Who Loves Ya', Baby?

A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2004)

WHO LOVES YA’, BABY?

Michael Mayer in 1990, just as he was beginning his theatrical directing career in New York, read a new novel, Michael Cunningham’s A HOME AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, and he immediately could see its potential as a film. Tom Hulce, then a successful actor, liked the book so much he bought up all the producing options. Over a decade later, Mayer had been enjoying a very successful career directing plays, winning a Tony, and directing the national tour of ANGELS IN AMERICA. More than a year ago, Hulce brought Mayer the project, and convinced him that he could direct it as his first film. With Mayer on board, they coaxed Killer Films, a very energetic production team famous for the often-controversial nature of their projects, like BOYS DON’T CRY. Then they talked Cunningham into writing the screenplay, adapting his own novel. Out of the blue, Colin Farrell’s agent contacted them, declaring his interest in being in the film. Ironically, at the time, Mayer really didn’t know who Farrell was.

The cinematographer chosen was Enrique Chadiak, who was educated in Madrid. Daily Variety had just put him on this year’s Top Ten list for young lensers to watch. One got the feeling that he gave Mayer a bit of an education in film photography. Mayer’s forte is working with the actors. He loves actors. He seems especially good with child actors. He, also, played the part of Jonathan’s boss in the movie. It was a 34-day shoot, filmed in Toronto (for Cleveland), New York, Phoenix, and some rural countryside, probably in Canada, representing Woodstock.

The plot scenario at first seems less than original…three friends set up a love triangle, and attempt to build a life together; a bisexual man, a free-spirited woman, and a homosexual man. Other films like JULES ET JIM (1962), Truffaut’s movie with Oskar Werner, Jeanne Moreau, and Henri Serri, or A SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS (1980), with Brad Davis, Karen Allen, and Jameson Parker come to mind. Both men are in love with the woman, but it seems to take both of them to constitute a whole person, to give the earth mother what she thinks she needs.

The movie setting shifts three times in the lives of its principal character Bobby Morrow. It begins in Cleveland in 1967, at the height of free love, sex, and rock-and-roll. Nine-year-old Bobby, played fetchingly by Andrew Chalmers, gets a liberal education from his hippy older brother Carleton. The youngster sees Carleton having sex with his girlfriend,
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stays up too late listening to heavy rock albums, and he is slipped a tab of acid while he and his brother hang out in a quiet cemetery. Cartleton had a freak accident and died. Soon after, Bobby’s mother died. He became this strange lonely little kid living with a father; a man who seemed to have crawled into the coffin with his wife.

Then the setting shifts to 1974, when Bobby is 14, and played by Erik Smith, who looks remarkably like a younger Colin Farrell. Bobby a leather-clad loner gravitates toward another shy kid, Jonathan Glover; played first very competently by Harris Allen; all big glasses, hayseed blond locks, and braces. The boys become best buddies. Bobby turns him on to smoking grass, and the joys of hanging out midst the solitude of a cemetery. Jonathan, confused about his hormones, begins to feel drawn to the more open hedonistic attractive freewheeling Bobby. Those adolescent emotions changed to ardor one night during a sleep over. Bobby’s openness to any new experience allowed him to return the advances [masturbation] as naturally as he would while tasting a new food, or listening to some new music. Clearly Bobby was not gay. He just reciprocated the affection that was offered to him.

Suddenly Bobby’s father died, and he was orphaned. He simply turned to Jonathan’s parents, the Glovers, (played by Sissy Spacek and Matt Frewer) and sort of adopted them. Being decent people, they let him stay. Sissy Spacek was wonderful, playing the mother Alice as a woman caught in a velvet trap; domesticated early and never really discovering her true self until later in life. Matt Frewer played Ned, the father, as a kind, gentle, frail man, who took up very little space in a room; who would one day dry up and die quietly. Having his ashes spread to the wind by his son was the apex of his existence.

One marvelous scene I enjoyed was where Alice caught the boys smoking pot in Jonathan’s room. She gently chastised them, but Bobby with his impish grin was unfazed by the show of maternal authority. He simply referred to the embracing of what little happiness there was in the world, and then he offered her a toke. She, impulsively, accepted, saying,” Don’t ever tell your father.” A poignant moment developed while Bobby cajoled Alice into dancing with him. Jonathan, mouth agape, watched his mother getting stoned, swaying to the music as she clung to Bobby, and he began to understand the power that Bobby could exert over others; unfocused power. Bobby lived in the moment, like a young Zorba, who was ready ”to undo his belt and look for trouble!” and he didn’t seem to have a clue as to why others were attracted to him. Later Alice came
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upon the boys kissing in a parked car, and she became very confused and angry. Was she a parent or a participant? Bobby just stood there in front of her one night while both suffered from insomnia, smiling, as innocent as a flower garden, as clueless as the rain. Alice threw up her hands, and decided to teach him how to bake a pie. Bobby, of course, became a baker.

Enter Colin Farrell, as the scene shifts to 1984. He took on this role midway in his recent mercurial rise, midst several action heroes and bad boy roles. Here he played against type brilliantly. His Bobby was never aggressive, never type-A, never conceited, even though he was a drop-dead handsome hunk that everyone felt drawn to; raw sexuality mantled in consummate innocence. His Bobby was a sensitive young man that you could punch right in the face, and he would just accept the blow, and stare back at you with hungry eyes silently inquiring as to your motives.

Bobby was now 24 years old. The Glovers had to move to Arizona because of Ned’s respiratory problems. They had to force Bobby to stay. He would have been happy to just tag along with them. He was like a chameleon, and he could adapt quickly to any new environment. Finding himself unhappy and alone, he immediately called Jonathan, who was living in New York City. Jonathan offered to put Bobby up. He packed his LP’s, some underwear, and he traveled off to the Big Apple like a kid on a field trip. Jonathan was very happy to greet his old friend. But he was surprised when Bobby did not need to talk about,” those things we did when we were kids.” Dallas Roberts played the adult Jonathan. He was primarily a theatre actor, doing a lot of regional theatre and off-Broadway, and Mayer and Hulce knew him. His Jonathan was very gay without being fey. There was very little swishing, no stereotypical “queer” mannerisms; gay without guilt, without apology.

Bobby adapted to living in NYC effortlessly. He lived in an apartment with Jonathan and his roommate, Claire; played with wild abandon by Robin Wright Penn [even better than she was in THE PLEDGE]. Penn’s Claire was a free-spirited woman, who was living openly with a gay man, living off an inheritance, and wanting to have a baby. She dressed like a Warhol disciple, or a John Waters character. Her long hair was many colors, mostly purples. She had a small hat shop, and created very unique chapeaus.

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Bobby was just there, available to either of them, emotionally or physically. Jonathan, a practicing homosexual sought his satisfaction elsewhere, all over the dark corners, alleys, and bars of NYC. His early 80’s unprotected sexual exploits set off our HIV alarms early, but there was no focus on it in the early stages of the story. As Jonathan became more remote, Claire and Bobby became an item. Once this was clearly happening, it began to really bother Jonathan; so much so that in the middle of the night, he packed up and left.

When Claire finally seduced Bobby, he was a frightened as a ten-year-old, saying,
“I have never done this before. I may not be too adept at it.”
Taken aback, and then amused, Claire said, “ Don’t worry, baby. Just lay back and let Mama teach you some things.” Post-coitus, Bobby wept like a bridesmaid. An interesting footnote, reported by the British tabloids, was that Colin Farrell originally had done a full-frontal nude scene. But he was so well endowed that this solicited gasps and wows from all the preview audiences, and the producers felt it prudent to cut the scene.

Ned Glover passed away, and the passionate triumvirate met in Phoenix for the funeral. Alice was so happy to see Bobby, Jonathan threw a hissy-fit. Claire, tired of the emotional seesaw, announced that she was pregnant. It didn’t matter which of them was the father, for now they could really be a family. Claire had attended the rock concert at Woodstock. This was a high point in her life. She was bankrolling the new family adventure, so she drove them to upstate New York, and they bought a small farmhouse near Woodstock. They worked hard fixing up the house. Claire had a daughter and they all parented it.

At one point, Claire watching Bobby change a diaper, asked him, “Is there anything that you can’t do?”
Bobby, after reflection, said,” I can’t be alone.”

Bobby found an old storefront building, and they cleaned it up and transformed into a fine dining restaurant, calling it the HOME CAFÉ. Bobby cooked, and Jonathan waited
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tables. Every night they would return arm in arm to Claire and the baby. But the perfection of this moment became blurred at the edges. Claire was unhappy watching the men’s relationship deepen. Motherhood was harder than she had anticipated. She was tired of the country life. She was ready to bolt, unaware that the boys had already discovered the first HIV+ lesion on Jonathan. So Claire made the decision to leave. She did love both men, but she was miserable. She needed the hum, throb, and lights of the city. She needed to hear street noise at night.

There were the small lies and pretenses regarding staying in touch. Standing by the car, with the baby in tow, Claire said to Bobby, ”Do you want to go with us?”
Bobby, thinking for a long moment, obviously in pain, realized that he could not abandon Jonathan.
“No,” he said simply.
Claire blew the boys a kiss, and the earth mother and child drove off in a whirl of fall leaves.
“You know,” Jonathan said,” They are not coming back…ever.”

One of Bobby’s great sorrows was that anyone he loved seemed to die early, almost senselessly. Now death was circling Bobby again, flapping its thick black wings in the night, and he knew it was coming for Jonathan. For the first time, Bobby would be completely alone…until he figured out whom to hook up with next.

“Family can be whatever you want it to be,” reads the caption on the poster for this movie. This dark and lovely, sad yet terrific film takes us on a halcyon unorthodox journey, peopled with eccentric loving characters, and one cannot watch it without responding to its heart, and possibly re-examining our own sense of family and love and loneliness and death. I would rate it 3 stars out of 4.

Glenn Buttkus 2004