Hunt right at home filming `Return to Me'
April 2, 2000
by Cindy Pearlman
Chicago Sun Times

LOS ANGELES--Bonnie Hunt has always wanted a hit. But this was ridiculous. On the Chicago set of "Return to Me," Hunt was having a particularly troublesome evening.
A curse word slipped from the lips of the Chicago woman who grew up in a strict Catholic home.
"I said, `Damn it, it's getting so late!' " Hunt recalls. "All of a sudden I feel someone whack me in the back of my head. My mother says, `Don't talk like that, Bonnie. You were not raised that way!' "
At that point, the grips lost it. "One of the crew guys comes up to me and says, `Bonnie, I've been doing movies for 27 years. I've never seen someone hit the director for swearing.'"
Hunt just shrugged and said, "Well, that's the way it goes when a Chicago girl comes home to film a movie."
Now Hunt is waiting for a hit of another sort when her romantic comedy starring Minnie Driver, David Duchovny, Jim Belushi and Carroll O'Connor opens Friday. In "Return to Me," Duchovny plays a Chicago architect and widower who finds that his new girlfriend (Driver) was on the receiving end of a special gift from his late wife.
On a sunny day in her home away from home, Hunt got down to the heart of the matter. She talked about family, films and frolicking at home last summer.
Hunt: Can I ask the first question? Did Jim Belushi say he slept with me to get the part?
Sun-Times: That would be a . . . yes. He said you've been together for years.
Hunt: Oh, please. God help us all. He was 82 when I was 12. In fact that would make me his type. Don't write that down. Whoops, you already wrote it.
Q. Did you really make a ton of "X-Files" jokes on the set?
A. Oh, God, we tortured David Duchovny. There is not a take of a scene where at the end someone didn't go, "Oh, look everyone! A spaceship!"
Q. Did groupies hang out on the set?
A. The day my mother arrived on the set was the worst. It was, "David! David! It's Bonnie's mom!"
Q. I heard you have your entire family employed on this movie. Is that true?
A. Are you kidding me? I had to pay a $5,000 fee to [the Screen Actors Guild] because they are all non-union. I called SAG and said, "Family before union," which of course is a sin in Chicago.
Q. So where can we find your relatives?
A. My mom is in the beginning at an Italian restaurant when Carroll O'Connor comes out. We had to do four takes. Mom has one line: "How is Gracie?" Meanwhile on the set, she's going, "Hello. How. Is. Gracie." Also she was so in love with Carroll O'Connor, I could hear her heart beating on her body mike.
Q. And your brother?
A. My brother Kevin plays a doctor. He is a doctor in real life. In fact, the team of surgeons on the heart transplant team in the movie is the real team of surgeons my brother works with at Michael Reese. My brother Tommy plays the electrician. He's an electrician. My sister Carroll is the nurse. She's an actress in real life. My nephew Patrick is Danny the dog walker.
Q. Was it fun to film at home?
A. A blast. Every Friday night, I would wrap early and we'd go to my favorite restaurants. Robert Loggia would sing until 3, even though the places closed at 1. Also I didn't have one location that was more than five minutes from my house in Chicago. Every day I walked or rode my bike to work.
Q. Given your local-girl-done-good status, did you get breaks from the city?
A. Half the time I didn't even have a permit to film. I'm not kidding. My Teamsters were like, "You want us to block traffic, Bon? No problem. Don't worry." I'd be like, "You guys, it's, um, rush hour." They would say, "Bon, it's for you. The cars can wait."
Q. People are comparing this movie to "You Can't Take It With You."
A. That movie did influence me. [Pause.] What? Do you think I have original thoughts? No, believe me, I love Billy Wilder and Frank Capra, too. If there was a doorman in their movies and he had two lines, he was still a three-dimensional character. That's the stuff I ache for on screen.
Q. This is a movie about a heart transplant, but what's at the heart of it for you?
A. It's about how your life changes in an instant. I've experienced it. The day my dad died, I was 18 years old. Dad went down into the basement and had a heart attack. . . . All of a sudden they carried him out of there and he was gone. In this movie, David Duchovny's character, Bill, [sic] loses his beloved wife in a car crash. In one second, she's gone.
Q. There's a particularly poignant scene where Duchovny sits by a door with the family dog, and both are almost waiting for his wife to walk in and say it's all been a bad dream. Was that a tough scene?
A. The day we shot that scene I told David the whole story about my dad. I told him about that feeling after a funeral where everyone is gone and you're just standing there. It's empty and silent. David understood that feeling in an instant. That's what he put on the screen.
Q. But then the movie becomes a lighthearted romantic comedy.
A. I wanted to say that every once in a while there's somebody you meet who it's safe to be honest with. They won't think you're a weirdo. It's about how you must take a risk.
Distributed by Big Picture News Inc.