers.
``Women just don't find themselves in the positions when somebody sits across from them and says, `You and I are buddies. I see myself in you. Here's $5 million [for a film],' '' Foster says.
Does that mean she will push to get more women in high-profile spots at her film company? Foster is both politic and savvy in her response.
``We want the right director for the right movies,'' she says, adding that she currently has screenwriter Jane Anderson working on directing her first film.
And she cautions against budding female filmmakers trying to be another Jodie Foster: ``It's much more important to develop your own voice and to stick to it and to believe in it.''
In her latest film, Foster presents a stack of issues: fear of watching parents inch closer toward death, ever-simmering sibling rivalry, the alienation of moving away to find a career, the estrangement wrought when one family member is homosexual, and how families somehow manage to heal amid turmoil.
She compared making the film to a sort of therapy.
``It was a very healing experience for all of us,'' she says. ``Each one of us had come from difficult films.''
Foster's was last year's ``Nell,'' in which she starred as the feral mountain woman. She earned another Oscar nomination, but it was a role that came at a high price. So encompassing was Nell's influence, it left her somewhat emotionally shattered.
It was like ``having loved somebody so much that you didn't know where that person ended or you started,'' she says.
Letting go of Nell was a ``very big moment in my life, personally. It was very moving and not something that I would be able to explain to anyone,'' Foster says. ``It was probably one of the reasons why I wasn't really ready to act for a while.''
Producing and directing ``Home for the Holidays,'' however, was ``smooth, sane, easy,'' she says. ``Somehow, we just got together and it was like being given a gift.''
The ensemble production focuses on Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) - single mother, museum art restorer, dutiful daughter - whose life is so complex it defies those safe labels. Through utter obligation, she ventures off to Baltimore to spend Thanksgiving with her parents, Adele (Anne Bancroft) and Henry (Charles Durning).
Robert Downey Jr. is the manic prankster brother, Tommy, who uses his wit to keep his family at bay, knowing they will never fully understand or accept his homosexuality.
Prissy sister Joanne (Cynthia Stevenson) is the good girl who stayed behind, married a banker (Steve Guttenberg) and tries to do everything right.
The Larsons form what Foster calls a ``crazy, mad tapestry'' of human emotion - at turns, their deeds and misdeeds both hurt and heal. Steeped amid the pathos, there's a great deal of love and laughter. Like most families, it's a complex stew of feelings.
Foster said that while the film itself is not autobiographical - it was based on a short story by Chris Radant - she sees parts of herself in each of the siblings.
The Larsons' boisterous and eccentric antics, however, don't resemble anything that's ever taken place at the Foster household, where Foster, who turns 33 this month, was the youngest of four children.
``We're very cool and polite in my family,'' she says, in what could describe her own persona. ``If anything, the bummer of our family is that we don't tend to exorcise our feelings. ... We sort of take each other's coat and say, `How are you this year?' ''
Asked if she will be going home for the holidays, she notes that the occasion already has been marked in the form of a cast dinner party at her home that included her family.
``We all had such a good time that I said, `Oh guess what? We don't have to do Thanksgiving this year,' '' says Foster, appearing oblivious to the irony that she spent a good part of two years making a $20 million film that celebrates this American ritual and then quietly announces she will not ``do Thanksgiving'' this time around.
That said, she flashes her brilliant blue eyes - high-beam style - to indicate she's ready for another question.
It's clear Foster relishes being in control. She doesn't speak so much as pronounce, dispatching words like obedient soldiers from a vast, articulate army. She has the broad-shouldered confidence of a general - even her trademark Armani suits have become something of a power uniform for her.
This day is no different. She wears a severe, black Armani suit (the company offers them to her gratis), with a pale paisley scarf, sensible black flats and very little in the way of jewelry.
It's as if she doesn't want anything competing with her luminously beautiful face. Her flawless complexion and fine bone structure (just a hint of a cleft chin), create a face the camera has adored since she was little more than a toddler of 3 hawking Coppertone.
Besides the early TV commercials that supported her family (her father left when her mother was pregnant with Jodie), Foster has appeared in more than 30 films. She won a best actress Oscar in 1988 as the gang-rape survivor in ``The Accused'' and again in 1991 for her role as FBI agent Clarice Starling in ``The Silence of the Lambs.''
There's been some buzz that Foster may earn yet another Oscar nomination for ``Home for the Holidays.'' But she's more concerned, she says, with what viewers get from the movie rather than the accolades she earns.
And what exactly would she like filmgoers to realize from the movie?
``Just to keep trying to connect,'' she says quietly. ``That it's worth it.''
by CNB