Tod Williams is the director and screenwriter for the wonderfully insightful film "Door in the Floor." It’s unusual for the screenplay of a new film to be available for sale before the film is released. Such is the case for "Door in the Floor," a movie based upon the John Irving novel "A Widow for One Year." Because of Irving’s support of the film and his influence with publishers, he was able to have the screenplay published at this time.

Tod and I talked a little about the good fortune that Chicago’s northern suburbs have with the Renaissance theaters (owned by Landmark) being located in Highland Park. Although it’s not right around the corner for most people in Lake County, it’s a short ride to a great theater, which has free underground parking with an elevator that takes you directly to the theater lobby. Right after I met Tod I told him about Lakeland News being a suburban newspaper and he said, "Good…that’s who I want to come to this movie, frankly."

George to Tod: To me you captured the notion of "coming of age" at any time in life. Normally that term only applies to a young adult, but here it means that and adults in their late 40’s. You can be at a fork in the road regardless of your age. While you cannot determine the future, you can have an influence on it by the decisions you make. To me, that’s really what this film is about. How did you put this all together? All the smaller characters were important.

Tod: This movie was very difficult to get made. The conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that adults don’t go to movies that are complicated. It took four years from the time John (Irving) approved the first draft of the screenplay to when we began shooting. The good news in the process was that I got a chance to really polish this thing quite fine. What we chose to publish in the screenplay is actually the shooting script. In the book, you’ll actually see the decisions I made in the editing process. Once I had the actors I wanted in certain scenes, I felt like I could cut back on some of the overly explained stuff because I wanted the story to be somewhat elliptical.

George: How do you immerse yourself in a movie of this intensity and maintain some type of personal life?

Tod: Well, it’s kind of impossible, but I’m getting married on Saturday (this brings out a good laugh). Part of the reason I wanted to do this was that I was getting divorced when I read the novel. So I was focused on how love dies. The film helped me get my personal life back. After some years I was able to meet this woman and open my heart again.

There are ambivalent things about most characters in the movie, with them having things you like about them and things you might condemn.