Bonnie Hunt ... sweet, funny, and quite a filmmaker
Friday, April 7, 2000
By SARA VOORHEES, Scripps Howard News Service

Bonnie Hunt is saying good-bye to her husband, John Murphy, when I come into the room. He's been waiting in the hall at the FourSeason hotel, in Albuquerque, N.M., while she was speaking to another journalist, and now he's leaving for home.
Director, co-writer and star Bonnie Hunt confers with camera operator George Kohut on the set of the romantic comedy movie "Return To Me." Photo courtesy Metro Goldwyn Mayer
"Don't forget to pick up the lawnmower, honey!" she calls to him. "Or ask the
neighbor boy to come and mow our lawn, okay?" Murphy returns to her with a smile and kisses her good-bye. "I mean it!" she says. "We look like the Beverly Hillbillies!" Her husband laughs and blows her a kiss as he's walking out the door.
Brow furrowed, she says to me, all seriousness, "You think I'm kidding, but last week, I let the dog out onto the front lawn, we couldn't find her for three days! I'm not joking."
She could be joking, I'm not sure, but who cares. Bonnie Hunt is the funniest woman in movies, every bit as funny as Robin Williams, when she wants to be, and I know I'm in for a treat. She's here to talk to me about her wonderful new comedy, "Return to Me," which she wrote with her fellow Second City Alum Don Lake. It's a love story about a man (David Duchovny) who falls in love with a woman (Minnie Driver) whose life was saved, unbeknownst to either of them, when she received the heart of his recently deceased wife.
A heart transplant may sound like an odd plot for a love story, but the movie is rich in humor and romance. The title is borrowed from an old Dean Martin classic.
"Dean Martin was a big part of my life as a child. There were always Dean Martin records around the house, and my mom used to play them all the time. So I felt really grown up listening to Dino. 'Return To Me' is one of those songs ...
"When we were writing the movie, I said 'Let's call it "Return to Me,'" because the words evoked a storyline, y'know. Those words are incredible." She sings a verse, in a luscious alto: "'My darling, if I hurt you, I'm sorry ...' Nobody really says that, do they? Wouldn't it be nice if a guy said that? 'My darling if I hurt you I'm sorry ..." Worth a million."
Hunt's velvety voice is no accident. Her mother was a singer, who gave up a promising career to have a family. "There are seven of us â€" that we know of. My mother used to say that she gave birth to her audience. She used to sing to us all the time ... in the kitchen or putting us to bed. I learned to sing from her. I think I even learned to direct from her. When I was working with the kids (in the movie) I'd have somebody off camera say something that would get a genuine smile from them. I learned that at Sears, when we used to get our pictures taken." I laugh, and she says, "I'm not kidding. My mother used to do that all the time. I ran the film like my mother ran the family."
Hunt's actors agree with this assessment of her directing style. Duchovny says, "She's a natural-born nurturer. She lets you improvise, says, 'That was fantastic!' and then she asks you to do it her way."
David Alan Grier, whom Hunt met when she was working on "Jumanji," plays Duchovny's best friend. He says there is one big difference between Hunt and the other directors he's worked with. "She has breasts â€" that's obvious, isn't it? Actually, she's more masculine than most directors I'm used to."
James Belushi, who plays her husband, says, "She's the earth mother. She's gentle, she's patient. That makes her different from most male directors right there."
Audiences will feel that maternal quality in "Return to Me." Like the Oscar-winning "Moonstruck," it's all about family, and the intricate ways in which an extended family, of biological relatives or of friends, can see us through the most painful experiences. Such insights could only have come from a director who understands what that kind of family support feels like.
"My family and my parents are all through this movie," Hunt says. "For once thing, most of my family and friends are actually IN it. My sister Mary is in the church scene. My sister Carol is in the doctor's office. Kevin, the doctor, plays a doctor. And my brother Tom is an electrician with a beard.
"And we filmed (the movie) in my old neighborhood in Chicago. It's all about the most romantic times in your life â€" and you know you can't compete with that newness. And after you fall in love, after that, the work begins, if you're going to stay together for a lifetime. In the movie we get to see David and Joely (Richardson, who plays Duchovny's wife) and their husband-and-wife love. We see my and Jim's love, which is the reality of a long-term marriage. And the boys (Carrol O'Conner, who plays Driver's grandfather, and Robert Loggia as her uncle), who've had a long and respectful friendship all their lives.
"I think in good storytelling you try to get the truth first, and people who portray the truth with a good sense of humor. Don and I as writers, we really tried to maintain honesty and truth through the characters, because we certainly had a situation that was fantastical as a storyline. So in order for that to work, we had to have honest human emotions to carry us through."
I agree with Hunt, that she and Lake have captured the honesty of real emotions and the romantic innocence of a magical story. But the screenplay is also filled with compassion for the aftermath of surgery, which Driver experiences after her heart transplant. Much of that insight comes directly from Hunt's own experience as a nurse.
"When people have a medical situation, they resent being defined by it. I worked as a nurse for several years before I went into comedy. My patients used to encourage me to go for it. I think so much of being a nurse is about making them feel good, making them laugh. They wanted me to be a standup comic. I used to do routines for them."
I pause for a moment, to reflect on that image. Bonnie Hunt, one of the funniest people in American, doing standup routines for her hospital patients. The thought makes me smile, and for a minute I lose my train of thought.
"I'm sorry," I say to her. " I can't remember what I was going to ask next."
"Yes," she says, guessing at my question. "I did wear a bra in this movie." When I laugh, she says, "I can't leave anything to gravity. Not even a young woman of 21 like myself ..."
She could be kidding, I don't know. But who cares?