Hallmark Showcases Young Star
It says a lot about Jena Malone that an experienced director such as John Erman would put her name and Jodie Foster’s in the same sentence.
“She’s as close to Jodie Foster as anyone I’ve known,” said Erman, an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning producer-director. “They’re so alike in their sensibilities. Jena is one of the brightest children I’ve known. She’s got the most amazingly buoyant personality. She’s an adorable, very lively, very intelligent teenager-verging-on-adult.”
Foster was a teenager when she drew attention in “Taxi Driver” in 1976. Malone, just 13, already has a body of work that has drawn CableACE and Emmy attention.
Tonight Erman directs Malone in a CBS movie, “Ellen Foster.”
Judging by its storyline, this should be a depressing movie. Malone plays a 10-year-old girl whose beloved mother dies, leaving her with an abusive drunk of a father. Her bitter grandmother, who hates her son-in-law, calls her granddaughter “trash”; her aunts are too selfish to give her a home.
She appeals to her best friend’s parents, but they are reluctant to take her in because they’re black and she’s white and this is the South of the early 1970s. Her teacher, an ex-hippie, is willing, but she and her husband are legally blocked by a judge concerned with preserving The Family.
The truth is, Ellen Hammond’s family - or what’s left of it - is hardly worth preserving.
But, despite its many unhappy moments, “Ellen Foster” is not depressing. It’s the 194th presentation of Hallmark Hall of Fame, a series that often showcases stories about the survival of the human spirit.
Young Ellen clearly is one such survivor. Faced with rejection and even abuse at nearly every turn, she keeps alive her dream of finding a family to love her. Treasuring her late mother’s words - that she’d always love her, even from heaven - Ellen is determined to take charge of her own life and find happiness.
The film is adapted from Kaye Gibbons’ first book, based partly on her life and written while she was a student at the University of North Carolina.
Malone’s ability to combine pathos with spunk was showcased in two Showtime cable movies last December when she turned 12.
For “Bastard Out of Carolina,” directed by Anjelica Huston, Malone earned a CableACE nomination as best actress. In “Hidden in America,” Malone, then 11, played the daughter of a laid-off factory worker. That film won a CableACE, and both also were nominated for Emmy Awards. In October, Malone appeared in “Hope,” directed by Goldie Hawn for TNT.
Malone is making theatrical movies, too. Last summer she played Jodie Foster’s character as a child in “Contact.” This week she is finishing filming a Chris Columbus-directed film with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon.
Author Gibbons said she was surprised at the impact of her novel, which Oprah Winfrey selected - along with a 1989 Gibbons book, “A Virtuous Woman” - as her reading selections for November. Both rocketed up The Washington Post and New York Times best-seller lists.
“I didn’t anticipate the response from people who had suffered as Ellen did,” said Gibbons. “Many adult Ellens ask me how to finally heal the wounds of wicked childhoods, how to find peace. I always say, ‘Do what the child Ellen did. Find courage inside you. Then find those who will love you, who will help you find a space to bloom.’ Years before I wrote this novel, a new mama pulled me out of the cold and nurtured me. That’s why I’m happy now.”
Gibbons, 37, lives in Raleigh, N.C., with her husband, Frank Ward, a corporate lawyer, and their five children.
“Our children were not born with the skills needed to parent themselves,” she said. “That’s the most unfair task we could ever require of them. They need someone to guide them, for there are many dark, lonely and confusing passages in the world. If you know an Ellen Foster, make room for her … if not in your home, then in your heart.”
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Ellen Foster” airs tonight at 9 on Spokane’s KREM-TV, Channel 2.