Hunt's Full Heart
San Francisco Chronicle
Archived April 2, 2000

Actress writes and directs transplant comedy with help from family, friends and her hometown
For the delightfully down-to- earth and funny actress-writer Bonnie Hunt, family is where the heart is.
She captures these qualities in ``Return to Me,'' a touching romantic comedy that she co-wrote and directed. Opening Friday, it's bound to please audiences hankering for a cozy, old-style charmer.
``Return to Me,'' co-starring David Duchovny, Minnie Driver and Hunt, was filmed in the old neighborhood on Chicago's north side where Hunt grew up in a working- class Roman Catholic family, one of seven kids.
``I wrote what I know. I'm a blue- collar Chicago girl raised on wonderful movies my mom took us to, ones that had a lot of heart,'' said the multitalented actress (``The Green Mile,'' ``Beethoven,'' ``Only You'').
Before her acting career, Hunt, 35, worked as an oncology nurse who sharpened her dazzling improv comedy skills by buoying the spirits of terminally ill patients at Northwestern University Hospital. In turn, they urged her to keep performing at the Second City comedy theater and chase her dream to be an actress. She still remembers the day she got her first movie role, as the waitress who spills the toothpicks in ``Rain Man'' (1988) with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.
``I ran all the way to my callback audition on my lunch hour,'' she said during a recent interview in San Francisco. ``And then I ran all the way back (to the hospital) and went from room to room shouting, `I got the movie! I got the movie!'
``It was such a thrill for them. These were terminally ill people, and some didn't have long to go, but they took such joy in urging me to go out there and follow my dream. They showed me that day how amazing people can be.'' She still works raising funds to fight cancer.
``Return to Me,'' co-written by Hunt's longtime writing partner and former Second City comedy collaborator, Don Lake, is the first feature film Hunt has directed. She relished the job like a proud mom ``fussing over family.''
``I relied on a lot of my old nursing skills,'' she said. ``There are only so many hours in the day -- people have to be taken care of and feel good and be in a nice comfortable bed by the time you leave.''
Trouble is, with Hunt around, nobody wanted to leave.
Workdays on Chicago locations, which included a neighborhood tavern near Wrigley Field, a backyard garden in Old Town and Chicago's beloved Lincoln Park Zoo, often turned into long, after-hours fetes for the cast, which includes Joely Richardson, Jim Belushi, Carroll O'Connor, David Alan Grier and Robert Loggia. Hunt also gave parts to some of her Chicago kin: her mom, Alice Hunt, brothers Tom and Kevin, sisters Carol and Mary and nephew Patrick.
In addition, Hunt's cast -- or clan, as some on the set called it -- included a half-dozen Second City actors she's been pals with through the years.
With ``Return to Me,'' Hunt puts her personal style on the screen. Viewing Chicago as a place with ``real people in the old neighborhoods,'' she has created a film of unpretentious charm. Brought in for less than its $25 million budget, the film has scored high approval marks in test screenings.
Duchovny plays Bob Rueland, a Chicago construction company owner whose beautiful young wife, Elizabeth (Joely Richardson), is a primate expert at Lincoln Park Zoo. When Elizabeth dies in a car accident, her heart is transplanted into a working-class woman named Grace (Driver), who gets a new lease on life. Bob and Grace meet by chance at the family-owned Irish-Italian bar and restaurant partially owned by Grace's family.
Hunt says the simple story has a fairy-tale quality, but ``characters are what give it that feeling I was looking for. I wanted people to feel as though they could crawl right into the movie and just live there.''
Grace's father, Marty O'Reilly, is played by O'Connor in his first big- screen appearance in 25 years. Over dinner, Hunt coaxed the actor, best known as America's favorite bigot, Archie Bunker, on the '70s sitcom ``All in the Family,'' into taking the role. At first he insisted he didn't want to do a movie, but then he asked if he could play Marty with an Irish brogue. Done deal.
Hunt patterned the role after how own father, Bob Hunt, a self-taught electrician who died when she was 18.
``That left a big emptiness,'' she said. ``My dad was a man of great wisdom in his short time here. I was very down as a teenager, very upset because I had gotten hurt in a car accident. But my dad was a source of strength. He used to say, `It's the character with strength that God gives the most challenges to.' I've thought about that so many times in my life when things didn't go right. In writing this movie, I was able to use my dad's words, because they really applied to the health problems Grace was having with her failing heart.''
Hunt also based the Duchovny character on her dad as a young man, and gave him her grandmother's maiden name, Rueland.
``I just went into it with the idea that a movie is forever,'' she said, gazing wistfully out a window, tears welling in her eyes. ``I'm not sure I was conscious of it every minute, but I can see my dad in the whole thing. And the rest of my family's there, too.''
Hunt has long divided her time between Chicago and Los Angeles, but last year she and her husband, Bank of America executive John Murphy, sold their Old Town home and they now live in Santa Monica. Part of the house is set aside for Hunt's office, shared by co-writer Lake and Hunt's two rescued mutts, Buddy and Lacy (a dog figures prominently in the movie as well).
She and Lake, who has a small part in the film as a man testing out his new hair transplants, write daily.
``We have two keyboards and one monitor, and that's how we develop dialogue,'' she said. ``We hardly speak to each other except through what we're writing. We have writing conversations.''
She and Lake met at Second City, where they did improv together. The comedy style requires performers to be in their toes.
``It's still the way we work,'' she said. ``It's like we've been friends all our lives, and writing the movie, we were just doing a Second City gig.''
Belushi, another Second City alumnus, who plays Hunt's husband in the film, had such a blast working with Chicago comedy cronies on ``Return to Me'' that he decided to try some of his old stunts while the cameras were rolling.
``We did this bowling scene, and he said, `Hey, Bon, remember that old flip I used to do at Second City?''' Hunt said.
``Next thing we know he's doing it. Cameras were rolling. It was a take that we hadn't really planned. The whole bowling alley cheered. Naturally, we put it in the movie. ''
`RETURN TO ME' The movie opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.