James Garner, coproducer with Peter Duchow of the made-for-TV movie ”My Name Is Bill W.,” didn`t have to mount a campaign to get James Woods into the title role. To say that Woods ”volunteered” may be like saying Ollie North was ”willing.” Garner, on location in Richmond, Va., to film the story of the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, chuckled at the memory.
”We had just finished shooting `The Promise` (a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie in which Woods portrayed Garner`s schizophrenic brother), and the whole crew was sitting in a restaurant, waiting for a plane,” Garner said. ”I was talking to Peter about our next project, which was to be the story of Bill W., and Jimmy was about two booths away. Suddenly, he jumped up and yelled, `What? What are you doing? I am Bill W!` So we signed Jimmy up right there. I figured we`d better strike while the iron was hot.” (The movie, also a Hallmark Hall of Fame production, will air 8 p.m. Sunday on ABC-Ch. 7.)
The strike was fortuitous. After a string of critical hits ranging from
”The Onion Field,” ”Salvador” and ”Holocaust” to the current box-office smash, ”True Believer,” Woods is the one who is ”hot.” After 20 years of labor at his craft, he finally is able to pick and choose among scripts and roles, and ”Bill W.” was one role he passionately wanted.
The ”Bill W.” of the title is Bill Wilson: war hero, failed stockbroker and compulsive drunk. In 1935, in Akron, Ohio, while trying desperately to sober up yet raging for a drink, he met Dr. Bob Smith, a fellow sufferer whose career as a surgeon rapidly was dissolving in alcohol. In their mutual misery, they became what Smith later categorized as ”buddies on the stormy sea of booze,” learning together how to stay sober, one day at a time. Out of that experience came Alcoholics Anonymous, along with its companion, Alanon (for families of alcoholics), founded by Wilson`s wife, Lois, portrayed in the movie by JoBeth Williams.
In addition to his role of coproducer, Garner appears as Smith in the opening scene and late in the movie, after Woods (as Wilson) has waded through several levels of hell to the final signpost that says to the drunk, ”Dry out or die.” Woods, whose cold, reptilian gaze, sallow complexion and overwhelming inner intensity frequently have cast him in the role of the heavy, said he loves to play a hero.
”I love the idea of a guy who can turn adversity into faith and achievement,” he said between takes on a cold, windy Richmond street. He said his desire for the role stemmed not from any personal problems with alcohol but from his own striving for self-improvement:
”It`s a nobly heroic adventure for someone to embark on. I`m always on a spiritual quest. It`s an important thing in life, to try to evolve. No matter how good you think you are, or how important, you can always find something finer in your life.”
Woods, whose signature role was that of Gregory Powell, the psychotic cop killer of ”The Onion Field,” said he battled against the stereotype.
”I could have made a fortune playing bad guys, but I don`t think that would have contributed much to society. I could have made a career of movies like `Rambo 8` or something like that, but I really don`t think I`d be offering much to the world.
”One of the things that`s been productive in my life is to feel that some of the movies I`ve done had an impact. `Onion Field` had a definite impact on (moving up) Gregory Powell`s parole date. `Holocaust` had very definite reverberations in Germany that extended the statute of limitations on Nazi war crimes, and `Promise` had an enormous effect on people`s perceptions of mental health problems. It took schizophrenia out of the closet in this country. I think this will have an impact, too.”
True-life `extras`
Out on the set, director Daniel Petrie was having trouble with his extras. The scene was a seedy side street, dirtied up a bit to resemble Depression-era Akron, where drunks, bums and hungry street people roamed aimlessly.
The street had been ”dressed” with trash hauled in by the set crew and a shabby old lady was picking through it, stuffing various items into a garbage bag while ”winos” milled about in the background.
The trouble was, neither her activity nor theirs was in the script, but then, as Petrie discovered, they weren`t in the movie either. They were not extras. They were real people, drawn to the scene by all the cameras and commotion. Shooting halted and the old lady escaped with her booty, forcing the crew to go out and hustle up more trash. Hamilton Beazley, a consultant from the National Council on Alcoholism, watched life imitating art and shook his head.
”For every alcoholic, four people are affected,” he said. ”It`s a family disease. Right now, 23 million people are in trouble with their drinking and 10.5 million are full-blown drunks. The alcoholic is the only sick person who denies he`s sick.”
Yet, Beazley said, Alcoholics Anonymous would have nothing to do with the making of the movie, which may be part of the reason that Garner and Duchow needed more than five years to put it together.
They managed only after ex-journalist Bill Borchert befriended Wilson`s widow. She opened up her husband`s memorabilia and agreed to cooperate, giving Borchert his first successful script as a screenwriter.
”If you asked AA what they think of this movie, they`d say, `No comment,` ” Beazley said. ”Their only purpose is to help the alcoholic stay sober. They have no outside view of anything. They take their anonymity very seriously.”
Dr. Bob`s house
The skid-row scene done, the movie crew packed up and repaired to the suburban home of Edith Johnson, 82, whose life had been deliciously disrupted by the moviemakers. By adding two dormer windows, synthetic siding and a few shrubs, they had converted her house into a near replica of the one in which Dr. Bob had lived in Akron.
At the moment, as portrayed by Garner in the movie`s opening scene, he lay dying in her upstairs bedroom while a camera mounted on a cherry-picker eavesdropped through the window.
”I`m thrilled to death,” she said in her soft Virginia accent as she and neighbors watched the shoot from the sidelines. ”It`s just wonderful. Mine was the only house around here they could find with a roof like that, so they stopped here and came in and interviewed me and I was willing for them to do it. They were painting all over and moving everything and I lived in the kitchen. I told them to leave me one corner I could stay in, and they did.”
Woods and Williams, aged 20 years by the miracle of makeup for the scene, needed only to drive up in an antique automobile-a dozen of which had been rented from area collectors-get out and walk to the front door. As usual, with the simplest scenes, it was shot over and over and over, but Williams was content, calling the movie the ”most important” one she had made since she costarred with Daniel Travanti in ”Adam” (about a 5-year-old in New York who disappeared).
She reflected on the change in perceptions making that stock figure, the comic drunk, far more rare in American theater.
”I always loved the `Thin Man` movies,” she said. ”But if you go back and look at them now, all those people ever did was drink. It was all, `Well, in that case, I guess I`ll have another nightcap.` It was very funny then, but there`s something that happens now when I watch, because we all know so much about the affect of it.”
Garner, too, was concerned.
”I wouldn`t want anybody to get the idea that we`re doing a story about a bunch of drunks,” he said. ”That`s not very uplifting, but this is uplifting.”
Woods, still questing for the human spirit, was not worried.
”If we do this program and one drunk gets sober, we will have achieved an awful lot,” he said. ”To save a human life is a pretty spiritually enhanced achievement.”
