Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/462877
23 WINTER 2015 / CINEMONTAGE in a small town called Miami and, at 12, moved to the country when her businessman father took up farming. By the time she was offered Places in the Heart, Littleton had worked her way up from entry-level jobs to editor. She had spent time as a non-union editor of commercials and low- budget features before joining the Editors Guild in 1976. One of her first mainstream successes was Body Heat (1981), written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who recommended Littleton to Robert Benton. Benton — whose hometown is Waxahachie — told the Associated Press in 1984 that his screenplay was "a heavily fictionalized version of a number of stories that actually happened" in the lives of his family members. When Littleton read it, she, too, found much with which to identify. "I just felt if there's ever a film that I have to do, it's this one," she says. She had just finished E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), but the film had not come out — nor, of course, had her Oscar nomination for cutting it. One of Benton's requests for Littleton was that she join the company on location in Waxahachie. For the duration of the shoot, everyone stayed at a former Best Western hotel," she says. Dailies were attended by cast and crew alike, "so we had a community feeling from day one." She developed friendships with many in the crew and several of the actors, including Glover, with whom she has since worked on Silverado (1985) and Grand Canyon (1991). Other aspects of making the film in Waxahachie were more sobering. Places in the Heart depicts a town gripped by racism; shortly after the film begins, Edna's husband is inadvertently shot and killed by a young black man, who is then made the victim of a lynching. Later, Edna is looked upon with derision for employing Moze, despite the fact that he alone stepped forward to help her. As Littleton saw it, the legacy of racism was still in evidence. "Being on location and in the countryside, and seeing the racial divide in 1983 — as opposed to 1935 — things were not that different," she laments. There were also reminders of the haves and have-nots of the film. "Cotton was no longer king in the economic picture of Texas, but oil was," she adds. "And there was great wealth centered around oil, as there was around cotton." Places in the Heart does not flinch from unpleasant realities of the day — not only racism, but sexism, evident in the faintly disdainful manner of the bank manager (Lane Smith) as he listens to Edna's plans to shore up her finances. And there are natural disasters, too, as when Waxahachie is hit by a tornado. "I went through at least three tornadoes when I was a kid," Littleton remembers. "I know the dread of coming out of the cellar and wondering if your house is still there." Her firsthand experience informed Benton's decision to eschew planned visual effects, including what Littleton says was a "pitiful" foam- like tornado. She told him, "Benton, you know, it's better to play the whole storm off-camera, on their faces." Instead of models or animation, the film gives us the howl of the wind — Littleton praises the work of sound re-recording mixer Tom Fleischman, CAS as "one of the most beautiful mixing jobs of any film I've worked on" — and a succession of faces with eyes full of fear. During editing, Benton looked to Littleton to interpret what he shot. He stood back from the process, preferring to view scenes projected on a big screen rather than on the KEM. Benton's notes were general, she says. "He had an insightful way of being able to look at the material on the screen, and immediately afterwards say, 'You know, we need more of a flow here' or 'Why don't we examine this piece of music?'" Littleton relates. Benton's biggest single point was for the storytelling to be simple. "The difficulty was being able to keep the film honest at all times — that we're not seeing the hand of the filmmaker at all, as if it were unfolding like a picture book," she continues. In spite of its subject matter and storyline, Places in the Heart is never a downer. "It's an affirmation of decent people trying to have a life of meaning and to prevail, to somehow prosper, to live ethically, to survive," Littleton says. The opening credits montage is illustrative of the film's tone. A choral rendition of the hymn "Blessed Assurance" is heard as we see a series of shots in Waxahachie. The images of family stability and material comfort (such as a family praying before their dinner) are deeply appealing, while the images of strife and challenge (such as a woman who is living out of her car) nonetheless MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM Carol Littleton with Beaufort, circa 1985. Courtesy of Carol Littleton