Judy Blume’s “Tiger Eyes” Makes It to
the Screen
By Shirrel Rhoades
Curled up there on her white patio couch, Judy Blume looks as girlish as
the heroines of her popular novels. She’s talking with me about “Tiger Eyes,”
the first movie ever made from one of her books. It’s showing during the
upcoming Key West Film Festival.
“The movie is faithful to the book,” she says, “but
also opened the story up a bit.”
She co-wrote the screenplay with
her son Lawrence Blume, who also directs the movie. “I think the story as told
in the movie is so much better than the way I told it in the book. The way
things are revealed is such a better way.”
Even so, writing the screenplay was
“not at all easy, it was long, it was intense.”
She describes the screenplay as a
blur. “I’m not used to having a writing partner. Sending stuff back and forth
all the time,” she says. “Our writing styles are different but somehow it
worked. He knows structure. I know character. The only thing I really like to
write is character and dialog.”
“Larry’s very …” She pauses to
search for the right word.
“Analytical,” her husband George
Cooper supplies.
“That’s it, analytical,” she
agrees. “When I’m writing a book I’m very intuitive, but he’s more analytical. We
are a good balance.”
The movie project began when the
author was approached by a producing team based in LA and London, saying, “We
would like to do a film based on any of your books. Which one would you like to
do?”
The answer was simple – “Tiger
Eyes,” her 1981 story of a young girl dealing with the death of her father.
“There was no discussion at all,”
she recalls. “Larry always knew, I always knew, it was the best book to shoot.
It’s got a real story. So many of my books are so internal, where you’re
dealing with one young woman’s viewpoint. That’s difficult to capture in a
movie.”
Set mainly in Los Alamos, New
Mexico, “Tiger Eyes” introduces us to Davey Wexler, a teenage girl trying to come
to terms with her father’s murder.
Carrying a mysterious paper bag
with her, Davey (Willa Holland) and her mother (Amy Jo Johnson) and younger
brother (Lucien Dale) go to visit overbearing Aunt Bitsy (Cynthia Stevenson)
and Uncle Walter (Forrest Frye) in Santa Fe – seeking time for the family to
recover.
“I’m not going to be here very long,” Davey says. But the family winds up extending the stay, with Davey getting enrolled in
school, encountering new classmates, learning why lizards run.
While exploring the rugged countryside on her
aunt’s bicycle Davey tumbles into a canyon
where she encounters a Native American boy who
calls himself Wolf. So she introduces herself as Tiger. By the end of the
story, Wolf (Tatanka Means) and his ailing father (Russell
Means) have influenced Davey’s life for the better.
Larry Blume handles the directing
well. The countryside lends itself to gorgeous cinematography. The young actors
seem real. And the story unfolds with a tug at your heart.
Not surprising that Larry was named one of “Ten Rising Stars” by the Hollywood reporter for his
first feature-length film, a comedy called “Martin & Orloff.”
“Tiger Eyes” will engage you even
if you’re not a 14-year-old girl.
Judy remembers how she came to
write the story. “I lived in New Mexico for seven years. At
the time I had moved to Santa Fe with my kids. I was leaving two miserable
years in Los Alamos and I needed to write about it.”
She adds, “What I didn’t know when I was
writing this book was that I was dealing with my own father’s death. I was young when
my dad died suddenly. I was with him. You never get over that. It’s always
there, it’s a big part of your life. It’s a big hole. But I didn’t realize that that part of the book was coming
from me.”
Larry says that he really liked having
his mother on the set. She knew the material. And she enjoyed working with her
son on a professional basis. “I’m Judy to him. We’re equals here.” She smiles. “The part that I loved best was being in
preproduction.”
Casting the lead was a big decision. “We
looked at a hundred young women. Saw at least a dozen. Saw three or four again.
Willa was a huge find. We didn’t watch ‘Gossip Girl,’ so neither of us had seen
her act before.”
With Davey in place, they now
needed a Wolf. Tatanka Means, the 6’ 3” son of American Indian Movement activist
Russell Means, filled the bill. “Other than a few possibilities in LA, we
didn’t see anyone else,” she nods decisively.
“Russell came to meet us. He asked,
‘Are you going to cast my son?’ By the time we finished talking, Russell had
agreed to play the part of Wolf’s father in the film.”
Passing away last month, “Tiger
Eyes” was one of Russell Mean’s last screen appearances.
The film’s shoot took a little over
three weeks. “I was on the set every day, every moment of every day,” says Judy.
“I loved being in the canyons. We had everything from brilliant sunshine to
freezing cold. Ohmygod, we even got snow.”
Since the story takes place from
autumn to spring, they dressed Willa Holland in a winter coat and put her out
there in the snow. “It turned out to be very fortuitous,” says Judy.
“I loved the actors, loved the
crew!” she exclaims. “Larry, if he were sitting here, would say, ‘Yeah Judy,
you loved the 23 days on the set because it wasn’t all on your shoulders.” He
had to finish the film on time and on budget. “And he did.”
Out of Judy Blume’s 28 novels,
there are others waiting to be turned into movies. “I think I have two more
that would make very good movies. There’s one Larry wants to do very badly. But
right now he’s busy developing different projects.”
Predictably, Judy is working on
another novel. “I got the idea in 2009 at the Literary Seminar. It came to me
in a flash, a story that actually happened in the town where I grew up. But I
took off about two years to do this movie. Now it’s time to get back to work.
I’ve finished a good rough first draft. I hope I can complete it by next
summer.”
Books and movies, I ask her to
compare the two creative experiences. “Writing is me by myself locked up in a
room. It’s lonely, but as not lonely used to be,” she says. “Moviemaking is
collaborative, you absolutely can’t control anything. I think I’ll stick with
writing. But making ‘Tiger Eyes’ with my son was one of the most thrilling
experiences of my life.”
srhoades@aol.com
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