Not Necessarily the News

The cameras finally started rolling in March 1995 — but there were still creative differences. Redford and Pfeiffer kept pushing for a darker interpretation of the material; Avnet wanted a more up-with-people approach. ''We were kind of a weight dragging Jon down,'' says Pfeiffer. ''He was always going in the lighter direction, finding the humor.''

In fact, at times it almost sounds as if Pfeiffer would have preferred to go back to the film's original concept — the Jessica Savitch story. ''I read the book [Golden Girl] when I was doing my preparation,'' she says. ''But I wish that I had read it earlier in the development of the movie. I never even read Didion and Dunne's earlier draft — their original, original draft — and I probably should have. At one point I did talk to Avnet about adding more of that angst, whatever it was that was driving her, that certain damaged quality.''

Redford was a bit miffed about losing the scene in which he slugged Pfeiffer — ''It was absolutely quintessential to their characters,'' he says — but he was less in love with the Savitch tale than Pfeiffer was. ''I would have been more interested in her story as a director,'' he says. ''There wouldn't have been enough of a part for me as an actor. There were, like, five guys in her life when she died.''

In the end, after all the rewrites and faxes and meetings, only one genuine anecdote from Savitch's real life actually made it into the movie: the fact that as a Philadelphia anchorwoman, Savitch became so popular a local band wrote a song about her (''The evening lady of the air/Welcomes me in my easy chair,.../Jessica, I love you so,/I want you, don't you know'').

As far as Avnet is concerned, that is more than enough. ''I had no interest in doing a biographical piece on a very self-destructive woman,'' he says, leaning back in a chair in his L.A. office and casually flossing his teeth. ''It's just so depressing. The abuse. The drugs. Her husband's suicide. You'd have to be a bit of a sadist to enjoy that sort of thing.''