A Very Happy ‘Return’

Actress-writer Bonnie Hunt has been in Hollywood long enough to star in four situation comedies and appear in a dozen feature films. But she still feels an affinity for her hometown of Chicago.

So it’s not surprising then that the Windy City factors prominently in “Return to Me,” the romantic comedy co-written by Hunt and Don Lake that also marks Hunt’s directorial debut. The MGM release, starring David Duchovny and Minnie Driver, opens Friday.

“For Bonnie, the movie was really like a love poem to Chicago,” Duchovny says. “She took a lot of pleasure in showing the city to me and Minnie and wanting us to love it the way that she does.”

Hunt notes that “Don and I wrote what we knew.” And what they experienced growing up there was a small-town feeling that belies Chicago’s big-city aura. “The cops, everybody we’d see on the street--it was more important to them that I was a local girl than that I was somebody from Hollywood,” she relates in a recent interview. “There’s still a real sense of community to the neighborhoods there. It’s my comfort, plain and simple.”

Hunt upped the comfort factor even higher by using familiar faces in her film--well, faces familiar to her, at least. Hunt, 36, grew up as the sixth of seven children in a close-knit family. Her father died when she was 18, but her mother and siblings all still live in Chicago--and several Hunts pepper the film’s closing credits. “Two of my brothers are in the movie,” the writer-director-sister reports. Kevin, a doctor, appears in a hospital scene. Electrician Tommy plays a worker for Duchovny’s construction company. And one of her sisters is seen as a nurse.

“Animals and Bonnie’s family are all that’s in this movie,” quips Duchovny, recalling his interaction with a dog, a gorilla, Hunt’s brothers and her nephew, who plays his young neighbor. In fact, Hunt’s use of family members in the film ultimately cost her a fine from the Screen Actors Guild for her enthusiastic use of nonunion actors.

“It was worth it,” she asserts, noting that overall the film came in ahead of schedule and under its $25-million budget.

In “Return to Me,” Hunt plays a supporting role, the kind of part she’s done a lot of over the years--the wisecracking best friend. “I’m happy to be a supporting player,” Hunt observes of her customary on-screen persona. “Over the years, if you look at the films of people like Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, their supporting characters, even if it’s a doorman with two lines, always seem three-dimensional. To me, that’s a sign of good storytelling.”

“Return to Me” tells the story of Grace Briggs (Driver), a heart transplant patient who is reluctant to share her medical history with the new man in her life, widower Bob Rueland (Duchovny). When Grace discovers what the audience has known nearly from the start, that the heart she was given came from Bob’s late wife who was killed in a car accident, the relationship is thrown into turmoil.

So where’s the comedy? “I think you have to see the high highs and the low lows to get to the core of what makes us tick as people,” Hunt says. “The comedy comes more out of who the characters are than what’s going on.” Duchovny appreciates this approach. “Bonnie’s humor makes fun of what it basically is to be human,” he says in a phone interview. “It’s not at the expense of regular folk, or any kind of folk for that matter.”

“Return to Me’s” Bob and Grace are surrounded by an assortment of colorful and often amusing supporting players, including Carroll O’Connor as Grace’s grandfather, Robert Loggia as O’Connor’s partner at O’Reilly’s, an Irish-Italian restaurant, and David Alan Grier as Bob’s close friend and confidant.

Cancer Patients Were Source of Inspiration

Hunt is most closely associated with comedy, but her professional roots are anything but funny: a nursing school graduate, Hunt worked on the oncology ward at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Ironically, Hunt credits her time with cancer patients for launching her performing career.

“Those patients really inspired me,” she recalls. “I used to go out on auditions on my lunch hour and do improv shows at Second City at night. The patients would give me skit ideas, I’d videotape the shows and the next day they’d see what I did with their ideas. It became a big part of their healing process.”

Hunt got three days off from her hospital job to make her feature film debut, as a waitress astounded by Dustin Hoffman’s math skills in 1988’s “Rain Man.” Since then, despite her supporting-player status, Hunt has amassed an impressive roster of A-list leading men, including Tom Cruise (“Jerry Maguire”), Robin Williams (“Jumanji”), Harrison Ford (“Random Hearts”) and most recently Tom Hanks (“The Green Mile”).

Not long after her appearance in “Rain Man,” Hunt decided to leave nursing and take the show-business plunge. Her subsequent move from Chicago to Los Angeles meant not only leaving her job, family and hometown, but also her new husband, John Murphy, an investment banker she’d wed in 1988. In time, Murphy joined Hunt in Los Angeles, and the couple recently bought their first house, in Santa Monica.

In 1993, in a move that presaged her threefold duties on “Return to Me,” Hunt wrote, produced and starred in the short-lived television sitcom “The Building,” which was executive produced by David Letterman, a longtime pal and supporter.

“He’s been a good friend to me over the years,” Hunt says of the talk show host, adding with a smile, “I think he’s gone above and beyond the call of duty, having this whole heart thing to help me promote the film.”

Hunt tried television yet again but “The Bonnie Hunt Show” (also executive produced by Letterman) lasted only a few episodes; even after being retooled and retitled, “Bonnie” came and went quickly during the 1996 television season. The show may have ended, but Hunt’s relationships with her cast mates linger on: Several of her television co-stars appear in “Return to Me,” including longtime writing partner Lake.

Studio Signed Her for a Two-Year Deal

“The minute I got this thing in the ‘go’ position, I called up all my friends and said, ‘Employment!’ ” Hunt says. “Eddie Jones, who plays my dad in ‘Return to Me,’ and Marianne Muellerleile, who plays Sophie, were both on the very first sitcom I did, and I said to them, ‘If I ever direct a movie, you’re the first two people I’m going to call’--and that’s exactly what I did.” Hunt also appeared earlier with Duchovny (of TV’s “The X-Files”) and David Alan Grier (“Jumanji”).

MGM’s early test screening of “Return to Me” scored very high, resulting in the studio’s signing Hunt for a two-year first-look deal. Next up for her is “Anniversary,” which the studio had bought before the new deal was made. The Hunt-Lake script is about a just-divorced couple who has to pretend to still be wed for the benefit of an ailing extended family member.

MGM has expressed interest in Hunt playing the lead. Oddly, she is a bit reluctant. “It’s fun to be part of someone else’s vision and someone else’s story,” Hunt says. “It would have been nice if another director was asking me to do it.”

She’s looking forward, though, to sitting in the director’s chair again. She credits her mother for helping her maintain her cool when the burdens of being a first-time director weighed too heavily.

“My mom would come to the set [of ‘Return to Me’] every once in a while,” Hunt recalls. ‘Sometimes I’d be thinking, ‘Boy, I’ve got a lot to do today’ and be kind of overwhelmed, and then I’d look at my mom. She had seven kids within 10 years and kept us all busy and entertained and loved. And then I realized that was my job as a director, to keep everybody busy and entertained and loved.”