`Waiting For The Light' -- Miracles And Missiles Are The Backdrop For Maclaine Movie Filmed In Tacoma

It was Shirley MacLaine's idea to shoot her most recent movie in Tacoma.

``She lives pretty close to Rainier, with a great view of the mountain, so she just commuted to work from home,'' said Christopher Monger, the writer-director of ``Waiting For the Light.''

The whimsical comedy stars MacLaine as the eccentric aunt of two children who perform a ``miracle'' during the apocalyptic hysteria surrounding the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. It opens Friday, preceded by a benefit screening for the King County Council for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, to be held at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Metro Cinemas. (For ticket information, call 628-0888.)

``The story was originally set in California,'' Monger said during a recent return trip to Puget Sound. ``But we couldn't afford to do it there, partly because of stiff child labor laws. We couldn't even afford child actors from California, because the laws travel with the child.''

He added that he'd prefer to shoot outside Los Angeles and San Francisco anyway, because people there are tired of camera crews in the streets, while the Northwest is still receptive. Although Monger was born in Wales, he didn't consider shooting overseas. London, he said, is out of the question because of traffic and overcrowding.

``The only thing we absolutely had to have was an orchard, and Shirley pointed out that there are lots of houses here with orchards behind them. A few scenes are set in Chicago, but we used a couple of apartments in Tacoma to fake that. Tacoma is like a small town in South Wales, a town redefining itself. It was nice to feel at home in some way.''

MacLaine's enthusiasm for Monger's script was enough to give the green light to the project, which he wrote in mid-1988. After she signed up, Monger cast Teri Garr in the role of the children's mother; he beefed up the part when she asked for more scenes. He found the children, Colin Baumgartner and Hillary Wolf, in Chicago.

``Child actors are usually totally cute and absolutely obnoxious,'' he said. ``It's always hard to cast children. They're so used to doing TV ads. In New York, you can find 8-year-olds talking deals. Colin and Hillary aren't like that.''

Aside from a few key supporting characters (Vincent Schiavelli of ``Ghost'' plays a grumpy neighbor), almost everyone else in the cast is local, including such Puget Sound personalities as Lou Guzzo and Bob Hardwick.

``It's difficult to do a one-line description of the script,'' he said. ``We knew it would have to be a word-of-mouth picture, and the key to getting it made was Shirley and Teri. The budget was far more than any of my previous films - three of them were made for $20,000 apiece - although I didn't get any more time to shoot. I do love working with an American crew. It's a better machine than the European equivalent, and I got to spend more money on the actors and the way things looked.''

Monger said he had always wanted to make a personal film about the impact of the Cuban missile crisis, partly because he doesn't believe fictional re-creations such as ``The Missiles of October,'' in which scriptwriters put words in the mouths of American and Soviet leaders (``How do we know what they were doing and saying anyway?''). He vividly remembers his own reaction to the nuclear threats of October 1962.

``I was 12 years old and going to school when it happened,'' he said. ``Ordinarily during prayers the Jewish and Catholic kids were allowed to leave class, but this time they were invited to stay. Then I knew how serious it was.''

The idea of the children playing a prank, which is interpreted as a miracle by freaked-out adults, was also inspired by Monger's childhood: ``My brother and I blew up a car on Guy Fawkes Day, by putting firecrackers in the gas tank. We thought it was a semi-derelict car, but the owner didn't think of it that way. There was lots of speculation in the village about who'd done it, and we thought no one had a clue it was us. But 20 years later my mother admitted she knew.

```You two, I could have killed you,' she said. `But you were so white in the face, running off to hide in corners, that I knew the fear in yourselves was worse than any punishment.' I used that attitude to inform the Teri Garr character. She must know what's going on, but she's going to let this play out by itself.''

As he developed the script, Monger was also thinking of Billy Wilder's 1951 film, ``Ace in the Hole,'' which deals with a community transformed by media manipulation: ``I admired the build-up in that film, which is very dark and cynical. The `miracle' needed a background, and the Cuban crisis upped the odds, made people more vulnerable.''

(The only other film that takes this approach, 1971's ``The Steagle,'' stars Richard Benjamin as a university professor who flips out when he hears President Kennedy confronting Khrushchev on the radio. Convinced the world is about to blow up, Benjamin tells off the boss, leaves his wife and kids, takes off on a jet odyssey and assumes different identities to suit the people he meets.)

Monger said one day he'd also like to direct a film about the personal impact of the day President Kennedy was shot: ``Everyone remembers where they were. But what if you were a liberal couple planning to get married that day?''

His earlier films, including the 1979 feature, ``Crime Pays,'' which is all in Welsh (``And I don't even speak Welsh!''), have only been shown in the United States at film festivals.

``It's hard to get anyone outside Wales to watch Welsh films with English subtitles, but I'd still like to get it shown here,'' he said. ``It's the true story of a cab driver who stole his boss' week takings, which were only about $600, and became a sort of Robin Hood to the local community.'' Another early Monger film, ``Voice Over,'' deals with a radio-show host who uses his show to communicate with a catatonic woman. ``Waiting For the Light'' is his fifth feature.

A graduate of London's Chelsea School of Art, with degrees in painting and filmmaking, Monger has also directed avant-garde theater productions, held several painting exhibits in England, and worked as a journalist. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he's developing several projects he hopes to film.

``The slowest part about this one has been the release,'' he said. ``We held the premiere of the finished film last February at the Berlin Film Festival, and a spring release was considered. But everyone got cold feet, no one wanted to buck the big summer releases, and then `Postcards From the Edge' opened and you couldn't have two Shirley MacLaine movies at the same time. Then Nov. 2 opened up with the right theaters, and here we are.''