Smits’ Tearful ‘Broken Cord’

Jimmy Smits thought the tears were behind him. He was surprised to find they were not.

He had cried so often during the making of “The Broken Cord”--the true story of a man who discovers that his adopted son’s afflictions were caused by the birth mother’s alcohol addiction--that he thought the subject matter couldn’t possibly make him cry again.

But when Michael Dorris, the author whose experiences had inspired “The Broken Cord,” started talking to a roomful of television critics about his adopted son--Abel, 23, who’d been killed in an auto accident just last September--Smits felt his lip beginning to quiver. The tears, he knew, would not be far behind. So he covered his eyes and turned his face toward the floor, hoping no one would notice.

“If Abel had been born whole,” Dorris was saying, “he had the potential of making a real contribution to the world. Because he was gentle and he was kind and he had a sense of humor. But he wasn’t able to do that, because of the problems with which he was born. He overcame those problems more than most people thought he would be able to to. In a way this movie is his contribution. And I’m very proud of it.”

And then Dorris and Smits hugged. It was hard to tell who was comforting whom.

“Yeah,” Smits would say later, sequestered in a hotel suite overlooking Marina del Rey, “it still gets to me.” He and Dorris had been together in Los Angeles, meeting to discuss the film, when Dorris got the call from New Hampshire, telling him that Abel had been killed.

Smits was first approached to play David Norwell--the character based on Dorris--in 1989, soon after “The Broken Cord” was published. “I was floored by it,” Smits said. “I read it in one night.”

The book, which took Dorris six years to write, chronicled his struggle to become one of the first single adoptive parents in the country, his joy at finally being able to adopt a Native American child (Dorris, who is now married to author Louise Erdrich, is a member of the Modoc tribe) and the agonies of discovering that his son (called Adam in the book and the movie) was ill and that doctors had no idea what was wrong. After years of research and clashes with the medical establishment, Dorris finally found that Abel--who suffered from seizures, learning and behavioral disabilities and curvature of the spine--was the victim of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Because his mother had been a heavy drinker throughout her pregnancy, parts of Abel’s brain never developed properly in the womb.

When the book came out, it was greeted with scores of exultant reviews and, by Dorris’ count, movie offers from 36 different producers. Dorris and Erdrich decided to go with Carmen Culver, whose credits include adapting “The Thorn Birds” for TV.

“We wanted someone who wouldn’t see this as a disease-of-the-week movie,” said Dorris, who opted for television over a feature film in the hope that more people--particularly poor women--will see the movie and better understand the dangers of drinking during pregnancy. “And we wanted someone who understands that this is a story about fairly complicated people and that a lot of it is funny. I mean, you don’t have to tell people that it’s sad. It is sad. But there’s more to the story than that.”

“Michael has this incredible amount of strength and, oh God. . . .” Smits, his voice trailing off, hugged his midsection. “I mean, I guess it affects me so much because it’s preventable, you know?

“I’m usually very analytical when I’m prepping stuff, real into the head thing. But when I’m into the performance aspect, I’m coming from right here,” Smits said, indicating his heart. “It’s weird, you know, you’ll talk to actors sometimes and they’ll say, ‘Well, I couldn’t get to that emotional place.’ For me, it was like the other way around; for me it was how to restrain it, to let the audience do the feeling.

“My problem was that, on the set, I was very prone to becoming emotionally devastated by what was going on.”

Smits’ starring role in “The Broken Cord” (which was directed by “thirtysomething” alumnus Ken Olin) comes just a few weeks ahead of his one-episode return to the NBC series “L.A. Law.” Smits, who left the show last year after five seasons portraying attorney Victor Sifuentes, said it was emotional seeing the cast and crew again, but he still has no regrets about leaving.

“They originally wanted me to come back for the first sixepisodes of the season, but I didn’t want to do that,” Smits said. “I had a wonderful time for those five years, but I did all I could do with that character.”

Even though his guest episode will tie up the loose plot line left by his departure--the marriage and subsequent separation of Victor and Grace Van Owen (played by Susan Dey)--Smits doesn’t rule out one-shot appearances in the future. More immediately, though, he is exploring other possibilities that include a network miniseries and possibly a series for cable.

“I don’t want to have the bounds put on me in terms of mediums,” he said, asked if, after the less-than-dazzling box-office reception to his last feature film, “Switch,” he’d made a conscious choice to concentrate more on television. “If I come across a television project that moves me--as this one did--then that’s what I’ll pursue.”

But Smits, 36, is still meeting with feature film directors and, in spite of the visibility that came from “L.A. Law,” he is still auditioning.

“It’s part of the deal of being this,” he said, rubbing his arm to indicate the darkness of his skin, the fact that he is Latino. “It’s still an issue, but that’s all right. It’s just something I’ve accepted.”

What Smits hasn’t accepted is the absence of regular Latino characters on prime-time television. “I was reading an article about the fact that Culture Clash (a three-man Latino comedy troupe that made an unsuccessful pilot for Fox) didn’t get a deal and there was a quote about there being no Hispanic characters on television.

“And that really got me off-center. I thought, ‘Wait a minute. I was out there for five years, you know, and I thought I had opened some doors.’ But have I? I don’t know.”

“The Broken Chord” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on ABC.