The picturesque house rests on a plateau next to a small family cemetery. A few hundred feet away, rows of freshly tilled soil stretch out to meet the rolling green hills on the horizon.
Silhouetted in the center of the field, an isolated figure gently probes the ground with a small branch. He is clearly a man of the earth; he stands literally and metaphorically alone.
This is Horton Foote country.
An intimately drawn world set in small-town Texas. A world of angel food cake and delicate bouquets of sweet peas, and richly developed characters speaking the 81-year-old writers masterful American vernacular. A world of change and loss and erosion of values and people who bear up under the load of life.
This world is being created on location at a horse farm in Ventura, Calif., for “Alone.” It is Foote’s first play written directly for the screen since “Tender Mercies,” the feature film that garnered Oscars for the writer and for actor Robert Duvall. Venerable 86-year-old Hume Cronyn (“12 Angry Men”) stars as a widower learning to live life with a measure of dignity after the death of his wife of 52 years.
His spiritual journey becomes a subtle backdrop for a classic Foote family drama when the prospect of discovering oil underneath his cotton ranch brings his financially strapped relatives to the spread. James Earl Jones and Frederic Forrest co-star. Michael Lindsay-Hogg (“Brideshead Revisited”) directs. Michael Brandman, the visionary behind TNT’s acclaimed “Screenworks” series, is executive producer.
“Alone” resonates with emotional authenticity. In the last five years, both Foote and Cronyn lost their wives of more than 50 years. Both men bring to this story the experience of resurrecting their lives after losing a profound love.
Foote, a very private Southern gentleman, speaks guardedly of his recovery. “I think probably the impulse to write this play came out of that. The actual sense of missing and loss you never really lose. It’s just ridiculous to even think you’re going to, but you begin to have a sense of gratitude for what experiences you’ve had with them.”
Cronyn’s loss dominated his thoughts during the production. “It was always present in my mind,” he says of the death of his wife, actress Jessica Tandy. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever totally recover from Jessy’s death. When you lose somebody close to you, so many people say, `At least, you have your memories.’ I never found that to be very helpful. In fact, there would be times when I found I wanted to banish all memory. It was just too painful. I’d rather look forward and try not to get lost in the past.”
These thoughts might easily come from the mouth of John Webb. Cronyn, who is aces as usual, looks like hes been preparing to play Webb all his life. Similarities between the two are apparent as he describes the widower’s defining qualities.
“One of them is love; one of them is generosity, which is a first cousin of love; one of them is a really extraordinary quiet perseverance. He’s a true product of the earth. His relationships with his daughters and his somewhat unspoken-of relationship with his deceased wife all gave him a strength and a warmth and a singleness of purpose which made for a very strong, generous, and simple — in the best way — man.”
Cronyn played a Foote character in the mid-’50s, when he starred in the writer’s live television drama, “A Member of the Family.” Actors find Foote’s plays call for a unique approach. Duvall, a veteran of several Foote films, once observed, “You can’t make too many false moves with his writing. You can’t push it. You can’t propel it along. You have to just let it lay there. It’s like rural Chekhov, simple but deep.”
“Simple but deep” aptly captures Foote’s signature style in “Alone.” The screenplay is like a body of water softly rippling on the surface while a complex and active marine life carries on below.
Cronyn, who played Chekhov many times on the stage, concurs, savoring the Duvall quote like a taste of choice wine. “Horton gives you the material without underscoring it. Sometimes you have to dig out the meat from the nut, but it’s all there.”
Foote’s characters cover a broad scope, but the survivor — written with admiration — and the permanently heartbroken — written with compassion — dominate. Webb is the former.
“He endures, in the best sense of that word,” Cronyn says. “Survival is a very old instinct. It probably goes back to the very beginning of the history of mankind and womankind. I think Webb would be ashamed to give up. I think that is deeply ingrained in his character. It’s bred into the bones of those brought up on the land.”
In the screenplay’s most poetic scene, James Earl Jones delivers the line “Blessed, blessed, blessed quiet” while the farm folk visit on the front porch, enjoying the intimacy of true friendship. The line refers not only to the peaceful geography of the farm, but also to the geography of the heart and the geography of the mind. It sums up the destination of the play and the destination of the play’s main characters.
“It almost like a benediction,” says Foote of the peaceful resolution of his story. The night before he gave this interview, Foote watched films by Ozu (“Tokyo Story”). “He treats what one would call the ordinary and finds a masterful way to give it great significance,” the writer says. It’s a description easily applied to a Foote drama.
The writer owes his glory and his endurance in the world of stage and screen to sticking with this less-is-more style that mystifies detractors and inspires admirers.
“Alone” remains true to Foote’s spare meditative interpretation of the American experience, never deviating from the distinctive voice that lingers in the memory long after the closing credits.
