PBWC Hosts Meryl Streep for Opening of 'One True Thing'
By Edvins Beitiks
"It's going to be called a woman's film," said Meryl Streep, star of 'One True Thing'. "But that's not bad at all."
"If 'Titanic' taught Hollywood anything, it was that people want to experience their emotions huge," said the actress. "My daughters and their friends ... don't go to see that digitalized liner go down - they went to see Leonardo De Caprio drown, and weep and weep and weep ... they pay $7 to see it all over again."
'One True Thing,' the story of a woman trying to deal with the cancer that is tearing through her mother's body, opens in the Bay Area last month and may end up bringing the same reaction. Members of the Professional BusinessWomen of California who saw Monday night's premiere at the AMC 1000 Theater gave Streep and co-star Renee Zellweger an ovation as they sat in front of the screen to engage in a question-and-answer session following the movie.
She's never understood the male-dominated scheduling of movie openings, said Streep: "Women have a different schedule than ... other people. We don't have to be out there on the first day, that first week, to be on the cutting edge. But if you don't go the first week, that movie's gone, because all they do is watch the numbers."
"Why do they open all these new movies two weeks before Christmas?" she asked. "There's no time. You're already so stressed out. But I could go in summer, when they have all those action pictures, those explosions..."
'One True Thing' offers an alternative to the explosions - a look at a mother-daughter relationship that grows from cold to lukewarm to warm in the space of one autumn and winter. From Streep's first appearance in blue gingham and sequined red shoes, with Zellweger rolling her eyes in disgust, the movie moves through degrees of heartbreak that leaves people, both on the screen and in the theater, in tears.
At the AMC 1000, Streep and Zellweger talked fondly about their mothers, Zellweger describing "this little Norwegian lady, always so helpful. I'd take friends over to our house if they were hurt. If I forgot my lunch, she'd bring it to school. Soccer games, track meets, she was always driving us everywhere. 'An angel on earth,' that's how my friends describe her."
Streep said she was never part of the put-down-your-mom-crowd at college. "You know, sitting around smoking cigarettes and somebody says, 'My mother called today,' and somebody else says, 'Oh, gawd.' I thought, 'Why wouldn't they want their mothers to call?" Streep laughed a little, saying, "I usually play women who are neurotic or obsessed, but this was a chance to play a woman content in her own skin, which is what my mother is."
Streep dedicated 'One True Thing' to her mother and "mothers everywhere."
"I thought of it as a love letter back to them," she said. "It's only when you're older, when you have your own children, that you realize that it's an art, mothering." There are some hard scenes to watch in 'One True Thing', including a talk between mother and daughter about a marriage the mother will never see, and a scene of Streep being lifted out of the tub, body sagging, hair gone to chemotherapy. "I don't feel unattractive at that moment," said Streep. "I just felt alive. I felt a responsibility to people who have been sick not to make it look phony."
Asked what two movies of hers she would recommend to those wanting to see her at her best, Streep named 'A Cry in the Dark' and 'Ironweed.' "I want to bring somebody from the background, bring somebody forward you normally wouldn't look at," she said.
She listed Colleen Dewhurst, Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda as three important influences, while Zellweger named Streep as one of hers. "You turn to someone, not just because they're incredibly talented, but because they are extremely good people," said the young actress, who starred with Tom Cruise in 'Jerry Maguire.' "Meryl is one of those people in my life."
Zellweger pointed to the fact that Streep routinely took a helicopter home from location shooting in Morristown, N.J., "so she could tuck her babies in bed. That's a good person."
Afterwards, Ruth A. Stergiou, Executive Director of the 6,000 member PBWC, said Streep "has never portrayed women as Hollywood wants them portrayed. She portrays women as they really are, and I have always admired her for that."
Lydia Beebe of Chevron Corp. and her daughter talk with Rosalie Zalis, Chief of Protocol for the State of California.
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