A Place for Everyone in ‘Marvin’s Room’

Jane Rosenthal sees “Marvin’s Room’s” long road to the big screen this way: “I felt as if I had been speaking a foreign language for years--and finally people understood it.”

There are many heroes and heroines in the story of how this rather obscure 1991 off-Broadway play became a major film, perhaps none more crucial than Rosenthal. As head of Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Films, she acquired the project several years ago and subsequently squired it through Hollywood, where it was rejected by studio head after tumbling studio head.

“I believe the mark of a good producer is . . . sticking with [things you believe in],” she says. “But I must say I’m glad to be at the end of the journey.”

“Marvin’s Room” deals with two alienated sisters who come together when one learns she has leukemia. She is the “good” sister, the one who has been caring for their ailing father, Marvin, for most of her adult life. The other sister has been raising two sons and trying to make it as a beautician.

The film, which opens Wednesday for a weeklong run for Oscar consideration, stars Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep, with De Niro as Keaton’s doctor, Leonardo DiCaprio as Streep’s troubled son and Hume Cronyn as Marvin.

A dream team, to be sure, and one that could hardly have been imagined by playwright Scott McPherson, who wrote the original “Marvin’s Room” and enjoyed its successful run off-Broadway. He then wrote the screenplay but died shortly thereafter of the complications of AIDS.

Theatrical director Bonnie Palef took McPherson’s screenplay to Tribeca Films, where after it stalled awhile producer Scott Rudin came aboard and Palef exited.

Next, Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax Films, agreed to finance and distribute the film.

“I liked that it dealt with tough issues in human and smart ways,” Weinstein says. “I went through several experiences like this in my family, and at our age group, this is what we’re all dealing with.”

Streep had been interested in “Marvin’s Room” since De Niro called her in Los Angeles and insisted she fly to New York to see the play.

“I took my then-12-year-old son along,” she recalls. “What’s amazing is that not only did I love it but so did he. I was convinced then that this could reach across all age levels.”

In those early days, she assumed she would play the role of Bessie, the virtuous sister. But by the time she was offered her choice of the lead roles, she chose “bad” sister Lee and proposed that Diane Keaton be Bessie.

“I felt it was time I played a bad mother,” Streep says. “I’d played angry women before--like in ‘Plenty’--but none quite so direct and un-neurotic about it, so fueled by fury. And then I never saw anyone else but Diane for Bessie. She has such a sense of what’s humorous, yet it’s always rooted in reality, so unforced and unself-conscious.”

Clearly, this was a labor of love for the 10-time Oscar nominee.

“I just always loved the material and the message,” Streep says. “It may be unfashionable to spend your life giving rather than needing, but this story celebrates a quiet, self-sacrificing life.”

Perhaps the riskiest “casting” of the film was that of director, and it went to Jerry Zaks, a mythic figure on Broadway (“Guys and Dolls,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”) but a newcomer to the big screen.

“I was responsible for the Jerry choice,” says Rudin, who had worked with Zaks on a play called “Face Value.” “I knew how well he can mix black comedy with very emotional material, and I needed someone to thread that needle through the tone of it. . . . I knew we could supply the things that he might be inexperienced with.”

Zaks himself acknowledges that he was on unfamiliar ground and made some missteps.

“I was speaking in a language I’ve never spoken in,” he says. “I had this whole new set of incredible tools with which to tell a story, yet every scene is basically opening night. I finally started to get the hang of it near the end.”

All the actors were not only willing to work for a fraction of their usual fees but were also willing to play less than their usually attractive selves.

“There’s no diva stuff going on,” he says. “All the characters have aspects that are unsympathetic, and the actors--Hume Cronyn and Gwen Verdon [as daffy Aunt Ruth], especially--allowed themselves to look bad.”

Everyone involved with the film says there was a special feeling of responsibility to McPherson.

“The writing was sacrosanct,” Rudin says. “We all knew if we played that text, we couldn’t go wrong.”

Still, no one appears to be trying to camouflage what the movie is about or attempting to hype, for example, DiCaprio’s appearance to bring in the youth audience. The filmmakers are highlighting the humor in the film, but the real stuff of which “Marvin’s Room” is made is the twin issues of caring for aging parents and learning to live with those relatives one may not have personally selected from the gene pool.

“It’s a story everyone brings their own baggage to,” says Rosenthal, who says her father’s terminal illness gave her much of her motivation (he died during production). “For me, this film became about my father’s cancer, but mostly the film is about family.”

Indeed, that is how singer-songwriter Carly Simon felt as she watched a cassette of “Marvin’s Room” one recent Saturday night. By the next evening, she had written “Two Little Sisters” to play over the final titles.

“That was sort of a record for me,” Simon says with a laugh, alluding to her well-documented roller-coaster relationship with two sisters. The song is a haunting, acoustic lullaby, telling of “two little sisters gazing at the sea, imagine what their futures will be. I didn’t choose you and you didn’t choose me, but I guess we’re from the same family.”

Now the question is whether people will want to watch others on screen deal with what they may be dealing with at home.

“I never ever dreamed it would find an audience, but I think we’re surprising them out there with the response so far,” says Streep, referring to the reaction at test screenings. “I hope maybe it will mean we’ll get more diverse movies.”

Rosenthal, who has spent the most time, money and energy on “Marvin’s Room,” doesn’t even want to think about what happens next.

“My feeling is one of cautious optimism,” she allows, “but it would break my heart if people didn’t see it.”