BIG EDEN describes the wish each of us has for finding love.
But more than that, it describes the wish all people have, perhaps without even knowing it, about what they would like to believe about themselves: the wish for decency.
Big Eden is a tiny fictional town in northwestern Montana, as Preston Sturges or Frank Capra might have envisioned it. Timber and Cowboy country. This is the story of Henry Hart, a successful New York artist, who returns to the town of his childhood to care for the ailing grandfather who raised him. Back in Big Eden, Henry must come to terms with his relationship to Dean Stewart, his best friend from high school, as well as the object of his unrequited love. All these years henry has been pining for a dream image of Dean from back then.
This is also the story of Pike Dexter, the shy, unassuming Native American owner of the town's general store, who is as surprised as anyone to find himself falling in love with Henry. The people of Big Eden conspire and ultimately succeed in bringing Henry and Pike together.
While the romance at the center of BIG EDEN is between two men, because their only conflicts are with themselves, their struggle is universal. It is about the personal obstacles we all set in front of ourselves and that keep us from happiness, whether straight or gay. It is about finding the courage to make ourselves vulnerable, and to come to intimacy.
At the same time, while the consistent and unconditional acceptance of Big Eden's townsfolk of Henry's sexual orientation is clearly unusual, I believe it is also what people, in their heart of hearts, would like to believe about themselves; that when it comes to family and loved ones they are accepting and supportive, because its family.
It is my wish that people visiting Big Eden, even while being able to say "well, that wouldn't happen", might stop to think "well, it should be that way." I want the people in the audience to be sureprised by their own optimism, and to stumbel upon a level of acceptance they may not know they had. This was the impetus for writing BIG EDEN, and why it is so vital to tell this story. In a real world, where a young man can be beaten to death merely because he is gay, it is important to imagine a world as it could be. A world in which we are all family.
I believe that people are innately good and loving. Whether they know it or wish for it or not, all people, in their hearts, are decent. Big Eden is populated by people who know this.
BIG EDEN is a fantasy, but one I think everyone has. Both for ourselves, and for our families, and the world.
Thomas Bezucha, July 1999
Writer/Director
