MOVIES : Of Words and Men : From 'To Kill a Mockingbird' to a host of new projects, Oscar-winning writer Horton Foote has devoted a career to the personal story

By DEBORAH STARR SEIBEL

Dec. 22, 1991 12 AM PT

<i> Deborah Starr Seibel is a Los Angeles-based free-lance writer. </i>

To all appearances, this was not a glamour gig: a dilapidated bunkhouse set strewn with rusting harnesses and rotting blankets. A cast dressed in dingy overalls and torn, faded flannels. And a somber atmosphere in which misery was the order of the day.

But for Horton Foote, 75, the renowned playwright and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter, this dreary world of make-believe produced only smiles and enchantment.

Foote won an Oscar for his adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” (1962). Now, he was knee-deep again in a Depression-era struggle to survive during the movie production of his latest adaptation, “Of Mice and Men.”

Foote admitted that he was hesitant about tackling the John Steinbeck classic. “I avoid adaptations as much as possible,” said Foote, who also earned an Oscar for his “Tender Mercies” screenplay, “because there is such enormous responsibility.

“Your mark (of achievement) is always the original work if you have respect for it, which we certainly did. But you also don’t want to be strangled by that. The trick was not to settle back on what one remembered about the book or the play but to find something fresh and new and exciting.”

“Of Mice and Men,” Steinbeck’s celebrated 1937 novel, is the story of desperate migrant farm workers--overworked and often brutalized--who somehow manage to survive the Depression, build a lifelong friendship and hang onto the dream of having a place of their own. Required reading in almost every American high school, the work has already been performed countless times on stage and in a 1939 film version starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Burgess Meredith. In any form, a remake of such a familiar story would be a tremendous challenge.

For Foote, the burden of living up to the Steinbeck legacy was compounded by another, far more personal predicament. “It is very painful to try to get inside somebody’s psyche,” Foote said, “and I had to try to get inside Steinbeck.”

This isn’t the first time Foote has been challenged to crawl inside the mind of a great novelist. Besides “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Foote has reshaped Bette B. Lord’s “Spring Moon” for film, William Faulkner’s “Tomorrow” for stage and screen and Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” and Flannery O’Connor’s “The Displaced Person” for PBS.

“Thankfully,” Foote said, “there comes a point where, even though you’re dealing with someone else’s work, it becomes a part of you. Then the work simply takes over.”

On the “Of Mice and Men” set in Culver City one recent morning, Foote was elegant in his dapper blue suit, crisp pin-striped shirt and perfectly knotted tie, all in bold relief to the tired and dusty costumes of the day.

Foote has been married to the same woman for 45 years and is a father of four. His life as a multifaceted writer has been devoted to an examination of powerful emotions--or, as one critic put it, the “unbearable turbulence”--bubbling beneath the surface. His commitment to telling intensely personal stories--even during times when his work was considered unfashionable--has been unshakable. And his attention to one special place has been unwavering.

That’s Wharton, the small Texas town southwest of Houston where he grew up and where he still spends much of his time. In all his original works--including 1982’s “Tender Mercies,” 1985’s “The Trip to Bountiful” and about four dozen plays including “The Traveling Lady,” “1918” and “The Chase”--Foote returns again and again to the place he knows best.

The town has inspired him throughout a remarkable career spanning five decades and encompassing stage, screen, novels and television. In the lives of its people, he finds endless variations on the poignant, all-too-human struggle to survive a changing world.

“I write because I have to write,” Foote said. “If nothing of mine was ever produced again, I’d still write.”

He recently was on a one-day visit to Los Angeles with his wife, Lillian. Closely watching the actors, he alternated his gaze with tennis-like precision between the set and a video playback monitor.

He smiled as Lenny--the half-witted, gentle giant of a migrant farm worker, played by John Malkovich--is provoked beyond endurance and viciously crushes another man’s hand. “He’s reinterpreting Lenny for us,” Foote whispered. “He’s finding extraordinary things. I think he’s going to redefine the role.”

Like a kid watching his first play, Foote remained motionless as Lenny refuses to do battle with his loyal companion, George Milton, played by actor, director and co-producer Gary Sinise. “You must understand that these are very enthusiastic young men,” Foote said, “with a lot of passion and vitality. So it makes it very exciting.”

Sinise acquired the film rights to “Of Mice and Men” from Elaine Steinbeck. The author’s widow, familiar with Sinise’s portrayal of Tom Joad in the Tony-winning play “The Grapes of Wrath,” is enthused about the remake.

“The minute I finished reading the script, I thought, ‘I’m glad I let them have it,’ ” she said, speaking from her home in New York. “You’ve got to understand that this play is still being done all over the world. I have been approached many times over the years by those who wanted to remake the film. I had always said no, but the minute Gary asked, I said yes. I knew he was the right one to do it.”

Foote has been welcome on the “Mice” set and has often been asked to contribute last-minute rewrites--an unusual situation most Hollywood screenwriters would kill for.

But, then, Foote will not consider a project in which the screenwriter is considered expendable.

“If there’s anything about Hollywood that troubles me,” he said, “that troubles me deeply. I don’t know how that ever came about--that enmity. I know I could never work that way.”

Sinise, co-founder of Chicago’s renowned Steppenwolf Theater (with Russ Smith, his co-producer on “Of Mice and Men”), says he’s comfortable being surrounded by writers.

“This is only my second film,” said Sinise, who directed 1988’s “Miles From Home.” He has also directed episodes for the TV series “thirtysomething” and “China Beach.”

“In television, the writers are around you all the time; they’re all over you. I’m glad he’s here.”

A similar sentiment was echoed by the crew’s gaffer, Patrick Reddish, who had shyly asked to be introduced to Foote. “A lot of us were happy to take this job because of the content,” Reddish said. “It’s so great to be working on something of quality.”

Even Malkovich (“Dangerous Liaisons,” “The Killing Fields” and an Oscar nominee for “Places in the Heart”) rolled out the welcome mat. “Part of what you have to commit to as an actor is the screenplay,” he said.

“I mean, all these Hollywood people with these movies in their heads and they know just how to shoot it--but just what is it they’re shooting? Ninety-five percent of the time it’s hogwash, just garbage. I like to have the writer be there to protect what he’s written.”

Malkovich deadpanned: “Also, it can be convenient to have someone else around to heap abuse on.”

Foote has no contractual agreement for this open-door policy. From the first phone call last winter asking him to consider the project, his relationship with Sinise and co-producer Smith was built on mutual respect.

“When you’re this excited about doing a project,” said Smith, relaxing over an outdoor picnic table lunch, “the first thought comes to mind is always, ‘Let’s get some young, hotshot Hollywood writer.’ ”

“What the hell do you think I am?” challenged Foote in mock outrage from across the table.

“Well, a hotshot, certainly,” said Smith, laughing. “We had about two meetings with those hotshot types, and it just seemed so wrong, so immediately wrong, that we went back to what Gary and I had talked about originally: We wanted someone who had respect for Steinbeck but who was not in awe of him--someone of equal stature, someone equally accomplished. We came around to Horton very quickly.”

Foote said that despite his reservations, it didn’t take him long to come aboard: “Because I found that we all wanted to take the same kind of journey. What really sold me was that I thought whatever I found fresh, Sinise and Malkovich could match. And that was a great relief to me because I felt that unless you had an actor of Malkovich’s stature playing Lenny, you’d be in deep trouble.”

Foote knows something about casting, having begun his career as an actor. At 16, he had left a comfortable, middle-class home (his father was proprietor of Wharton’s men’s clothing store) to study acting, first in Dallas and then at the Pasadena Playhouse. “Of course I wanted to be a star--and in the most conventional sense,” he said. “I was still a very provincial country boy, and I was sure I wanted to be a movie star.”

Not for long. After he performed in summer stock on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., a stint with the American Actors Company in New York led to a major change in Foote’s career direction. “I used to suggest situations for actors to improvise,” he said. “And one day, (choreographer) Agnes de Mille suggested I start writing. She just casually said, ‘I think you have some talent.’ ”

At that point, still star-struck, Foote had no intention of becoming a playwright. But he did see a golden opportunity. “I was very pragmatic,” he said. “I simply said, ‘I’ll try writing and write a very good part for myself.’ ”

The plan backfired. His first full-length play, “Texas Town,” was well received; his acting wasn’t. Recalling a 1941 review by New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson, Foote said, “He was very complimentary about the writing and said all the actors were very talented--except one.” Foote pointed to himself.

When Foote’s acting ambition waned, he devoted himself to writing.

“I didn’t know it then,” he said, “but very soon I began to get in touch with things I could never get in touch with as an actor. It was deeply satisfying.”

But favorable reviews soon became a two-edged sword. “Early on, I became known as one of Broadway’s ‘promising playwrights,’ ” Foote said, “which is a terrible thing to have put on your back.” He promptly left town, heading for Washington, D.C., and a period of experimental theater. “Because I wanted to go someplace where I could fail.”

He has had several marked episodes of advance and retreat from both the lights of Broadway and the stardust of Hollywood. The most striking occurrence was in the mid-1960s, when Broadway’s avant-garde theater movement came into full flower. Despite having built a 25-year career on the Great White Way and in Hollywood, Foote suddenly found himself out of favor.

“I couldn’t stand Hollywood, and I didn’t like television--it was becoming sort of all hyped up and sitcom-y. The Broadway that I knew was collapsing around me, and Off Broadway--the freedom of language, the four-letter words, the nudity--I was interested in it, but I didn’t identify with it and couldn’t write for it.”

What followed was a 15-year retreat from both coasts, during which Foote produced a nine-play cycle based on his father’s life, “The Orphans’ Home.” Two of the plays were eventually produced as films: “1918” and “On Valentine’s Day.”

Foote won his second Oscar for his original screenplay “Tender Mercies,” featuring an Academy Award-winning performance by Robert Duvall. (Duvall also stars in Foote’s “Convicts,” co-starring James Earl Jones, which opened Friday.) Foote was also nominated for his screenplay for “The Trip to Bountiful,” adapted from his play and featuring an Oscar-winning performance by Geraldine Page. For Foote, who had refused to deviate from writing about Wharton, the place he still calls home, it was a comeback with a vengeance.

“In a curious way, I find it easier to write in New York,” he said, referring to his home away from home. “When I’m in Texas, I get too involved in life. Being a writer to them is like being an astronaut: If they call you up and you tell them you’re working, they say, ‘What do you mean you’re working? You’ve got a pencil and paper. What the hell kind of work is that?’ ”

Foote is preparing his 1989 “Dividing the Estate” for a new stage production to begin next Sunday in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Meanwhile, on-camera work for “Mice,” now in its ninth week, is in the home stretch. With the film tentatively scheduled for release in fall, 1992, Foote believes the Dust Bowl saga has retained its power.

“I think the times have conspired to help us,” he said. “One of the great virtues of Steinbeck is his enormous compassion for humanity. And if we ever needed compassion for humanity, it’s now.”

Foote recalled meeting about 40 years ago the man whose work he was now painstakingly re-creating for the screen.

“I met Steinbeck because I was asked early on in my work in television to dramatize (his 1937 novel) ‘The Red Pony’--although it never came about,” Foote said.

“He was sitting in the garden of his New York brownstone. I was thrown because here was this writer so associated with the dispossessed, and here he was, sitting in this elegant garden with this French poodle.

“I was so worried and nervous about what to talk to him about that I didn’t have any preconceived notions of what he would be like. But having read his books I thought of him as a man of great integrity.”