Kathryn Stockett is under more pressure than she has ever been — with a best-selling novel, a book tour, a lawsuit and all the ensuing chaos that has come in the past two years — but the one thing that isn’t stressing her out is the film version of her book “The Help.”
“I am so thrilled that the movie is not really my responsibility,” Stockett said of the film, which opens Wednesday and is based on her heartfelt story about the relationships between black maids and their white employers in the 1960s. “It was such a joy to hand it over [to director Tate Taylor].”
That doesn’t mean that Stockett hasn’t had some anxiety about it.
“I had a bad dream last night that Tate kept calling me and asking me questions about the screenplay. He was like, ‘What about this and what about that?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know!’ ” Stockett said.
In reality, Taylor, who grew up with Stockett — they attended preschool together and were nearly neighbors in Jackson, Miss., where the book and film take place — asked the author a couple of questions from the start and then took off with his own vision.
The outcome is a tale of two cultures — the black maids who endure outdoor potties and other indignities of the pre-civil rights era and the white women who sit around playing bridge while dreaming up ways to humiliate other human beings. Does that sound too simple? Of course it does. The relationships are far more nuanced and complex than perhaps any single vehicle can illustrate, but Taylor’s effort is solid, Stockett said.
“He had to make a few plot changes that are just perfect. It is true to the message and true to the feeling of being in Mississippi,” she said.
Viola Davis stars as Aibileen Clark, a maid who discovers she is changed by the loss of her own child just prior to beginning work for a new family. Octavia Spencer is Minny, the wisecracking maid who is the best cook in town, but can’t keep a job because of her big mouth. Emma Stone steps in as Skeeter, a Southern belle more interested in writing a book about the maids’ lives than finding a husband and having children like all of her Junior League buddies. And Bryce Dallas Howard stars as the mean-girl ringleader, Hilly Holbrook, who we just know is destined for some sort of comeuppance.
Both Taylor and Stockett grew up with black maids. Taylor’s relationship with his mother’s maid was much more familiar than Stockett’s connection to her grandmother’s helper, Demetrie, Stockett said.
Still, she relied heavily on Demetrie’s voice when crafting her novel, though a lawsuit filed early this year by Ablene Cooper, the maid of Stockett’s brother, suggested Cooper was the inspiration for the main character. Stockett has said Aibileen Clark is a fictional character and is not intended to depict Cooper, whom Stockett said she has met only briefly.
A self-proclaimed rule breaker, Stockett said she defied tradition when she handed off her debut novel to Taylor for his directing debut.
“For weeks, I had phone calls from agents, husbands and family members. Everybody in my life was telling me you cannot give the film rights to Tate, he has no experience, the films he did didn’t go anywhere, he had no connections, he couldn’t open a single door in Hollywood and frankly, he had no money to put up for it. Once I got over the few minutes of fear ... there was nothing but joy and elation. I knew Tate was going to get the story right,” Stockett said.
But even getting the film into capable hands couldn’t prevent Stockett’s life from getting complicated. She is newly divorced. And despite having determined that writing is her calling, lately she has been doing everything except writing.
She promises herself, as does Aibileen while strolling down the street in the movie’s final scene, that the writer in her will soon get on with doing what she does best.
