It is the lazy summer of
1916. Jay and Mary Follet live in Knoxille, Tennessee with their bright, sensitive seven year-old son, Rufus, who idolizes his father. Jay and Mary are close to her family, which includes her
Aunt Hannah and her painter brother, Andrew. Jay's difficult father lives on the family farm, forty miles away, and his brother Ralph is a self-pitying alcoholic.
At three-thirty one morning Ralph
calls to tell Jay their father is dying. When Jay arrives at the farm he finds his father as cantankerous as ever and his brother half drunk. On the way back home, Jay is killed in an automobile
accident.
It is left for Mary to tell Rufus his father is dead. At first the boy does not know what to make of it. When a sanctimonious priest tells Mary that her husband cannot have a full
Catholic service because he was not baptized in the Church, Rufus reacts with fury. The service is a blur for the boy, but as the long day draws to a close, Mary looks down from the bedroom window and
sees Rufus watering the lawn, a chore that had belonged exclusively to Jay. After Rufus learns of a "miracle" witnessed at the funeral by his Uncle Andrew, we see that he has grown up in a way he will
not understand for years.
THE CAST
Annabeth Gish
has impressed audiences with her depth and versatility since 1986, when she made her feature debut in Desert Bloom. She went on to such films as Mystic Pizza, Wyatt Earp, Oliver Stone's
Nixon, Double Jeopardy, and the upcoming Pursuit of Happiness. On television she has been seen in such films and miniseries as
Scarlett, Don't Look Back, True Women, What Love Sees, Sealed with a Kiss, and The Race to Space.
James Cromwell
has played a range of characters that runs from the benevolent Farmer Hoggett in Babe to the brutally corrupt police captain Dudley Smith in L.A. Confidential
. He has also been seen in such films as Space Cowboys, Snow Falling on Cedars, The General's Daughter, Deep Impact, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Star Trek: First Contact, Eraser, Romeo is Bleeding
, and many more. His television credits include The Green Mile, RKO 281, A Slight Case of Murder, and literally dozens of other films and series.
John Slattery
has guest-starred repeatedly in sustaining roles in some of television's most popular series, including Sex and the City, Judging Amy, Will and Grace, and Law and Order
. His miniseries credits include From the Earth to the Moon and A Woman of Independent Means. On the large screen he has appeared in
Sam the Man, Where's Marlowe? Sleepers, Eraser, My Brother's War, and several other films.
BEHIND THE CAMERAS
Robert W. Lenski
(screenwriter) is one of television's most respected writers and one who is especially skilled at the difficult art of adaptation. Among the writers whose narratives he has brought to the screen are Anne Tyler (
Breathing Lessons, for the Hallmark Hall of Fame), Thomas Hardy (The Return of the Native), and the inventor of American hard-boiled detective fiction, Dashiell Hammett (The Dain Curse
). His numerous other credits include Mafia Princess and Kane and Abel, both adapted from contemporary best-sellers.
Dennis Doty
(producer) made television history as a programming vice president at ABC, where he developed both Three's Company and the initial ABC foray into morning television, which ultimately became
Good Morning America. As a film producer he has been responsible for three motion pictures based on the books of Dick Francis, including Blood Sport, and the Tom Clancy miniseries Netforce
, in addition to numerous other films.
Gilbert Cates (director, producer) has directed many remarkable motion pictures, including Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
with Joanne Woodward and I Never Sang for My Father with Gene Hackman and Melvyn Douglas. His television credits include Arthur Miller's After the Fall with Faye Dunaway,
Hobson's Choice, Consenting Adults, and no fewer than nine editions of global television's most widely-viewed show, the Academy Awards presentations, most recently in 1999.
Marian Rees
(Executive Producer/principal, ALT Films) is one of television's most honored producers. As a principal in Marian Rees Associates, she was responsible for more than twenty-five motion pictures for television, many of which aired on the prestigious Hallmark Hall of Fame. In all, MRA-produced films have won eleven Emmy Awards including two for Best Motion Picture, and have received virtually every important television honor.
