A MOMENT MADE FOR A MOVIE.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

She's fought breast cancer. She's fought lung cancer. And now, she fights against the tumors that have spread to her brain.

Thursday night, she fought tears, and this time, she let the fight win.

"I'm going to cry," said Yolanda Williams of Eugene, as she hugged her daughter, film producer Gina Matthews.

"You're gonna cry, I'm gonna cry - we're all gonna cry," a smiling Matthews said.

"Mom, think baseball," said Williams' other daughter, Debbie Healey, trying to get her mother's eyes to dry as a photographer crouched to shoot their photo in Cinema World's lobby. "Think apple pie."

Think movies. Think Hollywood premieres. Because that's where the three - along with 80-some relatives and about 160 friends - were Thursday, at a Hollywood premiere, right here in Eugene.

Matthews, a 1986 graduate of North Eugene High School and a 1990 graduate of the University of Oregon, brought a special screening of her latest film, "13 going on 30," starring Jennifer Garner, home to her mother because Williams' chemotherapy and radiation schedule would not allow her to attend the April 14 premiere in Los Angeles.

The film opens locally, and nationwide, today.

"It was really hard for me, not having my family there," Matthews said of the L.A. premiere. "If mom couldn't come, nobody was going to come."

So Matthews, along with her film, came to them.

Sony Entertainment, the film's distributor, paid the tab - tickets, popcorn, soda and all.

"I grew up coming to this theater," Matthews said. "This was my theater."

Before the celluloid rolled onto the screen, Matthews stood in front of the crowd, before rows of relatives - her mother, a native of Italy, was one of 12 children - and friends and said: "This is to honor my mom, Yolanda."

Williams, 63, wearing an attractive brownish-red wig in place of the hair gone from weeks of chemotherapy, then rose from the middle of the 357-seat theater and waved to the applause.

"People always say, 'Boy, it sure must be hard to be a producer and live in L.A.,' " continued Matthews, herself an effervescent and stunning reddish-brown brunette. But it's not hard, she said. Not really. "Not compared to the courage my mother has every day of her life."

Williams was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. Two years later, it had spread to her lungs. It seemed she had beat it, though, by the time 2004 rolled around. But on Jan. 8 she suffered a grand mal seizure in her Santa Clara home. Two tumors had developed in her brain. Doctors said they were inoperable. Then they said the cancer was terminal. But Williams refuses to give up the fight, said her husband, Al Williams.

As Matthews added an "I love you, mom," and "enjoy the show," and ran back to her seat, she sat in the ninth row reserved for her mother, stepfather Al, her sister and Matthews' husband, Grant Scharbo, a Hollywood writer and co-owner of the couple's production company, Roundtable Entertainment.

The romantic comedy is about a 13-year-old girl, Jenna, in 1987, who wishes she were all grown up. "I want to be 30, flirty and thriving," she says.

Her wish comes true.

She awakens in her boyfriend's Manhattan apartment in 2004, and the fun begins.

"Do I think she's got a hit on her hands?" Yolanda Williams asked after the movie. "Yes I do. I loved it! It reminded me of Gina when she was growing up."

When Matthews was growing up, when she was going to North Eugene High, "she always had a job," said Shelley Kirkpatrick, one of Matthews' best friends in high school and a fellow member of the Highlanders cheerleading squad.

Matthews worked Emeralds baseball games at Civic Stadium. She worked in pizza parlors. "Gina was always the type of person you knew would succeed," Kirkpatrick said. "She always worked really, really hard. This is what she was destined to do. She was just very driven."

A telecommunications and film major at the UO, Matthews landed a job with Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles right after college. She worked her way up through Hollywood's ranks and started her own production company in 1998. She has also produced the films "Urban Legend," "Urban Legend II" and "What Women Want," starring Mel Gibson.

When "A Gina Matthews Production" appeared in pink letters at the beginning of the film, the crowd let out a roar of hollering and applause.

Matthews can even be found in the film, monster dancing with others right behind Garner in a redo of Michael Jackson's legendary "Thriller" video.

"I'm very proud of her," Yolanda Williams said. "I never thought that she would stay (in Los Angeles). I always hoped that she would come home."

Thursday, she was home - her past, present and future coming together in a story made for Hollywood.

CAPTION(S):

Gina Matthews gives her mother, Yolanda Williams, a hug before a special screening of `13 Going on 30," a movie Matthews produced and brought home to premiere in Eugene.