MOVIES

Hunt, lost and 'Found'

As many in Hollywood discover, directing yourself isn't an ideal situation

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
Monday, March 10, 2008

The make-up man comes and goes between interviews, freshening up Helen Hunt for the next round of repetitive questioning by reporters. She sits gamely at a small round table in a suite at the Four Seasons hotel, enduring the promotional toil of hawking a movie with her best face forward.

Hunt seems vaguely fatigued. No photographers are invited. Just Hunt, us, a folded copy of the Sunday New York Times (hers), a tape recorder (ours) and a cell phone (hers) that vibrates noisily during the interview. It's her boyfriend Matthew Carnahan, creator of the FX show "Dirt," with whom Hunt has a 31/2-year-old daughter.

Hunt was in Austin over the weekend to present the regional premiere of her deeply personal, emotionally turbulent dramedy "Then She Found Me," which she co-wrote, directed and stars in. It screened during South by Southwest on Saturday at the Paramount Theatre. The films co-stars Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth and Bette Midler as her brassy long-lost mother.

Famous for her seven-year stint on the hit relationship sitcom "Mad About You" with Paul Reiser, Hunt starred in the films "Twister," "What Women Want" and "Cast Away." She won the best actress Oscar for "As Good as it Gets" in 1998.

In "Then She Found Me," her long-gestating feature directorial debut, Hunt plays April Epner, a woman pushing 40 who desperately wants to have a baby. Problem: Her husband (Broderick) has just left her. Enter Firth's single father, who scoops her up, but tends to emotionally drop her, too. Hunt, who is 44, plays April with minimal glamour and a pall of anguish. The film opens in theaters in May.

American-Statesman: Why was "Then She Found Me" almost 10 years in the making?

Helen Hunt: Alice Arlen, who co-wrote "Silkwood," had written a beautiful adaptation of the novel, and I tried to get it made as an actress, hoping to give it to a studio and a big director to make. Everyone sort of loved it but didn't think it was quite a movie yet, and I couldn't disagree with them. So I tried to rewrite it with a writing partner without changing anything too dramatically. I finally put it away for a few years and very slowly began to understand what was missing, what the protagonist wanted. The baby wish is not in the novel. It's from my head or, actually, my life. I just knew it was right. And neither of the men are in the novel. Then I read an essay by James Hillman called "Betrayal" and I suddenly thought that that's what this movie is about, that's the one sentence, the secret theme of the movie that most good movies have. I decided it should be about betrayal. I worked and worked and found that the sentence should be: "You can't really love until you've made peace with betrayal." Once I had that, I could get rid of beautiful characters in the novel and replace them with characters who could help tell the betrayal story. It took ages.

It sounds like you wove in autobiographical elements to make it more personal.

Yeah. All of the characters are me. That's the secret. Someone said to me that when people ask you how autobiographical is it, the only answer that will satisfy them is: "Totally." And in this case it's true, but I'm not just my character April. I am all of them.

In its muted textures and painfully realistic adult tone, the movie reminds me of some great ones from the '70s, like "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "An Unmarried Woman." It doesn't cop out with any conventional Hollywood dopiness.

Those are two I thought of for sure. That's a big compliment. That's why I hired my director of photography. He immediately thought of "Kramer vs. Kramer" with the material, and I said, great, we're totally in the right ballpark. "Truly Madly Deeply" by Anthony Minghella was another one. The tone of my movie is trying to feel like a combination of "Kramer vs. Kramer" and that movie.

If your film had been made by a big Hollywood entity you know how lame it would be.

It would have. I tried so hard to get more money for it, but I think in the end it was served by not having any.

I was watching a cable documentary in which Alec Baldwin interviews Gene Wilder about his career, and both of them said that when they direct themselves in movies their performances suffer, and so they won't do it again. Was this true for you?

I've heard that a lot. George Clooney has said he hates directing himself. I directed myself in "Mad About You" and hated it. I loved directing scenes I wasn't in. In a way they are totally antithetical jobs. This was just different. By the end it felt deeply mine. Everything I care about is in this movie. I asked Warren Beatty what I should do. He said that if you are in it, at least you will know that one person in the movies sees it as you do. And that's how it was. To know that I only had one actor to schedule for rehearsal and to communicate the meaning of the scene to, that was a big deal. The decision to star in it was one of the last decisions to be made. It was as logistical as anything else. I couldn't have made it in 27 days if I had to accommodate a real actress. But I was willing to do anything.

It's a truism that it's hard for women to get exceptional film roles after age 35 or 40. Are you facing this problem?

I guess I am. I don't know what to compare it to, though. I don't know what it's like to be a 25-year-old guy trying to get a job, or what it's like being a 50-year-old black man trying to get a job. I know that there are very few stories written that make it worth it to leave your daughter at home.

Did you suffer any kind of post-Oscar depression, a kind of post-partum lull?

No. I mean, I made a lot of movies at once right after I won. Then three things happened. I created this movie, I wasn't offered parts I was dying to do and my family came to life. So if I'd been offered a bunch of great parts, I probably wouldn't have made this movie. You have to believe it happened the way it was supposed to happen.

The presidential race. Does it mean much to you?

Sure, sure. A Democrat will win or I'll kill myself! (Laughs) How's that?