Small-town boy: with Sweet Home Alabama, out screenwriter C. Jay Cox confronts his rural roots. (film).In the movie Sweet Home Alabama Sweet Home Alabama (song) , Reese Witherspoon plays a New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of fashionism who returns to her hometown in Alabama to confront her past. Except for the heroine's sex, the film could well be the story of many gay men from Middle America Middle America 1 A region of southern North America comprising Mexico, Central America, and sometimes the West Indies. Middle American adj. & n. who have found happiness and security in the big city. Indeed, the film's screenwriter, C. Jay Cox--who now lives in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. but grew up in rural Nevada--says his experiences inspired the story of Melanie, a talented and ambitious young woman stifled by the dearth of opportunity and the conservative mentality in her small town. "It was easy to grow up in Nevada feeling like the only homosexual in the world," Cox explains. "In a [town with a] population of 600, it's easy to grow up feeling like the only anything in the world." But as Melanie discovers in the film, with reinvention comes the necessity for looking back. "We have to resolve the people we are now with the people we were," says Cox, "and I don't think that's peculiar to gay people. It took me a long time to make peace with who I was, to realize that I'm a cowboy and that's just fine, that's part of who I am." Directed by Andy Tennant (Anna and the King, Ever After), Sweet Home costars Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey Patrick Galen Dempsey (born January 13, 1966) is a Golden Globe Award-nominated American actor who first became prominent in Hollywood during the late 1980s. He is also known for his role as neurosurgeon Dr. Derek Shepherd (Dr. , Candice Bergen--and Ethan Embry Ethan Embry (born June 13, 1978) is an American actor, aka Ethan Randall.[1] Embry was born in Huntington Beach, California to Karen (Daugherty) and Charles Rendall.[2] He started acting in 1991, at age thirteen. as Bobby Ray, a young gay man who didn't leave Alabama. "Hollywood tends to think gay men are urban creatures, but I wanted to have a gay man in a small town," Cox says. "He's not flamboyant; he's just one of the guys." Cowboy he may be, but Cox is playing the Hollywood system just fine. He's written projects for Bette Midler Bette Midler (born December 1 1945) is an American singer, actress and comedienne, also known to her fans as The Divine Miss M. She is named after the actress Bette Davis although Davis pronounced her first name in two syllables, and Midler uses one. , Antonio Banderas, and Columbia Pictures, and he's preparing to make his directorial debut on a gay-themed project he has written called Latter Days, in which a West Hollywood actor-waiter makes a bet that he can seduce a Mormon missionary newly arrived in town. "I was raised Mormon and was taught that there was a separate hell for homosexuals," he says, "so I knew for sure that that's where I was going. Then I started to realize that a place where it was all gay men together wasn't so bad after all." |
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