ON LOCATION : MOVIES : Drawing to a Pair of Winners : Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates lend their star power to a film that challenges Hollywood images of the South

In the sun-streaked day room of a nursing home, two Southern women sit on an aqua sofa. The older one, dressed in a bathrobe with pictures of leaping bass on the pockets, absently shuffles cards and talks of bygone times. The other woman, middle-aged and somewhat plump, responds politely and fidgets with a candy bar.

The encounter between the frail Ninny Threadgoode and Evelyn Couch is an opening scene from “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe,” a Universal release shooting in this Georgia town of 11,400, and it sets up the contrast between the past and present that runs through the film like a thread of homespun yarn. It also marks the on-screen meeting of the past two winners of the Academy Award for best actress--Jessica Tandy (“Driving Miss Daisy”) and Kathy Bates (“Misery”).

“If I blow it, I can’t blame it on the actresses,” says Jon Avnet, who makes his feature directing debut on the $12-million project. Avnet, 42, produced the feature films “Risky Business” and “Men Don’t Leave,” and has directed several movies for television.

He bought the rights to “Fried Green Tomatoes” after reading the galleys of the 1987 novel by Fannie Flagg. The film, which began production in late June, is scheduled for a Christmas release.

“I think a good omen is that people of Jessica and Kathy’s talent were attracted to the material,” says Avnet, who co-wrote the script with Flagg. “I don’t think they’re going to be proved wrong.”

The cast also includes Mary Stuart Masterson as the strong-willed Idgie Threadgoode, whose relationship to Ninny is unclear until the end of the film, Mary Louise Parker as Idgie’s best friend Ruth and Cicely Tyson as Sipsey, a family confidante and seamstress.

Masterson, Parker and Tyson’s scenes, spanning 1920-1955, were filmed first, mostly at locations south of Atlanta. Shooting also took place in the nearby towns of Senoia, Juliette and Zebulon, where a magnificent old courthouse provided the setting for a murder trial, and where 200 local extras endured the midsummer heat in period costume. Most of the present-day action between Tandy and Bates takes place in the town of Newnan.

One hears nothing but sweet talk on the set of “Fried Green Tomatoes.” No backbiting, no ugly rumors, not even much of the good idle gossip that is a staple in small Southern towns, particularly in the kind of place where locals eat food like fried green tomatoes. The location is a love fest, according to makeup artist Fern Buchner, who has worked on many of Woody Allen’s pictures, and who therefore knows a thing or two about close-knit crews.

Many crew members have worked before with Avnet and Jordan Kerner, whose Avnet-Kerner company is producing the film in conjunction with Act III and Electric Shadow Productions. The list includes production designer Barbara Ling, unit manager Ric Rondell, editor Debra C. Neil and first assistant director Deborah Love. Composer Thomas Newman, who wrote the music for “Men Don’t Leave” and “Less Than Zero,” is scoring the film.

“Everybody is working at reduced fees,” says Kerner, looking around the Pike County courthouse square where a technician’s Rottweiler puppy lies underneath a massive magnolia tree. School-age children ride by on their bikes to take pictures of the actors coming and going, and Tandy creates a small buzz among the extras and courthouse workers when she arrives in a purple wig and glides up the walkway for a lighting test.

Tandy is especially popular in Georgia since playing an elderly Southern woman in “Miss Daisy,” which was filmed in Atlanta two summers ago and, in addition to her Oscar, won the Academy Award for best picture of 1989.

There is also a sense among the principals that the movie is a small crusade. It certainly is for Flagg, who is out to refute Hollywood images of the South as a land of wrenching poverty, decaying aristocracies and unrelenting racism by portraying what she describes as average, middle-class Southerners.

“Most people from Hollywood, who never get off the plane anywhere but Hollywood or New York, have no concept what the South is, so they just put anything they want in,” she says. “They don’t realize there’s a whole segment of the country that says, ‘That’s wrong.’ ”

Writers often are not welcome on movie sets, but Flagg believes she’s an exception, noting: “I think it’s because Jon (Avnet) and I have worked so closely for so many years on this project.”

Flagg, who gave up acting to write, has a small role that she describes as “a little Alfred Hitchcock cameo.”

“I obviously didn’t have much forethought,” she says, “because the one chance I had to write myself a great part, I didn’t.”

Bud she did create five strong parts for other actresses, a rarity in major films.

Tandy, 82, in her first role since “Miss Daisy,” agreed in April to play the role of Ninny Threadgoode. Bates committed to the project before she won her Academy Award for best actress last spring for her work in “Misery.”

In fact, when Bates captured her Oscar, Kerner says, “It looked like Jon was a genius.”

“It’s one of those things that just make you think God smiled on this movie,” he adds, smiling himself.

Bates, who has completed several films since “Misery,” including “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” and the screen version of Craig Lucas’ 1990 play “Prelude to a Kiss,” says her options have not changed significantly since she won the Oscar.

“I’ve been lucky enough to work doing good parts for a long time,” she says, “and I am getting nice scripts coming in. But just because you win an Oscar doesn’t mean that suddenly people are going to learn how to write. I mean, it’s the same people that are out there writing, and some are good, and some aren’t.”

Both actresses say they were drawn to the project by the script.

“I always go for the story,” says Bates, adding that the prospect of working with Tandy was “definitely a plus” in her consideration. “That always sweetens the deal when you know there is somebody there who you really want to work with. It makes it even more appealing.”.

Bates’ character, Evelyn Couch, befriends Threadgoode at the nursing home and becomes enchanted by her stories about life in her hometown of Whistle Stop, Ala. The town faded away with the passing of the railroads, but Ninny’s memories are vivid and help awaken Evelyn from a midlife rut.

Their first day on the set, Tandy and Bates filmed their initial meeting. Tandy, who spoke most of the dialogue in the two-page scene, had difficulty remembering all of her lines and took some gentle prompting from Avnet. But the play between the two actresses seemed to lay the foundation for the relationship that would develop later in the movie.

Tandy, whose career caught a second wind with the film “Cocoon,” which was also set largely in a nursing home, says of her new role: “I’m playing another old lady--I’m kind of stuck with them.”

The actress built her reputation on stage, appearing in such plays as “A Streetcar Named Desire” and, more recently, “Foxfire,” with her husband of nearly 50 years, Hume Cronyn.

“Every time you start on a new project, you’re really starting from square one,” she says. “If you begin to say, ‘Well, oh, I remember how I did in this one and so I’m going to use that,’ that’s not a good idea. That may get a bit tricky, and not true.”

Tandy says she gradually pieced together Threadgoode’s character from the whole cloth of the script: “There’s always more in the script that you discover as you go along. If you come knowing it all, it’s boring, boring, boring.”

Bates discussed her character with Flagg but says she based her portrayal on women she had known during her childhood in Memphis, Tenn.

“I do think for me it’s going back into the past and remembering the Southern women I grew up with,” says Bates, whose mother is from South Carolina. “That has become part of the soup I’m making for this character.”

Evelyn, like many other Southern women, is trapped by what she perceives as “proper” behavior, Bates says.

“She’s in the midst of a midlife crisis, and she did everything she was told,” the actress says. “Like she was told to dress a certain way or she’d be called a tramp. She wanted to be a good wife, and she didn’t want to get involved in women’s lib, or she’d be called (gay). And suddenly she finds herself in a world where none of that mattered.”

A few weeks before she began filming “Fried Green Tomatoes,” Bates returned to Memphis for Kathy Bates Day, sponsored by a local Rotary Club. That visit, and the small towns where most of the film was shot, helped her with her character.

“That’s part of the work, to keep Evelyn’s mind open to things in the environment, how she might respond differently,” Bates says. “When I go out places and I run errands or whatever, I’m always watching. That’s part of an actress’s work that’s never really done.”

Much of Evelyn’s inspiration to change comes from Ninny’s stories about the free-spirited Idgie Threadgoode. The interaction between Masterson, as Idgie, and Parker, as her friend Ruth, parallels that between Bates and Tandy. But from a production standpoint, it was as if they were playing in two separate films, Parker says.

“I feel like there’s a really good vibe--something between me and Mary Stuart, and that’s sort of where the movie is with me,” says Parker, who trained at the North Carolina School for the Performing Arts and has done most of her work in the theater, winning a Tony nomination for her work in “Prelude to a Kiss.” (She played a role different from the one Bates does in the movie version.) “As far as Kathy and Jessica are concerned, I think they’re amazing,” Parker says. “I just met them yesterday, but I’m proud to be involved in a movie with them.”

Tyson, who worked with Avnet and producer Kerner on their cable-TV film “Heat Wave,” was at first reluctant to take a small part in “Tomatoes.” She decided to accept the project partly because Tandy and Bates were involved. “It was the company, for one thing,” she says.

Whereas Tyson says it’s common knowledge that there are few good roles for women, Parker believes there are few good film roles, period.

Bates is concerned that labeling “Tomatoes” a “women’s movie” could prove a box-office mistake. “As long as this kind of segregation exists in our minds, it will be a problem,” she says.

Avnet, however, believes the film will probably speak more to women than to men, although he hopes a humorous edge will broaden its appeal. “There are elements of this story that should appeal to anybody,” he says.

A native of Brooklyn who was raised on Long Island, N.Y., the 43-year-old Avnet admits to being an unlikely champion for either a beleaguered South or the plight of women.

“I know these characters, I know these conflicts. I can’t agree that only a woman should tell a woman’s story, or that a black is the only person who can tell a black story,” he says. “Artistically, that’s just not valid.

“For whatever reason, this is personal to me.”

The reason may lie in the stories he heard as a boy from Flora Barber, a woman of racially mixed ancestry from a small town in North Carolina. She helped raise Avnet from infancy until he was a teen-ager, and he can still recall the curious inflections of her accent.

Avnet and Kerner clearly enjoyed working in Georgia. During filming on “Fried Green Tomatoes” they also shot a television movie for NBC, “Nightman.”

Kerner also cited practical considerations for the choice of locale, such as the depth of technical talent in Atlanta, the cooperation of local authorities and the support of the Georgia film commission. Avnet seemed drawn more by the people he met, their faith and their harmony with their surroundings.

There is a scene in the film in which a hive of honeybees swarms over Masterson; the actress did the stunt herself and was not stung. There are also images of lightning, rain, water rushing over a dam.

“I don’t know what they mean, but they’re very evocative,” Avnet says. And there is a sense of lost time he describes as “an amber quality” that pervades the Whistle Stop Cafe, where many of the scenes from the past transpire.

Working with Tandy, he attempted to capture such a timeless quality in her voice. Her narrations in the film tie the past and present together.

Tandy also expresses the hope that in some way audiences will connect with the past.

“Time and time again I’ve been stopped on the street, both for ‘Cocoon’ and ‘Daisy,’ where they’ve said, ‘Oh, it was so . . . I remember my grandmother,’ ” she says. “It touches chords in their own experience and makes them happier and richer.

‘God, I sound like Pollyanna, don’t I?”