Play Hits the Big Screen : Entertainment: The award-winning South Coast Repertory production of 'Holy Days' is being translated into a film.

By RANDY LEWIS

July 24, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BIGELOW GULCH, Wash. — The actor changed the line only slightly, a most subtle deviation from the script, but the director seized on it instantly.

“There’s some paraphrasing starting to creep in,” said Martin Benson of South Coast Repertory, addressing veteran troupe member Richard Doyle (who’d said, “Don’t hardly seem worth hanging onto at times,” as opposed to the text’s: “Seems hardly worth hanging on at times, don’t it?”).

Unlike all the productions on which the two have collaborated during their 27-year association, this one wasn’t being polished within the cozy confines of Orange County’s most acclaimed theater.

Instead, the scene was unfolding about 1,200 miles from SCR’s Costa Mesa headquarters. Benson, Doyle, actor John Linton and half a dozen members of a film crew were crammed into a hot, dusty barn on a 60-acre farm that sits just outside Spokane, overlooking a ravine called Bigelow Gulch.

For a week and a half that ended Tuesday, eastern Washington was doubling for Dust Bowl Kansas circa 1936, the setting of “Holy Days,” Sally Nemeth’s intimate four-character play about devastating loss, endurance and redemption that won SCR four Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards last year. This time, the story--of two couples who refuse to abandon their farm during the worst ravages of the Depression--is being readied for movie audiences.

Distribution is still up in the air, but the producers are hoping for full theatrical release--even though their budget is minuscule by Hollywood standards.

In addition to being the first film by Benson, 54, “Holy Days” is the first feature for producer-cinematographer Don Hamilton, and the first feature being shot by the Spokane-based Don Hamilton Film Co., which until now has specialized in commercials and industrial films.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the production, though, was the transportation--lock, stock and dust barrel--to Washington of the original cast and the key members of SCR’s technical crew.

“This is the way movies used to be made,” Hamilton said. “They would do a play on Broadway, then move everyone out to Hollywood for the movie.”

Then again, starting with a director, actors and crew already familiar with the script was the only way Hamilton could hope to make a feature on a total budget of $150,000 to $200,000--probably less than the amount spent on lighter fluid for the $80-million “Terminator 2.” It also helped that Hamilton owns virtually all of his own film equipment and a sound stage--and that he lives on the land he was using for location shots.

Hamilton, a former SCR employee, long has wanted to make the jump to feature filmmaking. In the company’s treatment of Nemeth’s play, he found what he considered a perfect marriage of material and opportunity.

“It’s a great story of endurance,” said Devon Raymond, who plays Molly, the morally righteous pregnant wife. “Today people think life is hard if they aren’t making $50,000 a year. Then you look and see what these people endured. . . . Obviously it’s not a teen drama or a big action picture, but hopefully these people are interesting enough.”

“I want to tell the story on film the best we possibly can,” Benson added during a rare lull in filming, which (speaking of endurance) often ran from noon to midnight or later over 10 days.

Benson’s reaction to Doyle’s altered line reading--his insistence that the scene be played exactly as Nemeth wrote it--was typical of the film crew’s general attitude.

“They are very committed to staying true to the piece,” the playwright noted last Wednesday, her last day on the set before she would be heading back to Los Angeles. “Obviously,” she added with a laugh, “I trust them enough to be leaving town today.”

But rather than merely recording the stage version, Benson and Hamilton were “opening up” the play, Hamilton said, so that it will have the look and feel of a movie. Instead of taking place entirely around the kitchen table of a farmhouse, as did the play, the movie will include some scenes outdoors, in the fields and in the barn, to form a more concrete picture.

“We’ve seen a lot of lose-the-farm pieces,” Nemeth, 31, conceded. “What’s different about this is the relationships of those four people and their relationship to their farm. To lose that would be to lose what it’s about.” The four are Molly, her husband Will, his brother Gant and Gant’s wife Rosie.

Nemeth said she did not hesitate to entrust her play--the first of her scripts to be filmed--to a first-time film director, producer and production company.

First, she had respect for Benson and the SCR crew. Further, she said, when a theater production “comes down, it goes off into the ether. That’s the nature of theater: It’s there, then it’s gone. All that’s left are snippets of memories of productions that you loved. So I figured at best (this) would be an incredible film, and at worst, I would have a nice record of that production. It was a no-lose situation.

“They are involving me in every aspect,” Nemeth continued. “I get to look at a rough cut and give my comments on the way it’s edited, (and) they are actually taking some of my suggestions. . . . Aside from that, they won’t change anything without asking me. It’s extraordinary, and it will never happen to me again, so I’m going to enjoy it while I’ve got it.”

As with most independent films, there was an anything-goes approach at work that allowed each member of the crew to handle a variety of tasks--as, for instance, when Benson decided a half-century-old tractor didn’t look dusty enough. He hopped into the iron bucket seat, punched the ignition button and took it for several laps through a barley field-- which Hamilton had just finished plowing in an effort to make it looks more Dust Bowl-esque.

Earlier in the day, when Hamilton wanted bigger drifts on the road outside the farmhouse, he’d been the first to grab a wheelbarrow and start shoveling sand.

“The unions would have a fit,” Benson admitted (although Hamilton was quick to note that three of the four actors are Screen Actors Guild members, and they closely observed that union’s regulations about working hours, breaks and duties).

Still, “there’s a wonderful innocence here,” said Benson--who referred to himself as “the world’s oldest neophyte film director”--with a laugh. “We don’t know enough to know that we can’t do this on this budget.

“This is so much fun I can’t tell you. . . . It’s sort of like summer stock, only it’s the movies instead of plays.”

Benson said he doesn’t view his debut as a film director as his ticket to Hollywood glitz. “I never had ambitions that way.” The appeal is “just this project”--a chance to take what he feels is a vital play and to get it to a wider audience in a form that stays true to the author’s intentions.

“Holy Days” takes place over Easter weekend, 1936, after years of dust storms have scoured much of the Midwest, prompting thousands to pack up their belongings and head to the promised land of California.

Instead of focusing on emigres like those John Steinbeck followed in “The Grapes of Wrath,” Nemeth examined those who chose to stay behind.

A key incident--the death of a son in one of the dust storms, is revealed in quick glimpses over the course of the play. Benson believes that the story’s theme--of crippling heartbreak and survival--has strong parallels in contemporary culture, and he says that’s the reason he has been willing to give up what little spare time he has to work on the movie version.

“It’s naive, I suppose, and probably corny, to say that purity of intent counts. But when we did ‘The Crucible,’ I was really upset about what was going on in the country at the time. We have a saying at SCR that we have to have a passion to do any play. We won’t do something just because it will be popular.

“I think Sally is a major playwright. She has such a cleanness of expression. The script is so unadorned, so understated. It’s really a blueprint script--it orders you not to go overboard. It could easily get treacly.”

Time after time, Benson would remind the cast that “we’re not going for something boffo here.” Once, watching dailies back at Hamilton’s studios, he urged the producer to “leech more color out of it.”

“Dust must permeate the entire play, physically as well as emotionally,” Benson explained. Hamilton turned down the colors until everyone and everything appeared pale, drained of vitality. “That’s the look I want,” Benson said.

Hamilton, 39, was working on his master’s degree in theater at UC Irvine in the early ‘70s when he quit to take a job at SCR. He handled a number of duties there over the years, including those of house photographer, before moving north in 1979 and setting up a photography studio in Spokane.

He told Benson to keep an eye out for any plays that might strike him as good material for film, which Benson agreed to do, although he says he “never really believed anything would come of it.”

Still, when Benson directed “Holy Days” for SCR, he remembered his promise and brought Hamilton down to see it. Hamilton --whose energy often seemed boundless even after a 15-hour day of prep work, filming and watching dailies--quickly began clearing the way to make the movie.

He saw it as a natural first effort for his company, for several reasons: It centers on dialogue around a kitchen table that all could be shot on one set at his own studio; exterior shots could be done, easily and inexpensively, on the farm where he lives. And, because of his history with Benson, he knew what to expect from an SCR cast and crew.

Hamilton and associate producer John Robideaux have raised about 60% of the money they need to produce a finished film, mostly from Spokane investors, Robideaux said. Robideaux and his wife, Toni, run an advertising and public-relations agency that has worked with Hamilton on numerous commercial projects.

Hamilton and Robideaux hope to continue producing feature films, and perhaps to create something of a film center in Spokane. The city, which has a population of 382,000 in its greater metropolitan area, has seen only a tiny amount of location shooting over the last decade, including “Vision Quest” in 1985 and segments of Steven Spielberg’s “Always” in 1989.

As chief salesman for the film, Robideaux said he will “be putting on the suit and tie and taking some of the footage we’re shooting now around to raise the rest of the money.” Until a distribution deal is firm, exact budget figures and a firm release remain up in the air.

Hamilton says a major studio has asked to see a rough cut of the film. He is also exploring independent distribution and the possibility of airings on public or cable television. “This would be a natural for at film festivals and art-film houses,” Robideaux said. And because of the relatively modest budget, he added, “we are 99% sure we can break even.”

Should “Holy Days” become a hit at the box office, Hamilton said, all the key players would share in any profits.

“It’s an investment for all of us--if it does well, we all do well,” Nemeth said. “Everyone is being compensated fairly. . . . There’s been no rancorous haggling over this, that or the other thing; there are no hidden agendas for anyone. Everybody is committed to the project. If it makes money, that’s gravy.”