THE CHALLENGE OF ‘MARIE BALTER’

Leaves swirled around the hem of her thin coat as the frail-looking woman desperately raced up a grassy knoll, across the street and to the top of the 30-odd stairs, stumbling briefly before lunging for the door to the mental hospital. She pounded on it, pleading for someone to let her in.

No one did.

Then the camera stopped rolling, the wind machine was shut off and Marlo Thomas walked back down the stairs, across the street and to the bottom of the hill to do the whole thing all over again. Six more times.

Most things are not as they appear here at the sprawling Riverview mental facility in suburban Coquitlam, which doubles for a Boston institution during shooting of “The Marie Balter Story” for CBS.

But two things are very real: the temperature, which turns breath to fog much as it would in Boston and would not in Hollywood and the conviction that Thomas, director Lee Grant and cinematographer Sven Nykvist have brought to this true story.

Nykvist, the longtime collaborator of director Ingmar Bergman, reportedly grew depressed as the story unfolded, so wrapped up did he become in the tale of Balter’s painful evolution from patient to administrator at the same facility.

Nykvist’s presence--and that of Oscar-winning actress Grant, who made an auspicious directorial debut with “Tell Me a Riddle” in 1980 and has made several documentaries and docudramas since--confirms that the line between TV and movies is blurring.

“Content films are now normally on television,” Grant said over breakfast one morning with her husband and producer, Joseph Feury. “All the cop things, all the shoot-outs, all the very fast-paced car-chase stuff--this is the kind of movie that is being made. Sven and Alan (Heim, the noted film editor who worked on “All That Jazz”) both wanted to do this because that is what they were being offered.”

Grant also believes that television is the place for true-to-life characters. In theatrical films, “there’s a whole kind of move toward models. There’s a move away from when it went to Sally Field and Sissy Spacek and people who are like real people.”

“The Marie Balter Story,” on the other hand, began with a real person and nothing more. Grant and Thomas were both at a Wonder Woman luncheon in New York two years ago--sponsored in part by Ms. magazine--when Balter, now in her late 40s, received an award after her life story was briefly told.

The daughter of an insane, alcoholic mother, Marie was brought to a convent at a young age and adopted by a couple who were abusive. Later, she was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic when she actually suffered from panic disorder. The medication given her, while correct for schizophrenia, reacted with her true malady to create schizophrenic symptoms, thereby setting in motion a vicious cycle that would keep her institutionalized for much of her life.

Balter eventually married Joe, a patient-turned-counselor (played by Ray Baker, Sally Field’s husband in “Places in the Heart” and a recurring character on CBS’ “The Equalizer” series). She moved out on her own and, free of the institutionalization that reinforced many of her symptoms, earned a degree from Harvard and then set up several mental health programs, which she still administers.

“Marie never remembers being touched,” Thomas said in a late-night interview shortly after the seven runs up the institution’s stairs. “All this deprivation of love and emotion. That banging on the door tonight? She was banging to get into the institution. It was the only safe place she knew.”

Though Thomas has turned producer several times in the last few years to ensure desirable screen roles for herself, this one was handed to her by Grant. One of Thomas’ productions, “The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck,” convinced Grant to do so.

“I find her a very interesting and charming person,” Grant said, “but I certainly did not consider her an actress--not at all. Until ‘Kathryn Beck.’ I was astonished. And I called her and I said, ‘I just have to tell you that I’ve realized that I cannot write anybody off.’ ”

When Grant and Feury secured the rights from Balter, they immediately thought of Thomas, who was pleased to find a good role, whether or not she was the producer.

“Actually, the reason I produce is to get good parts,” Thomas said. “I don’t produce so I can control (a project) but so I can initiate it.”

She echoed Grant’s sentiments about the lack of good human-interest material in movie theaters. “What were the recent movies made that you would want to be in?” Thomas asked of no one in particular. “Places in the Heart” and “Silkwood” “would have been great to do,” she said, but it “gets kind of discouraging when there are only like two.”

Thomas is not without her say in this project. Executive producer Dyson Lovell--who was executive producer of “The Cotton Club” and much of Franco Zeffirelli’s work--reportedly was brought in to ensure her creative rights. Lovell’s agent happens to be the same as Thomas’.

“Marlo felt that for her to come into a Lee Grant project, she wanted a representative whom she could use as a liaison between herself and Lee,” Feury said.

As is often the case in film making, there are several layers of authority. In this case, Los Angeles-based Gaylord Productions is financing the difference between the $2.4-million fee CBS is paying for the two-hour telefilm, which will be aired in the spring, and the just-under-$3-million cost of production. It’s a decent-size budget by TV standards, one that is stretched by use of the British Columbia location, where the U.S. dollar goes farther and union regulations are more relaxed than in Hollywood, thereby allowing some additional cost-cutting.

One of the film’s biggest budget items also turned out to be a substantial money-saver: Nykvist. “Sven is very, very expensive and he’s worth every penny of it,” said Feury. “In the long run, you save a fortune.” Indeed, Nykvist supervises a minimalist, seemingly effortless style of lighting.

He is also extremely fast, in one instance setting up three brief shots in about two minutes each, thereby helping the production avoid a costly union overtime penalty.

“In 30 years I have tried to work for simplicity,” Nykvist said. “That I have learned from Ingmar Bergman. I use as little light as possible to look realistic, to help the audience look at what it should look at.”

None of this means that “The Marie Balter Story,” in this era of Disease-of-the-Week TV films, necessarily will be a hit. “I don’t know if it will be,” Thomas said. “I can’t pick things for that reason; otherwise I’d still be doing ‘That Girl.’ My hope is that people will see my name in the paper and say, ‘Oh, I bet that will be good.’ ”

Nor does this project necessarily indicate that TV has become the preferred creative home for behind- and in-front-of-the-camera talent. Thomas and Grant have feature projects pending, in addition to other TV work, and both acknowledge that they would do more of the former if given the right opportunities.

Thomas’ planned-for movie is a comedy she hopes to star in for Walt Disney Pictures. Grant and Feury are getting closer to making “Ohio Shuffle,” a feature film “we’ve been developing for seven years.”

But that all may be beside the point, given the mature, people-oriented storytelling of “Marie Balter.” “A lot of people keep referring to it as a television movie ,” Feury said. “That’s not the way we look at the work we do. We’re making a movie that happens to be shown on television.”

Executive producer Lovell, who talked Grant into holding out for Nykvist and also helped pave a smooth path for Thomas’ participation, summed up his own foray into television: “What’s so bad about it? You can do quality work on TV, don’t you think?”