TORONTO - It may be 35 years old, but Tatum O'Neal says her classic baseball film "The Bad News Bears" has an edge that is absent from many modern movies.
"I think that the '70s was a better time to make movies in general. I just think there was more art and less control," the 47-year-old actress said in an interview to promote her new memoir, "Found: A Daughter's Journey Home."
O'Neal said "The Bad News Bears" and her 1980 summer camp film "Little Darlings" delved into areas that are sometimes glossed over today.
"There was a sense that the artistic won over the parental, kind of ... sanitation and I think it was important. .... 'Little Darlings' and 'Bad News Bears' got to do things that they probably wouldn't do today. The smoking and the topic of sex in 'Little Darlings.' Yeah, I like that they did that."
O'Neal played phenom pitcher Amanda Whurlitizer in "The Bad News Bears," which starred Walter Matthau as Morris Buttermaker, an alcoholic pool-cleaner who reluctantly agrees to coach a little league team.
The 1976 film is far from politically correct: the hapless Bears swear and hurl racial slurs while an exasperated Buttermaker downs beer after beer.
IN A PAPER LIFE, i told my story, and it was mine alone—the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction saga of being a child star in a dys¬functional show-biz family. but the story of my recent years is much more universal. This is the story of how i got sober, conquered my addictions once and for all, and am working to preserve that victory one day at a time. it is about the challenges and joys of being a mother; an ex-wife; and a single, middle-age actress. (yes, i said it.) it's about a woman who was once scared to get close to people but has learned how to be a friend and to trust in intimacy with others.
rebuilding a life means taking stock of what you have and what you've lost. As hope grew and i reemerged, i saw that there was an important person missing from my life: my father. Daddy. ours was the most important relationship of my life, and it was nonexistent for nearly twenty years.
more than anything, this is the story of a father and a daughter. when i wrote A Paper Life, i realized that there was no fairy-tale ending, that no life, particularly one in which a child is trauma¬tized, is ever perfectly resolved. in the ongoing process of rebuild¬ing my life, it was time to deal with my biggest unresolved issue. my dad. ryan o'Neal.
That strong, compelling movie star who was, at one time, my hero and my savior. yet we had barely spoken in eight years. even at my mother's funeral in 1997, we acknowledged each other but did not speak. Now i felt confident, strong, and certain of what i wanted. i was ready to try again, to rebuild my relationship with my father after so much private and public estrangement. And so i began a slow, careful attempt to reconcile with him. That reconciliation ran an uneven path, growing, faltering, and, ultimately, persevering.
when ryan and i first had the idea to share our efforts to mend our fragmented relationship with a television audience, we both thought long and hard about whether to do it. The risks and pitfalls were obvious—we might reinjure our new, delicate rela¬tionship and/or expose our private lives. but the honesty that the camera brings appealed to me. i wanted us to face each other in a harsh spotlight, where we couldn't hide anything, where each of us would have to take responsibility for how we had behaved in the past and who we were in the present.
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