It was also a huge honor getting Peter O’Toole to play Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And Harvey Keitel. At first, I thought: Harvey Keitel as Harry Houdini?! But he pulled it off. I think I would have emphasized Houdini even more. When I used to pitch the story with Albert, one of the selling points was that the story would work for both boys and girls. I wanted to give Frances a little bit of a tomboy quality. I think the finished film was a bit distancing for boys, but girls and their mothers adored it. So did the critics. I don’t think it got one bad review. Everybody seemed impressed that it was such an adult look at childhood; very respectful and very classy. I credit Charles Sturridge for that. I also thought it was cool that Mel Gibson gave himself a little cameo at the end. Most people didn’t catch that.
Sherry Lansing, being the incredible Hollywood executive that she is, kept me involved in the process the whole time. Even though I immediately went on to do another movie, she called me up to share the box office numbers when it opened. She talked about their plan for their upcoming week, and how they were going to change the publicity. She was very committed to making it as successful as possible. The movie opened very well, but it dropped 50 or 60% the next week. It did not have the legs we all hoped it would. We were definitely ahead of the curve on fairies becoming a popular subject. Now Tinker Bell is a superstar.
Watching Fairy Tale today, I can’t help comparing it to the magical realism of Pan’s Labyrinth. Both movies are very firmly grounded in a historical setting, but the supernatural is seamlessly integrated into that reality. In Fairy Tale, you’ve got World War I, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini…and then you integrate myths and the supernatural. That’s a delicate balance.
All of those historical details were added during the process of getting the movie made. The thing that made me want to tell this story was the idea of kids conning adults. This is a story about how a child’s beliefs can be so strong that even a brilliant man like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be convinced. After the death of his son, these little girls gave him hope that there’s something more to life than what we see every day…and something more after life.
When my father was a magician he saw Houdini’s final performance in Detroit, so I grew up hearing stories about Houdini. He was a hero to me, and I loved the idea that he was a skeptic because he was a magician. He was a master of illusion, so it was easy for him to debunk people’s claims about the existence of ghosts or fairies or anything supernatural. Then Arthur Conan Doyle, a man he admired for his brilliant mind, said that he believes these girls were telling the truth about the existence of fairies. Houdini had to decide how important it was to expose the truth, and possibly hurt someone he respected.
Ultimately, Houdini decides that what the girls are doing, they’re doing for a good reason. This is a theme that I come back to again and again in my work. If people are coming from a place of love, trying to do something that helps other people, then I can’t fault that person. They may not be doing what they’re doing in a particularly moral or honest way, but their basic intentions are good. Of course, the flip side of that are murderers who convince themselves that they are right and that the acts they commit are a good thing. They convince themselves they have a good reason for killing someone.
In our original storyline outline, Fairy Tale was bookended by scenes of Elsie and Francis as old women. It opened with a BBC film crew coming down the road in Cottingsley, and Elsie and Francis nervously wondering whether or not they should reveal the truth after all these years. They did in fact do a BBC interview in which they finally confessed. In the interview, they revealed how they’d made the wings move and everything. Then at the end of the interview, someone said to Frances, “So you don’t truly believe?” She responded, “Well, there were fairies…it’s just we couldn’t photograph them. But they are still out there.” Elsie sort of looked at her, like, “Please, can we just let this thing go?” But she wouldn’t…which I thought was great.
We wanted to end the film with a scene that takes place after the BBC crew has left. The two ladies are having their tea, and Frances says, “Can’t we just go out to the garden one more time? Just to say goodbye…” Elsie figures this is something she needs for closure, so they walk out there and Frances says, “It was magical, wasn’t it?” And as they walk, we start to see these strange lights appearing…We don’t show anything. We leave it up to the viewer’s imagination, and let them believe what they want to believe. Albert’s original title for the script was “The Golden Afternoon,” like the song from Alice in Wonderland. That was the aesthetic we wanted — that rich, beautiful, late-day sunlight that could seduce you to believe in magic.
Once again, so much in that movie is very personal for me. It’s very much about my belief that believing in magic can help a person overcome pain…and my belief that sometimes when you’ve told a story for many years, the story becomes its own truth.
That reminds me of what Bruno Bettelheim [19] said about the importance of having magic and mystery in life…
For better or worse, I’ve infused that belief system into my kids. They believed in Santa Claus for the longest time. And the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, real fairies, leprechauns…I loved creating those fantasies. The visitations by Peter Pan and Tinker Bell were legendary in our household.
If we were on location, staying in a hotel somewhere, and one of my kids lost a tooth, when they woke up in the morning there would be a silver dollar under their pillow and a path of glitter (fairy dust) trailing away from their bed. One time I made a trail of glitter from Shane’s hotel bed, across the room, under the door, down the hall, into the elevator, through the lobby and out to the street. For some reason, the hotel staff allowed me to do that. They got into the spirit of it. When he woke up, he followed that path all the way outside and looked skyward. He smiled because he was glad the tiny creature got out okay.
Once when we were in Ireland, he went searching the woods for leprechauns with one eye closed. He’d learned that secret technique from Darby O’Gill and the Little People. And every Saint Patrick’s Day, we left out whiskey for the leprechauns. We set a box trap to try and catch them and get their gold. Of course we never caught them, but the leprechauns would always leave odd trinkets or notes of Irish wisdom…Nancy and I went WAY overboard. [laughs]
To this day, I wonder whether I messed up my kids’ sense of reality. Maybe. I wonder, Will that be a good thing for them in the future? Will it make them more creative? Right now, they both absolutely love how unique their childhood was. Whenever I apologize and say I think I went too far, Shane says, “Dad, those were some of the best times of my life.” But I think sometimes it’s hard for him and Hannah to let go of childhood because it was so magical. When I was a kid, I had to create all that on my own. I guess most of us do. As a father, I must have unconsciously thought it would be ideal to grow up with someone you trust creating the magic for you. I loved being the magician. I loved creating all those illusions and seeing the kids respond with such open hearts. For me, there really can be something magical in life. I don’t think I’ll ever stop believing in that.
It gets back to the basics of religion. Collectively, we’ve never gotten away from the idea that there is a God and that there are things in this world greater than ourselves, whether it’s fairies or ghosts or people with special powers. I do believe that we mere mortals can make fantastical ideas real through the power of our imagination and belief.
When people ask me if I believe in ghosts, I always feel like I have to define “ghost” before I can answer the question.
Yeah, because if you say, “Yes there are ghosts and demons,” people immediately assume that you mean something specific. We say “ghosts” because the phenomena pre-dates our scientific studies of energy, what we see with Kirlian photography. Once we figure things out scientifically, we’ll use another term to define the phenomena, instead of “ghosts” or “spirits.”
A Different Kind of Christmas fits into this conversati
on too. You talk about creating a world of fantasy-illusion for your kids, and how that might affect them as adults. That’s more or less the backstory for A Different Kind of Christmas, which is about a grown woman whose father thinks he’s Santa Claus.
That was another longtime passion piece. There was a man named Robert George who lived about five blocks from here [in Glendale, California], who believed he was Santa Claus, and he felt that Christmas should be 365 days a year. He drove around town in a red Cadillac, yelling, “Merry Christmas!” I found out about him from a story in the local newspaper. The headline was: Should Santa Claus be shut down?
Now maybe he was a little un-normal…but so what. He was helping people. If a kid had a terminal disease, you could bring him or her — at any time of the year — to sit on Santa’s lap. People donated toys to this man, so that every kid who visited his house would walk out with a toy. It was amazing we have this fantasy character in our neighborhood. He was one of those unique individuals who make life worth living. I love him and his Mrs. Claus, Stella.
Bart [Baker, the screenwriter of A Different Kind of Christmas] took that idea and said, “Well, what if you were this guy’s son? Would you try to convince him that he’s NOT Santa Claus?” It was a little bit of a Miracle of 34th Street thing. We took the script to CBS and got it set up. Then a new regime came in and said, “We’re not going to do your Christmas movie, but would you like to instead do a new pilot of this series called Touched by an Angel?” I said no, took the movie to Lifetime and they said, “Well if you can change the son to a daughter, then we’ll do it.” So we did. Martha Williamson did the rewrite, then became the writer and showrunner of Touched by an Angel. Had I chosen to do the pilot of Touched by an Angel, I’d be very rich today, like Martha. Oh well.
One of the first actresses who read the script was Shelley Long. I didn’t think there was any chance she was going to do it, but she thought it was great. Then we cast Eddie Albert to play the Santa Claus character — not realizing that this poor guy was in no condition to do it. By the end of the first day, we could see that it wasn’t going to work. Carol Newman, the producer, said, “I’m bringing in somebody else to play the role.” I asked who, and she said, “Bruce Kirby — Bruno Kirby’s dad.” I was incredibly nervous because I’d spent years developing this project and now we were blindly recasting the lead roles. But I didn’t have any choice. We needed somebody on a plane who could start tomorrow.
In comes Mr. Kirby, and he couldn’t have been nicer. He couldn’t have been more of a team player. He was absolutely the right choice. My daughter Hannah is a scene with him. She’s the little girl in McDonald’s who says, “Don’t I get a toy with that?” She was about six when we shot that. I did not want her to do it, but I was convinced (by my former assistant Melissa, and my wife) to let her come in and read, and I said, “Fine — but she has to come in with all the other actors and read.” She only gets the part if she gives the best read. And she did.
This is the first of two Christmas movies that you did. Since It’s a Wonderful Life was such a profound influence on you, I’m wondering if you feel that building stories around the holidays adds extra emotion to a story?
Yes and no. The thing that I thought was great about this particular story was that it’s a classic show business story about being a celebrity’s kid. Shelley Long’s character hated the fact, in her childhood, that all the other kids gravitated toward her because Santa was her father. She was so embarrassed. She wanted to be disassociated from her father altogether. I saw that happen with my son Shane at a certain point, when he decided that he didn’t want to be labeled “the director’s son.” On set, he felt he was only known as “the director’s son.” He had no identity other than that.
The Shelley Long character wants to avoid all the embarrassment, but she’s struggling with her decision to cut herself off entirely from her father. How can you deny your parent something that is so much a part of them? Her father wasn’t doing anything wrong. He just had a unique calling, to say the least…and maybe he was letting his celebrity go to his head a little bit. On top of this, her feelings about her father are compounded by what happened on the day her mother died. This was all based on the true story. The real Robert George went to the hospital to be with his wife when she was dying. The hospital staff asked him if he would mind going down to the children’s wing and play Santa to the kids there. When he came back, his wife was dead. He never forgave himself for not being there when she died.
There’s a choice that appears again and again in your movies. The father has to choose between heaven and earth, fantasy and reality…like Tim Matheson at the end of Sometimes They Come Back or Craig T. Nelson in The Fire Next Time. Is that a dilemma you relate to personally?
It’s my Peter Pan syndrome, I guess. I’ve always loved that quote from J.M. Barrie’s book: “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” It’s not that I’m morose, but I do remember my mortality every day. I’m not afraid of death, but when it comes I don’t want to have any regrets. I feel like there are so many things I need to do before I die. I want to make a film that really has a positive effect on people’s lives. A movie for all those like me, who don’t ever want to surrender that childlike feeling of discovery. A film to deeply believe in.
It’s an amazing power that great movies have — because they’re speaking to you in the dark, speaking intimately to your subconscious. When I go see a movie, I try to surrender myself to it with a totally open mind. Usually, when the movie ends, everybody is talking and getting up to leave, while I’m still sitting there. I love being transported into another world. Even if it’s not a brilliant movie, I appreciate that fact that the movie got made and that it worked on some level. There are almost always good things about every movie. I look for those things and just try to appreciate them. I’d like to feel that there are films I’ve done that might fall into that category of having a lasting effect on audiences.
Was the pilot for Leaving L.A. a passion project?
Definitely. It was Nancy Miller’s dream and I was so blessed she brought me on board. Leaving L.A., which was originally called “Exit Elves.” Nancy wrote the script, and it’s hands-down one of my all-time favorite scripts. I adored it’s great, dark sense of humor.
The pilot is sort of like CSI crossed with Six Feet Under — before either of those shows existed.
A year or two after ABC cancelled Leaving L.A. (because Michael Eisner didn’t think a show about forensic crime was entertaining), the script for CSI came to me and Nancy Miller. I read it and said, “Wait a minute…This is a pilot for CBS?” I didn’t think it would get picked up, because it was so much darker than what we’d been doing — and there was no humor. So I passed on directing it. Nancy Miller passed on it as well. Of course the show has proven to be enormously successful, and now it’s okay to do shows about dead bodies and the people who deal with them.
Nancy Miller now has another show on, Saving Grace. She’s had a number of shows in between. She also created the series Any Day Now that ran for four years on Lifetime. I was asked to do the pilot for that, but I stupidly took a Showtime movie that fell through. My wife Nancy played the mother of Annie Potts’s character for the 1960s. They dressed her up like an astronaut’s wife with the big hair and the heavy eye makeup. She played this Southern racist who was raised to believe in segregation. Then they aged her to play Annie Potts’s mother in present day. Thankfully she’s moved beyond that racism, regrets the way she acted in the sixties and is trying to get on with what’s left of her life. It was a great part for Nancy, and she did a terrific job with a really challenging role. Nancy Miller’s series tackled so many incredible subjects.
Tell me about casting Leaving L.A. You had some great character actors in there.
I pushed for Chris Meloni [from In a Child’s Name and Something to Live For]. Everybody loved him. Lorraine Toussaint cracked me up when she came in. She has this wonderfully dry sense of humor, and we had an instan
t rapport. Hillary Swank was an amazing find. I thought her first read was terrible, but she came back a few days later , having reworked the material, and she blew everybody out of the water. And Anne Haney.
God, I love and miss her.
We shot the pilot with Lisa Rinna in the lead. She was great. But then ABC decided to shoot the entire thing a second time because they wanted Melina Kanakaredes as the lead. The first time you do something, it’s fresh because you’re creating things on the spot. The second time, you’re constantly thinking: Should I change this? We had the same script, same lines, same actors (except for Lisa), and more money…but the freshness, the discovery, and the instinct were gone. For whatever reason, ABC aired the pilot on Saturday, which is ratings graveyard night. After about six episodes, the show was pulled.
How did you get involved with The Third Twin miniseries?
That was the first time I worked with Jaffe/Braunstein Films, and I have done a number of movies with them since, including Odd Girl Out and Not Like Everyone Else. They’re great producers. Somebody must have been pretty adamant about getting me to direct The Third Twin, because my agent asked for everything and they gave it to me. I wanted to fly my family [to Toronto] for the shoot. The kids got a real summer vacation at a huge lake house. The highlight for them was the rope swing on the tree. It was a picture-perfect summer for them and Nancy.
A Strange Idea of Entertainment: Conversations with Tom McLoughlin Page 17