Acting, Producing and a Lot of Caring

The late filmmaker Samuel Fuller, best known for blunt-edged, brutal movies (“The Steel Helmet,” “I Shot Jesse James,” “Shock Corridor”), once noted that a film can wreak violence in surprising ways: “You don’t have to be violent with your fist; a voice can do it as well. One word can cut the [expletive] out of your heart.”

By this measure, “Stepmom” may be the most violent commercial movie scheduled to open Christmas Day. The cold war between a fashion photographer (Julia Roberts) and the former wife (Susan Sarandon) of her lover (Ed Harris) over the raising of his two children is fraught with heart-ripping emotional violence often as harrowing as the far more graphic violence of a blood-and-guts war epic.

In one sequence, for instance, Roberts’ Isabel, in one of her initial attempts at winning the kids over, buys them a puppy. Eight-year-old Ben (Liam Aiken) is thrilled while his 12-year-old sister Anna (Jena Malone) snaps that she’s “allergic to dogs.” Undaunted, Isabel asks what they want to name the dog. Anna suggests “Isabel.” Touched but wary, Isabel asks why. Anna replies, “Well, I’m allergic to dogs and I’m allergic to you, too.”

And this is one of the milder episodes of acrimony, tension and heartbreak spread throughout the movie’s two hours. The clash of wills between Isabel and Sarandon’s supermom, Jackie, grows nettles and weeds that begin to wither when Jackie is discovered to have cancer.

If you’ve seen the ads for “Stepmom,” you already know that you and/or whomever you see it with will probably need to keep a box of tissues close by. You probably also know that its gloom and anxiety are offset by cozy interludes of warm and, at times, antic humor. No film directed by Chris Columbus (“Home Alone,” “Nine Months,” “Mrs. Doubtfire”) can be a total downer, after all.

You should also know that, more than other standard-issue weepies, “Stepmom” gives your sympathies a vigorous workout. In one segment, you may find yourself sympathizing with Jackie more than Isabel. In another, you may find yourself feeling the opposite. This serve-and-volley of allegiances feeds the movie’s emotional tension and gives it a gritty overlay of realism.

Which, as far as Sarandon is concerned, “is a sign that we really respect our audience. I think a film that goes back and forth like this is saying to an audience, ‘We’re going to let you do the work. We’re going to let you figure it out and maybe sometimes you’ll be surprised because you can’t always predict where things will go or how you’ll feel about it.’ ”

“I think we as a group,” Roberts says, referring to those working both in front and behind the cameras, “felt that we had to be really honest about these people, where they were coming from and how they felt toward each other.”

Those connected with the film, she says, “shared an understanding to be unafraid of the ugly bits because life has them. And certainly situation, with all its complexities and overlapping relationships, begs for the truth.”

If the 31-year-old Roberts and the 52-year-old Sarandon speak with one voice on this matter in separate interviews recently, it’s because they are the most conspicuous members of the movie’s production team. They share “Stepmom’s” executive-producing credit with three others, including Pliny Porter, Roberts’ partner in the actress’ development company, Shoelace Productions, and screenwriter Ron Bass, who also worked on “Step mom’s” script.

Roberts and Sarandon--close friends who are both based in New York--had for some time been searching for a project they could do together. The script for “Stepmom” came to them through Roberts’ agent, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, who in turn urged producer Wendy Finerman (“Forrest Gump”), who had initially acquired the property, to bring Roberts and Sarandon in.

As producers, both women, along with Finerman, Porter and others, met several times to, in Roberts’ words, “hash and rehash, hire and rehire, structure and restructure” the project, which meant so much to Sarandon that she even had meetings in Los Angeles between takes of “Twilight,” the detective thriller released earlier this year.

“Once we got on the set,” Roberts says, “I never considered myself a producer. Once we started shooting, I was an actor. I mean, that’s what I do. And that was enough, particularly with this movie. I had enough on my plate.”

Sarandon Enjoys Role of Producer

It was different with Sarandon, who has a history of contributing ideas to her movies while they’re being made. “Only this time, I guess I had more clout because of this title,” she jokes.

While walking a treadmill in her trailer, for instance, Sarandon heard the original Marvin Gaye-Tammi Terrell recording of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” This, in turn, inspired her to give Columbus an idea that would lead to one of the movie’s more unexpected and buoyant moments: a scene in which Jackie, after telling her children about her illness, horses around with them in their bedroom, dancing with abandon to the song.

“After we filmed it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, have we made a huge mistake? I tell them I have cancer and then we dance. What are people going to think?’ But we took a chance and we had fun doing it.”

Both Sarandon and Roberts credit Columbus for sustaining the narrative core of a complex story. “If it flows smoothly, it’s because of Chris,” Roberts says. “There were times when I said this scene doesn’t seem right and he’d say, ‘Well, what doesn’t seem right?’ And I’d say, ‘I just want it to be better. I want it to be more forceful. I think she should be more aggressive here. Or wherever.’ It’s easy to make this wish list, but you don’t always get what you want. But the next day, we’d come into rehearsal and he’d pass out little scenes for everybody. Pretty amazing.”

“Chris has a very good story sense,” Sarandon agrees. “He’s also very conservative about telling a story and I was kind of off-center most of the time. And Julia and I would keep telling him that you don’t have to telegraph everything out front so much.

“We were of the school of ‘Show, don’t tell,’ ” Sarandon says of herself and Roberts. “And we would tell him to trust the characters, trust the story. . . . We would give him coupons and say, ‘Here. If you don’t see it the way we do it, you can redeem these and we’ll make the characters say, “I love you,” and all the obvious stuff.’

“He didn’t have to redeem any of those coupons,” Sarandon adds with a grin.

Keeping things “real” seems to have been a priority with “Stepmom’s” producers from its beginnings. A main character dying of a terminal illness can raise the melodramatic volume of any realistic story. Which meant, as Sarandon puts it, that “the hardest thing wasmaking sure that death wasn’t one of the most interesting characters [in the movie].

“To me,” she says, “the turning point of the film is not when Jackie’s told she has cancer. It’s when her little boy tells her, ‘If you want me to hate [Isabel], I will.’ That’s when she begins the process of realizing that, well, if I’m going to die, I’d better teach this woman how to take care of my kids. That’s the key to the whole movie, not her illness by itself. It’s the give-and-take, the overcoming of all that resentment to reach the point where they say to each other, ‘We may disagree on how to go about it, but we both love these kids and they’ll have us both.’

“There’s no guides to parenting, no sure things,” Sarandon says. “And all you can say for sure is that you’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to love your kids.”

‘Having Fun With Your Kids’

Such insight comes easy to Sarandon, who has a reputation for being something of a supermom herself. While filming “Stepmom” last fall and winter, she made certain that her shooting schedule didn’t interfere with anything having to do with the three children she’s raising with actor-director Tim Robbins. (“Chris even let me out for a couple of school assemblies,” she says.)

“One of the things this movie says is that it’s important to be forgiving of yourself as a parent. And with parenting . . . life is such a fight about being in the moment, having fun with your kids. Just being there and sharing whatever it is, their joy, their anger, their craziness. You don’t want to get into this thing that Jackie does about making lists and being exact.

“And you don’t want to wonder years later when they’re older, ‘Did you miss something?’ Or worse, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ ”

The proximity of Jackie’s role to Sarandon’s real life has inevitably prompted interviewers to ask Roberts how much of Isabel is in her character.

“My trying-to-be-amusing and slightly curt answer is that we’re the same height and weight,” Roberts says. “At the same time, I have a certain understanding for certain aspects of her life. I can relate to the fact that we’re both into our careers and not yet ready to raise a family.

“At the same time, I want to say [to these interviewers], ‘Do you really want to know where these things interact?’ And I include myself as an avid moviegoer when I find myself wondering how much an actor and a character are alike. And I say, ‘What difference does it make?’ You know? Just go and listen to the story and believe in the characters and let that be the joy instead of approaching it as a puzzle where you try figuring out the components of the actor in the character. That’s like seeing the strings. And where’s the joy in that?”