Learning to adapt

Filming in North Carolina in winter, the weather was just as unwelcoming. For the summer scenes, the cast was running around in sleeveless shirts in freezing temperatures. But the conditions also provided a bonding experience. Prince-Bythewood turned August's bedroom set into the actors' holding area, so the group hung out, huddling together for warmth and getting to know one another better between takes.

The hardest scene for Prince-Bythewood to shoot was one in which T. Ray (Paul Bettany) forces his daughter Lily to kneel on a pile of grits as punishment. "I said, 'I will kneel on it first and see what it feels like,' " recalls the director. "I lasted about 15 seconds." But Fanning insisted on kneeling on them, even for the close-ups. "First of all, I'm thinking, 'You're just dope, I love you,' " says Prince-Bythewood of Fanning, "but I started feeling worse and worse. I'm a director but I'm also a mother and what am I doing to this girl?" For her part, Fanning says by phone from Washington, D.C., just before the film's premiere there, that it was actually one of her favorite scenes to film, "because I loved it from the book so much, so getting to actually film it was challenging but a really fun challenge."

Releasing a film in a politically charged October 2008 that highlights voting-rights issues in 1964, while purely coincidental, is "a great time to be out because it's such a tie to the election," the director says. Filming at the same time Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary last winter, "it was also such a great emotional tie for the actors, given that Rosaleen is fighting for the chance to vote," she adds. She relates telling some of the younger cast and crew that "folks back then would say, 'We'll get a chance to vote someday, but not in my lifetime,' and you could say that most of us, even a year and a half ago, would have said, 'There'll be a black president someday but not in my lifetime.' "

And yet, the more things change, the more Hollywood stays the same. Prince-Bythewood says she was shocked by how long it took for the film to get made (nearly seven years all told). After all, the book was a bestseller, the film's cast is top-loaded with award winners -- who happen to be black. She points out that while she's never felt discriminated against personally, "What's discriminated against are some of my choices, which focus on women or black women." She adds, "Nobody reads the book and thinks it's a black book, it's just a great book."

But despite the challenges, Prince-Bythewood is finally able to relax and enjoy this happy ending. "After all this, last week we were on 'Oprah.' I'm sitting there, thinking, 'How did I get here?' " she says, smiling. "So this is the fun part."