The Globe and Mail - November 4, 1988

"Follows plays hustler in new Allan King film; Termini Station is a 'cross between grand opera and the Marx Brothers'"
Pearl Sheffy Gefen

COLLEEN DEWHURST and Megan Follows are teaming up again, but this time, says young Follows, "in a strange way, I'm the parent and she's the child."

That's not literally so. In Termini Station, Dewhurst portrays the passionate, frustrated, alcoholic mother of an uptight, vulnerable, hard- edged, part-time hustler, played by Follows in a drastic departure from her Anne of Green Gables image.

The Canadian film is being shot entirely on location in Kirkland Lake. Allan King is director and producer, and the script is by King's wife, Colleen Murphy, based on her play All Other Destinations are Cancelled, presented last winter at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre. Gordon Pinsent will make a cameo appearance as Dewhurst's husband.

In a pre-shoot interview before she headed up north to the gold-mining town, whose "lake" has been filled in for years by the dirt dug out of the mines, Follows ruminated about her role.

The radical change, she says, is exactly what appeals to her. "It's challenging, because it's something I've never done before, and I have to find the right colors and aspects of the character. She's a complex girl who has been badly hurt and has thrown up a guard as protection to cover her vulnerability.

"I like the journey she has to make to get past that. She's tough, but there's a lot more going on there. She's not sympathetic in the obvious sense, but I can't be afraid, as some performers are, of being unsympathetic."

She's sure her Gemini-winning performance as Anne will not stop audiences from accepting the change. "The funny thing is that I don't find any resistance in my audiences to different types of roles, but only among industry people, who think that people don't want to see me as anyone but Anne. And that's really ironic. It's a joke to me, because the first time I tried out for Anne, I didn't get the part because I hadn't done anything like that before!"

Follows, surprisingly mature at 20, a small bundle of kinetic energy and intense sensibility, says that doing Anne "opened up a whole part of me, and gave me enormous confidence in myself precisely because it was something they said I couldn't do, and I did it, and I'm proud of it."

Director King says simply that "Megan is a wonderful actress, the best of her age in the country." Besides, he adds, a producer's glint in his eye, "she brings a terrific audience with her."

King has to think about that because the awards he has won for past films such as Warrendale, One Night Stand and Who Has Seen the Wind have proved a double-edged accolade, and haven't always made it easier to get financing.

"Some people think that if you've won a lot of awards, it means you're so high-toned, you can't make any money," he grins ironically.

The film's budget is a mere $2-million, plus what King calls "another $1-million investment," meaning that most members of the crew, staff and cast are working for minimum salary plus a share in the profits. Crew includes Oscar-winning hair and makeup designer Paul LeBlanc, set decorator Jaro Dick and director of photography Brian R. R. Hebb.

Tall, determined, with hair and beard more salt than pepper, King calls his new film, which follows his controversial documentary about unemployment, Who's in Charge?, "a cross between grand opera and the Marx Brothers. It's very funny and very powerful, with an outrageous sense of humor, but tough and with tremendous heart. So it has terrific range."

The story is set in a mining town, and involves the passions within a family, where the mother tries to free her daughter of an emotionally crippling family past. Dewhurst is perfect for the role, King says, "because she is an actress with a huge capacity for the big gesture. I think of her as flamboyant and dynamic, with a capacity for wildness, like the mother in the script, who has a passion for grand opera and wants to run off to Rome. Dewhurst can convey that kind of emotional extravagance and tremendous courage."

King and Murphy live in a book-filled apartment with a grand view of downtown Toronto and a playpen in the living room. It's filled to capacity by lively, 10-month-old August, their first child, whose bright blue eyes follow the conversation with interest when he isn't punctuating his parents' remarks with his own loud comments.

Are there any problems directing a screenplay by one's own wife? King looks stern. "That can only be a problem if you're confused as to which roles you're playing, husband and wife or director and writer. The fact that we're married has nothing to do with the work," he says, and August lets out a howl.

"Directors sometimes get far too grand a conception of themselves," King notes. "The writer writes the script, and it's the director's role to interpret it, rather like the relationship between composer and conductor."

Colleen Murphy was herself raised in a mining town in northern Ontario, although her script is not autobiographical. The screenplay is far different from the stage version, she says. "It's opened up from two scenes with four characters to over 100 scenes with 30 characters. I've approached it in a totally different way."

Murphy was an actress, "but not very successful because I didn't quite fit easily into any type," until she won third prize in the CBC Literary Competition in 1984 with a 15-minute radio play.

That gave her enough money and encouragement to write Destinations, her first full-length play. Another is on the way, to be called Skeleton Lake, and it's "quite, quite black," she says cheerfully.

Having August has given her "more real compassion" and enriched her writing while changing her habits. "You're on your feet all the time with a baby, and time becomes very precious. I used to sit around and spend hours over a sentence, but now it's a situation where you've got three hours, you run over to Tarragon (Theatre), go into the office where you write and get at it, before you rush back to feed your child."

Tarragon, she stresses, has been great to her: "It's a fine breeding ground for playwrights."

The part of the daughter in Termini Station is "not only a tough character but a tough role to play," Murphy says. "If you don't have heart, you can do all the tough mannerisms and all you get is a tough girl. You don't get anything behind the eyes. Megan has a lot of heart and, on top of that, a toughness, and it's a wonderful combination."

Follows needs both qualities now. She made the decision to live in the United States six years ago, but she has fled Los Angeles for New York. "I didn't like being alone in L.A. anymore. It's a strange town, a great town if you're on top or working on some hot project. If you're not, it's very creepy. New York is creepy too, but there's no pretensions about it. It's awful, but at the same time there are wonderful escapes."

She has just lost her New York sublet and is camping on friends' sofas until she finds a new one, perhaps in Brooklyn. She'll stay there "because there's more work in the U.S., and I can live there and work in Canada too. The other way round is trickier, because you have to constantly remind people in the States that you exist."

They seem to know, because since first playing Anne, she has filmed A Time of Destiny with William Hurt, Stacking with Christine Lahti, and Seasonal Differences, a television movie about a Jewish high-school student. Her last film was a TV remake of Inherit the Wind with Kirk Douglas and Jason Robards.

Douglas, she says, "was very kind to me. There's an air about him, a tension. You know when he's in the room because he carries with him an incredible presence, that whole Hollywood star thing, which is not necessarily his choice but is a big responsibility, and takes a large toll."

How does she handle her own star status? "Stars today don't have that godlike elevation. But you have to keep reminding yourself what's really important. In New York, you walk out of your door and you may step over five people lying on the street in their own vomit, and you struggle into the subway past people trying to survive. It puts things in perspective."

Source: The Globe and Mail