CBS drama stars Woods and Archer
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from December 1993.
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Anne Archer plays a successful career woman trying to meet the needs of her new husband's (James Woods) children in "Jane's House), a romantic drama airing Sunday, Jan. 2, on CBS.
The drama is directed by Glenn Jordan, one of the principal directors of "Family." At the movie's opening, Paul (Woods) is struggling to raise his 16-year-old daughter, Hilary (Missy Crider), and his son, Billy (Keegan Macintosh), following the unexpected heart attack of his wife, Jane.
He meets Mary (Archer) when he and his brother Charlie (Graham Beckel, "Cafe Americain") try to book a sports celebrity (Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants) to attend the opening of his new sports equipment store on Long Island, N.Y. Mary, who runs a successful sports management company in Manhattan, is an independent former pro tennis player. Though reluctant to get involved at first, Paul and Mary quickly recognize some-thing. thing special about each other. Although their dating is at first awkward, since Jane had been virtually the only woman in Paul's life, Paul and Mary's relationship eventually blossoms into marriage. The never-beforemarried Mary tries to adjust to life in the suburbs and, most of all, to adjust to the children. Making Jane's home her own, however, is a difficult and unfamiliar challenge that requires her to make a new level of commitment.
The adaptation of a novel by Robert Kimmel Smith took a convoluted turn, according to Marsha Basichis, senior vice president with Spelling Television. "We have an overall deal with a wonderful writer named Eric Roth. This is a script that he had written as a feature at TriStar. Jeffrey Sagansky, who had been at TriStar, developed it as a feature, and it was a script that he always, always loved," she says. "When he came over to CBS, he said, 'God, if I could only do "Jane's House." Now, Aaron read "Jane's House" and absolutely fell in love with the script. It is very much a character-driven script, but it's a very dear, wonderful script ... What we did is, we bought this script out of turnaround at TriStar, and made it into a TV movie for CBS, so that Jeff Sagansky, who originally developed it as a feature, and who is now the head of CBS, well, it's something he always wanted to do."
Basichis freely acknowledges that "Jane's House" is a low-key property. "I was quite thrilled to be able to do a movie that wasn't (high concept)," she says, referring to the industry preference for a plot line that can be summarized in one sentence.
"While it's not 'high concept,' I think as far as American families go at this point in time, it's very relatable," she says. "There are so many people who live in some version of an extended family. I think it's a situation that's increasingly common in our society, and I think it's just wonderful to do a story that doesn't necessarily have a true-life-crime murder behind it.
"I think the characters are interesting, I think the situation is relatable and I think that alone should sustain a movie," Basichis adds. © TV Data Technologies
