Published: September 24, 2008 08:31 pm            

B-Sides: Lifelong passion for writing leads to independent film for Terre Haute native

Writer penned screenplay at home while raising twin girls

TERRE HAUTE — Hollywood couldn’t have written Cathy Rubey’s success story any better.

In fact, she wrote it herself. That’s what makes it so good. Now Hollywood is reading it.

Five years ago, she and her husband, Andy, sat in a Utah theater, watching Robert Redford’s “The Clearing” at the Sundance Film Festival. Redford helped create the annual event a quarter-century earlier to illuminate small, independent filmmakers. Afterward, Rubey read comments by Redford wishing screenwriters would come up with more flicks about folks his age.

Cathy Rubey paid attention.

Homebound while raising twin little girls in Downers Grove, Ill., the Terre Haute native found a window of time to pursue her lifelong passion of writing. “I’ve always been writing,” Rubey said. “Whatever I was doing, whether it was advertising, marketing or working as a paralegal, there was always writing.”

She wrote a screenplay about an airline pilot whose postcard retirement plans turn when he discovers he’s about to become a grandfather. He suddenly re-enters the lives of his estranged wife and grown children. His history as an unfaithful husband and distant father make this post-Thanksgiving reconnection tense and awkward, yet it happens. Rubey called it “Holiday Baggage.”

Last winter, Rubey watched two well-known actors lead a cast that brought her screenplay to life on film. Then, this month, the Hollywood Film Festival notified Rubey that it had accepted “Holiday Baggage” for its 2008 lineup.

Talk about life coming full circle.

Of course, reality isn’t so simple. Rubey also served as producer and executive producer, and enlisted her husband’s help for similar roles. Independent films are made without major studio money, so Rubey had to find investors willing to take a chance on a first-time producer. Impressively, she found them, including some folks in her hometown of Terre Haute. Her project became a small company. They found a director (Stephen Polk), co-stars (Barry Bostwick and Cheryl Ladd), a supporting cast of Chicago actors, and a production crew.

“It was on-the-job training, because I went from writer to producer to executive producer,” Rubey said.

“It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears throughout this process,” she added.

The payoff, though, came when the cameras began to roll. “It’s a success, and has been since the first day of production,” she said.

Working with Bostwick and Ladd “was tremendous, a dream come true in every way,” Rubey said. Bostwick, 63, has starred in dozens of movie and television roles, including a six-year run as Mayor Randall Winston on the comedy series “Spin City,” alongside Charlie Sheen. But his most remembered part came as Brad Majors in the cult film “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” As for the 57-year-old Ladd, anyone who watched TV in the late ’70s knows her as blonde Kris Monroe on “Charlie’s Angels.” Like Bostwick, Ladd’s list of credits is lengthy, stretching from the cartoon “Josie and the Pussycats” (she was Melody) to the 2007 parody “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.”

“They were pros, a class act, all about the film every day, and always in the trenches with us,” Rubey said.

Such commitment was important, because the story is important, she added. Those mature, adult characters — the baby boomers in Redford’s plea to new filmmakers — find themselves forced to consider a difficult human gesture.

“It’s a journey of forgiveness,” Rubey explained.

Pete Murphy, on the brink of retiring with a much younger bombshell woman, diverts his plans — temporarily, he thinks — when his daughter unexpectedly delivers twin babies. His estranged wife Sarah, who stopped tolerating his infidelity, slowly begins to accept his presence, despite its disruption to the family. Their adult children take far longer to thaw, even a little. Meanwhile, Pete starts realizing the virtues of the wife, kids and now grandchildren he’d left behind. Pete gets some tough, straight talk from his best friend, Jack, who picked up some of his absent buddy’s abandoned roles. Pete’s conversion comes too late for full reconciliation. But there is healing.

That ending isn’t tidy and happy. And that’s the point.

“Everyone’s got issues that they wrestle with, and manage, and they don’t really solve,” Rubey said. “I really wanted to show what that was like in the scope of a complex family.”

The plot could catch the attention of more independent film festivals, and “Holiday Baggage” is entered in several. Still, the storyline and cast differ from the usual hot items at indie festivals.

“Our story is not necessarily the edgy, politically relevant story you find at a lot of film festivals,” Rubey said. “Our story is a lot more mainstream, with a wider appeal.”

Film distributors have already shown interest in “Holiday Baggage,” and Rubey thinks it has potential on cable, network television and DVDs, as well as theaters. Its completion came, most likely, too late to be picked up for a 2008 holiday release. But the 2009 holiday seasons — which runs from Nov. 1 to Jan. 1 — is a strong possibility, Rubey said.

For now, the new filmmaker and her team are wrapping up post-production work, and a composer is completing the film’s musical score. And she’s planning more projects.

The situation does seem, as Rubey put it, to be a dream come true. Still, destiny could also be involved in “Holiday Baggage” becoming a reality. Rubey, who was a radio/TV/film major at Indiana University, received A’s in just two of her college classes — screenwriting, and conflict resolution.



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.