Friday, June 07, 2013

Judy Blume Comes To The Big Screen With Tiger Eyes

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One of Judy Blume's books is finally being made into a movie. Willa Holland, playing Davey, looks out into a canyon in this scene. (Freestyle Releasing)

- by Caroline Linton - Women in the World

She’s a staple of American adolescence, but there hasn't been a big-screen adaptation of one of Judy Blume’s books—until now. Caroline Linton talks to the legendary author about her new film.
For any girl under the age of, oh I don’t know, 50, it’s pretty unbelievable that there’s never been a big-screen adaptation of a Judy Blume book. The phrase Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret has been in the lexicon since 1970, and since the book’s publication, being a young woman in America has never been the same.

Blume’s Tiger Eyes was published in 1981, the story of Davey, an Atlantic City teenager, whose father is killed in a hold-up. Her devastated mother moves the family to New Mexico to live and help deal with the pain. Even though it’s older than I am (barely), the emotions in the book still hold up. And that’s just one reason why the book has become Blume’s first movie adaptation, which will be released in theatres, iTunes, In-Demand, and DirecTV on Friday. (After the movie’s New York premiere at the AMC Theatre in Times Square, there will be an audience Q&A with Blume, Lawrence, and Johnson, to the delight of legions of Blume fans.)
Tiger Eyes is deeply personal for Blume, whose own father died when she was in college. The movie has other personal elements: it’s directed by her son, Lawrence, now 49—the pair wrote the script together. Blume is a producer, and her husband, George Cooper, is executive producer.

“[Larry and I] always said—he grew up and he became an editor and a filmmaker—we always said that if we got the chance to work together, we would make Tiger Eyes,” Blume said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I think it’s because the most cinematic of all my books, not counting Summer Sisters [her 1998 adult novel] because that’s a bigger budget.”
Tiger Eyes is considered “lower-budget,” having been made for less than $2.5 million, but it still managed to draw in some serious star quality, including Willa Holland of The O.C. and Gossip Girl, Amy Jo Johnson of Felicity, and Native American actor Russell Means in his last on-screen role—and his son, Tatanka Means, plays his on-screen son, Wolf, Davey’s love interest. Transferring the first-person book into a movie meant that Holland, who plays 15-year-old Davey, had to be in every scene.

“Larry wanted it very much to feel like a first-person book,” Blume said. “Davey, therefore, would have to be in every scene and lucky us, we had Willa Holland to carry the whole movie and show on her face—on these huge close-ups—that internal monologue that I would write in a book. She can just show it. It’s just amazing to me.”

130605-tigereyes-embedTiger Eyes is one of the must-reads in the Judy Blume collection. Not only is Davey dealing her father’s murder, the dissolution of her family, and the sudden move to New Mexico, but also her new best friend drinks too much, her mother is relying on sleep medication and is beginning to date, she’s exploring a friendship with a dying man, and, on top of all that, she meets a handsome stranger in the woods named Wolf, whom she develops feelings for. The beauty of Blume’s stories are that they deal with the real issues that kids face, and they are written not just about them, but for them.
For example, one passage from Tiger Eyes: “I pretend to be engrossed in my schoolwork but what I’m really thinking is, that I’d like to dump the brandy over their heads and tell them how stupid and disgusting they are.” What 15-year-old hasn’t felt that way?
Of course, Davey also has to deal with her father’s death and feeling alone in the world—something that Blume remembers all too well from when her own father died. Her father passed away suddenly as well, but of a heart attack, not a murder. Like Davey, Blume was in the room when her father died.

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