Scott Roesch Monday, August 5, 1996 The Mr. Showbiz Interview Archive

DAN IRELAND'S The Whole Wide World plays like an old-fashioned Hollywood weeper, and it comes by its tears honestly. The film, set in rural 1930s Texas, is based on the memoir of Novalyne Price Ellis, a retired schoolteacher who, as a young woman, carried on an ill-fated romance with pulp writer Robert Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian). Bringing the story to the screen was a labor of love for Ireland, the film's rookie director, and Rene Zellweger, his twenty-three-year-old star. The forty-six-year-old Ireland took a much longer route to directing than most of his Generation X counterparts. He began his film career in Seattle in the mid-seventies, where he co-founded and, for a decade, operated the now-thriving Seattle International Film Festival. By the late eighties, he had segued into producing. The "proudest moment" of his life--before making The Whole Wide World, that is--was producing John Huston's last film, The Dead, in 1987. A definite low point, says Ireland, was his work on Whore, the 1991 Ken Russell film that starred Theresa Russell as a streetwalker. One good thing did come out of that experience, however: the film's male lead, Benjamin Mouton, gave Ireland a copy of One Who Walked Alone, the first and only book by Novalyne Price Ellis. Not only did Ireland love the book, he saw in its author a strong reflection of himself. "I've always wanted to make a film," says Ireland, tearing up at the thought. "It took me a while to get there, but it was always my dream. The fact that she was seventy-six and she realized her dream [of becoming a writer] . . . it kept me going through all the down times." One of those down times came when Olivia D'Abo, the British actress who had signed on to play young Novalyne, got pregnant and had to back out. D'Abo's last-minute exit opened the door for Zellweger, whom Ireland calls "a real Texas passionflower." In retrospect, says Ireland, he wouldn't have done the film without her. Zellweger's inspired performance does make it difficult to believe that the role of Novalyne was ever meant for someone else. (Her portrayal created such a sensation at this year's Sundance Film Festival that she landed the lead opposite Tom Cruise in the upcoming big-budget drama Jerry Maguire.) Early in the production, Ireland learned that Zellweger had a powerful emotional connection to her character. "Two weeks before she got the script [which ends with Robert Howard's suicide], the man she went out with for six years killed himself," says Ireland. "So for her, doing this was the most important thing in her life." Zellweger's grief would have presented a delicate motivational challenge for even a veteran director. "That's a pretty sensitive area to draw upon from an actor," says Ireland. "She was a basket case. I knew I could draw upon it in certain scenes, but I never wanted to interfere." Ireland shot the film's most emotional scenes only once. "I didn't do two takes of those things; I couldn't, because I knew where she was." Afterwards, recalls Ireland, "I had to go hold her for half an hour, while she lost it. Those tears [on the screen] are real." Ireland didn't have the luxury of a big budget (The Whole Wide World was made for only $1.3 million) and big stars for his directorial debut. But he did have something more important: a passion for his story. "At the end of the day, after you've finished eighteen hours of shooting, and you have the bond company on your butt, and you've got your actors needing you, and it's all coming at you," says Ireland, "if you're not passionate about [your film], boy, you're in the wrong business." Ireland knew he was in the right business when he introduced The Whole Wide World to a packed Seattle auditorium on opening night of this year's film festival. "Everything came full circle," says Ireland. "Walking out there and seeing that audience, it was probably the most touching moment of my entire life."

AMY DAWES writes for the Los Angeles Daily News.

LOS ANGELES --It's all happening pretty fast for Renee Zellweger. The Texas native, a strawberry blonde with a whisper-soft voice who projects a kind of bubbling sweetness and a winning sincerity, was doing fast-food commercials not long ago to pay her way through college. Then she was landing roles in little-seen independent films. Then she was meeting with Tom Cruise.

"I remember I drove to the studio, got out of my car, and just stood there and laughed and laughed and laughed," she says. " 'Cause I thought, 'Tom Cruise is in there waiting for me?' That was FUNNY to me. Then I went inside and managed not to throw up."

Well, she must have done a little better than that, since she did get the part in the sports-agent comedy hit "Jerry Maguire" opposite Cruise, winning over director Cameron Crowe and producer James L. Brooks despite the studio's clamor for a marquee name.

That role, and her latest in "The Whole Wide World," recently earned Zellweger the "best breakthrough performer" of the year nomination by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

In "Maguire," Zellweger plays Dorothy, an accountant with a romantic soul and a 5-year-old son to support who throws caution to the winds after she's smitten with hotheaded, soul-searching agent Jerry Maguire (Cruise). When Maguire leaves the sports agency in a quixotic quest for a no