boy for the film until they saw Dana Hill in Shoot the Moon and changed it to a girl. Radnitz suggested Rip Torn, with whom he had worked on Birch Interval, as the backwoods hunter, Marsh Turner. When Alfre Woodard auditioned for her role Ritt says "Alfre just blew us all away. Everybody was crying when she left. Her power is extraordinary." "I don't think this role is demeaning at all," said Woodard. "It wasn't written that way. It could have been portrayed in a less sensitive light. But that would depend on what the actor brought to it. I thought this woman was quite wise and very much in touch with the earth. She was alive and I fell in love with her immediately. I wasn't prejudiced against her because she had to work for a white woman for a living, which any Black woman, even myself, would have had to do if she'd lived in Florida in 1925. I wasn't going to hold it against her and I wasn't going to try to portray, through that woman, my frustrations with the politics in this country." Shooting Filming took place at Ocala, Florida, near Mrs. Rawlings's house, which is now a state museum. The unit had to deal with mosquitos, snakes, alligators and rainfall. "I felt I was being bitten by the same mosquitos and hearing the same sounds as Marjorie Rawlings," said Steenbergen. Radnitz said the location was almost another character in the film. Rawlings's husband, Norton Baskin, the hotel proprietor whom she met when she moved to Florida played by Peter Coyote in the film, came on location several times. He also had a cameo as the elderly man who directs Marjorie to Norton Baskin's hotel. "I was tickled to death when I met Peter Coyote," said Baskin. "He was macho as hell, which I wasn't. He is 6 foot 1, handsome and athletic, whereas I'm 5 feet 8 and anything but. I always wanted to look like that." "A lot of people down there really glorified and romanticized Marjorie, whereas Norton tended to be real straight about her," said Steenburgen. "It's very easy to approach a character like that - a so-called strong woman who overcomes the odds - and give a one-note performance, playing that strength alone. Strength is only one thing a person has. I'm real strong, and I'm also real feminine, and I