An American Jewish director backed by a Catholic charity has created a spiritually uplifting film that has wowed Hollywood
LEE DAVID ZLOTOFF STILL hasn't become accustomed to the spectacle of weeping people virtually leaping out of their seats to applaud his first feature film, "Care of the Spitfire Grill." The writer/director first witnessed the phenomenon in January at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where he won the festival's coveted Dramatic Audience Award for his exquisitely rendered drama, about a young Appalachian woman who leaves prison to seek redemption as a waitress in a small-town restaurant in Maine.
It happened a second time at a screening for executives at Castle Rock Entertainment, actor-director Rob Reiner's production company that picked up the rights to distribute Zlotoff's film this summer for $ 10 million, an unheard-of sum for a low-budget ($ 4.3 million) independent production. And it happened again this spring when the 43-year-old director screened "Spitfire" before the members of Temple Sha'arei Am, a Santa Monica-based Reform congregation in which Zlotoff and his wife are both active.
Normally cynical critics, too, have warmed to "Care of the Spitfire Grill," with The New York Times's Caryn James calling the movie "gentle and articulate." But the Times also reported one aspect of the production raising eyebrows at Sundance: It was made by a production company set up the Sacred Heart League, a Catholic direct-mail charity based in Mississippi. Fearing the film was pushing a "religious agenda," one unnamed film distributor told the Times his jaw dropped and he felt a "chill" running through him when he learned the identity of the backers.
But Zlotoff insists, and a viewing of the film bears this out completely, that it does not carry a specific religious message of any kind - although, in contrast to so many other movies these days, it does exalt, rather than denigrate, the human spirit.
"Spitfire Grill," as the film will be called when released commercially, stars relative unknown Alison Elliot as Percy Talbot, an ex-convict from a Maine prison after five years behind bars for killing her abusive stepfather. Required to reside in the state until her parole is up, Percy gravitates to the small town of Gilead, as much attracted to the ostensible magic of its name as to its sleepy, pastoral qualities. Intent upon redirecting her life, Percy begins living with and working for Hannah, played by Ellen Burstyn, the crusty but ailing owner of Gilead's unofficial town hall, the Spitfire Grill.
But Percy's arrival is anything but balm to the close-knit and flinty residents of Gilead, who greet her mountain drawl and open, friendly manner with suspicion and intolerance. Hannah's nephew, Nahum (Will Patton), takes an especially dim view of Percy when he learns that she has befriended his wife, Shelby, a woman he and others have deliberately robbed of self-esteem through systematic put-downs. Nahum becomes more alarmed when he realizes that Percy has persuaded Hannah, who has long hoped to sell her restaurant, to offer it as the prize in a nationwide essay contest. Entrants pay a $ 100 fee. The person offering the most compelling reason for taking over the restaurant will become the new owner.
To Nahum, who is concerned for his aunt's welfare, and perhaps for his own share in her eventual estate, the scheme is a hare-brained threat to the natural order of things. Convinced Percy will somehow wrest personal advantage through this effort, he begins plotting her downfall, finally resulting in a church-set climax which is both tragic and up-lifting.
"This movie was designed to be a human-interest movie," says Zlotoff. "Not a family movie, maybe, but certainly a movie you could take your family to. In no way, shape or form was it designed - nor do I have any interest in its being - a religious movie. When the League discussed the movie they were trying to fund, I said to them:
If, in your heart of hearts, what you really want to do is promote your religious agenda, don't hire me! I have no interest in doing that, particularly because I am Jewish, and I am not going to promote a Catholic agenda.'"
ZLOTOFF WAS BORN IN LONG Island, New York, and brought up in Queens. His father was a New York City junior-high school teacher, his mother ran a nursery school at the family's Reform temple. Zlotoff's own sense of spirituality and affiliation, he says, emerged from a long association during his teens with Reform Judaism's youth movement, the National Federation of Temple Youth.
"It gave me a sense of identity. It was either that or drugs, I guess," he says, laughing. In fact, Zlotoff met his wife, Becky, in the movement, and their eldest son, 17-year-old Jacob, was just elected movement president.
Zlotoff received his education at Brooklyn Technical High School and St. John's College in Maryland, whose only undergraduate curriculum is a renowned "Great Books" program. "Basically you read and discuss the great books of the Western world for four years," he says. "It's one of the best educations available in this country."
After making his way to Hollywood, Zlotoff found success in the early 80s as the creator/writer of the popular television series "McGyver." The program, still popular in syndicated reruns, features a detective who eschews guns and outright violence, preferring, instead, to cleverly use everyday objects, or what Zlotoff calls "vernacular technology," to solve his predicaments. "McGyver" was just the type of hero a kid from Brooklyn Technical High School would have dreamed up, and Zlotoff suspects he was chosen to write and direct the Sacred League's first film effort because of his association with the program.
"The show argued that bright - not might - makes right. And it turned out that the director of the League had seen my rsum, and was a big fan of the show. I think he assumed I could write a compelling human drama without resort to overt sex or violence. And to tell you the truth, that was something I was very, very happy to do."
According to Roger Courts, director of the Sacred Heart League, the group's move into filmmaking was seen as a logical extension of its activities as a publisher of religious and inspirational material. "One purpose was to generate income for charitable purposes… and hopefully to produce movies that are of high quality artistically and technically, and present the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition." Regarding "Spitfire," he says, "The film was not meant to be overtly religious at all… I think it is a film about human decency, which is certainly a traditional value. It's not doctrinal."
"My sense of it," says Zlotoff, "is they decided that rather than send something out every year that said We don't think you should see these movies' - instead of cursing the darkness, they said, Why not light a candle?'"
Zlotoff did not have a script in the attic that met the League's needs. But the kind of movie they wanted to fund was, as described, pretty much the kind of movie he wanted to make. A deal was structured whereby Zlotoff would pitch story ideas which, if they appealed to the producers, would lead ultimately to Zlotoff's writing a screenplay he would also direct. The first story he pitched became the basis for "Spitfire Grill." And in what may be almost unheard of in Hollywood, less than a year would transpire between Zlotoff's first meeting with the producers and the start of production.
Zlotoff says he got the idea for "Spitfire Grill" from three different journalistic pieces. One, from the Los Angeles Times, portrayed Appalachian poor who were wending their way into Ohio city slums. The second was an account, broadcast on National Public Radio, of an inn in Maine whose owners decided to auction it off by way of an essay contest. A third article, in Newsweek, described how several states were using female convicts as tele-operators for their tourism board information services. It took Zlotoff about three months to weave these pieces together into a single compelling narrative.
Although Sacred Heart maintained script approval, Zlotoff says that "having never made a movie before they said, Look, if we have faith in you, we should let you do your job; if we don't, we shouldn't be in business with you.' It's deceptively simple, but it's not something you hear that often."
No one, not even Zlotoff, expected the kind of reaction the film would generate at the prestigious Sundance Festival (founded by Robert Redford), which has become renowned in recent years as the launching pad for Quentin Tarantino's hard-edged, violent thrillers "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction." The question is whether the more uplifting "Spitfire Grill" will now earn similar acclaim for Zlotoff when it goes into general release.
"There's certainly been no shortage of movies that relentlessly attack the human spirit, or that delve deeply into darkness and depravity," he notes. "I think it reaches a point where people have just had enough. Why did people like this film? Perhaps at some level it was as if they are dying of thirst, and all of a sudden here's this glass of water."