A Fable for the ‘90s

Barry Morrow keeps writing variations on the same theme.

“Everything I do comes out of the same wellspring of experience I shared with Bill,” the Emmy and Oscar winner says. “It is all about what Bill taught me.”

Morrow’s relationship and friendship with Bill, a retarded man who was released from an institution after 44 years, became the basis of the 1981 Emmy-winning CBS film “Bill.”

“ ‘Bill’ is all about brotherly compassion, altruism if you will,” Morrow said.

“Rain Man,” the Dustin Hoffman-Tom Cruise film that won Morrow an Oscar for best original screenplay, is the darker side of Bill’s story, Morrow said.

“All of these characters I either created or fictionalized are underdogs, which means they suffer an inordinate amount of pain. I believe that it’s only through pain, experiencing the pain in your own life and appreciating the pain of other people that you come to value the good things in life.”

Morrow’s latest twist on that theme is CBS’ “Christmas on Division Street,” starring Fred Savage and Hume Cronyn.

“It’s more of a fable than a drama,” said Morrow, co-executive producer on the film.”Fables are stories with lessons to teach. I think this one can be fairly simply stated: love transcends all boundaries and all differences--age, station in life, race, creed and color. Love is the enduring thing and without it, we are all alone. We are all homeless.”

“Christmas on Division Street” tells the story of the unconventional friendship between an upper-class youth (Savage) and an elderly homeless man, Cleveland Meriwether (Cronyn), who lives on one of Philadelphia’s most dangerous venues--Division Street.

Morrow was inspired to write “Division Street” after meeting Trevor Ferrell, a Philadelphia boy who started his own campaign to help the city’s homeless.

“I spent time with Trevor and his family several years ago,” Morrow said. “We went out on a run in the evening and distributed food, blankets, some clothing and lots of hot coffee to anybody we could find.”

Morrow found the trips to be a life-changing experience. “Until you are there actually handing a blanket to somebody who would otherwise be very cold, and perhaps would die of exposure, do you understand what giving is in a fundamental way,” he said.

As soon as Morrow returned to his home in Northern California, he began concocting a story about the homeless. He came up with the premise of young boy with all the trappings of privilege who was lonely and hungry for love in his life and who finds it in the most unlikely person. “If you are not open to the experiences of life you will never meet a Meriwether, you won’t have your life change as this boy has by this man,” Morrow said.

Savage’s character encounters Meriwether in the library while researching a history project for school. “What starts there is the beginning of an enduring friendship that is improbable--dangerous, if you will,” Morrow said. “It is full of risks because the streets are dangerous. What endures is this bond of friendship. So Cleveland Meriwether is both everyman in a way and a presentation of a person who is homeless and will likely die in the streets.”

Filming “Division Street” raised Savage’s awareness of the homeless situation. “I was always aware of the problem, but now it gave me a hands-on kind of idea on how bad it is,” he said.

“Christmas on Division Street” was shot in Vancouver and in the center of Philadelphia’s toughest neighborhoods. “We did hire some homeless people in the mission scene,” Morrow said. “But a movie’s impact in employing the homeless for a day or two is minimal. We have more serious work to do,” he said, referring to homeless programs with long-term benefits.

Morrow said it was “scary” to arrive on the set in the morning and find real-life dramas being played out.

“There were stabbings,” he said. “Somebody threw a cracked wash basin from the 12th-floor story of a building into the alley where we were filming. It could have killed anybody. One woman came out of the bar absolutely out of her mind, she tore off all her clothes and starting writhing around in the gravel. The police were called. “

In one scene, Morrow pitched in and played a homeless extra. Wearing the shabby clothes was a grim reminder of how easy it is for an individual to slide into despair and poverty if “circumstances were all wrong,” Morrow said.

“We really try not to imagine ourselves falling that far. We will do anything to protect ourselves from the threat that represents, which includes ignoring the issue--the needs of homeless people in this country. What I was reminded of (making this movie) is just how much more important life is than the movies.”

“Christmas on Division Street” airs tonight at 9 on CBS.