Al Weisel
Holiday Movies: Stepmom
By Al Weisel
Premiere, December 1998, p. 92
From Cinderella's evil tormentor to The First Wives Club's bimbo trophy wives, stepmothers have gotten a bad rap onscreen. Despite an astronomical divorce rate, Hollywood has rarely dealt realistically or sympathetically with the problems a woman encounters coming into a prefab family. Stepmom, the latest from director Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone), makes the long-overdue case that stepmothers are people too. The film stars Julia Roberts as a career woman whose parenting skills can't compare with those of her boyfriend's ex-wife (Susan Sarandon).
Screenwriter Gigi Levangie knows just how it feels to play second fiddle to Supermom. She based the original script on her experiences dating the man who is now her husband, Imagine Entertainment cochairman Brian Grazer—who, like Ed Harris's character in the film, has two children from a previous marriage. "I think every stepmother has heard the words, 'You're not my mother,'" says Levangie
Ironically, Levangie found herself, not unlike the mother played by Sarandon, cast off when co-producer Wendy Finerman bought her baby. The script was rewritten again and again by a host of writers, including Ron Bass (My Best Friend's Wedding), during its protracted development. "I think we made it more interesting, dealing realistically with the problems that a stepmother has coming into a family, and that a mother has letting another woman in," says Sarandon, who, along with fellow producer Roberts, was very hands-on in shaping the script around the hard-won friendship between the two women. Levangie, however, wonders if the script suffered from too much mothering. "It's really indicative of the overprocessing the Hollywood studio system goes through," she says. "This is a very simple story. This is not Armageddon. But it's become Stepmomageddon."
Although the two leads spend most of the film at war with each other, Roberts says that being buddies in real life actually made the tense scenes easier. "When you're friends with somebody, you can really push it. You can see how ugly this can get because you have a safety net," she says. But she admits, laughing, that "Susan's character is so hard on my character that I would make jokes like, 'A little less brilliant with the insults.'"
The relationship changes once Sarandon's character discovers she has cancer—though there isn't even a hint of illness in the movie's trailer. "Terms of Endearment was never sold as a movie about someone dying. Love Story is not about someone dying—it's a love story," Finerman explains.
It was death, however, that was paramount in Columbus's mind when he turned down the film the first time it was offered to him. "I had just experienced the death of my mother, and this film was not something I was interested in doing," says Columbus. "About a year later, I had had enough emotional distance to realize it was the only picture I could do to get through my personal situation." Convincing himself was the easy part. "I had to prove to Susan and Julia that I could do it," he continues. "Based on my previous work, there was no indication that I could handle a picture of this dramatic quality." Though there are some obvious Columbus elements in the film—a light touch with serious subjects such as divorce, a keen eye for the comic details of family life, and great acting by child stars such as Liam Aiken—Stepmom should help America discover Columbus anew. "I got pigeonholed as a comedy director," he says. "This was the kind of picture I always wanted to do."■
Al Weisel is the co-author, with Larry Frascella, of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, being published in October 2005.