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Adam, a Manhattan nine-year-old who greets a reporter with a plastic fly on his outstretched tongue, remembers it differently. The parts he remembers, that is. (He's a little fuzzy on the audition: "That was a year and a half ago," he patiently explains.) Adam thought the work was "all fun," except for one scene where he had to wear leg braces, another where he rides a pony, and a few others where he was supposed to cry. Could Fred be someone Adam might know? "No, he's too smart for me." Could he exist somewhere? "It could be possible. It's true that some people are like that. Yeah, maybe in Cincinnati." They shot the movie in Cincinnati.
We promise not to reprint this quote 20 years from now in a cover story on Adam Hann-Byrd, world-famed entomologist. But chances are good that Adam, who doesn't plan a lifelong career as a little-boy actor, will evade the ravages of celebrity. Whether he wants to or not. Most people go through graceful, productive phases, and they pass with the same inexorability as the awkward ones. Not many people shine in or on every stage. Not many people are Jodie Foster.
But think of this: as the child performer was to the adult actress, so the tyro director may be to the mature auteur. Little Man Tate, for all its acuity of craft and gallantry toward its characters, could be simply the first step: the Coppertone commercial of filmmaker Foster. If this is the larva, imagine the butterflies to come.