Why Mary and not Nancy?

This article explains why Mary was featured in Without Limits but not in the earlier Prefontaine:


Friday October 9, 1998

YEARS CAN'T BREAK BOND

By Ron Bellamy
Columnist, The Register-Guard

IN THE BEGINNING, Mary Marckx wanted no part of a movie about Steve Prefontaine, with whom she had shared a deep love, and who had remained a haunting presence in her life long after his death in 1975.

After all, Marckx had spent more than 20 years trying to leave the past in the past, trying to live her own life, a life that had been profoundly affected by her tumultuous relationship, over our-and-a-half years, with the charismatic Oregon distance runner.

"I would always say that we were very good friends, and very bad lovers," said Marckx, now 45. "We went through so many things together in such a short period of time, and at that period of your life when you're developing a lot of deep feelings about life. We were of one mind. We fought all the time, but we were also just a part of each other, and so it was a very, very strong bond."

But Marckx didn't want to "dredge up all that past stuff," didn't want to jab at scabs that were barely healed, and she told representatives of one movie project about Pre that she wouldn't participate. In early 1995, however, she met with Kenny Moore, writing the screenplay for a second movie about Pre - the film that became "Without Limits" and that opens locally today at Cinema World in Eugene.

And despite her fears, Marckx agreed to participate, believing in Moore because she sensed that he believed in her, "believed me that I had a special relationship with Steve, and that I wasn't just one of his many girlfriends."

The meeting with Moore was the beginning of a marathon for Marckx, a sometimes grueling process that was emotionally draining. Yet at the finish line is "Without Limits," a movie of which Marckx is very proud, a movie that is centered on Prefontaine's relationship with Coach Bill Bowerman, but that also focuses on the relationship between Pre and Marckx, touchingly portrayed by Monica Potter.

"I was really pleased with how well it came out, and that it's been well-received," Marckx said. "It was beyond my expectations."

When Marckx agreed to work with Moore and co-writer Robert Towne, the director of "Without Limits," she provided 300 pages of letters from Pre that she'd kept all these years. She spent three weeks with Moore in Hawaii as he worked on the script, remembering details that she never thought she'd remember, even if she'd wanted to do so.

"It was like some kind of intense psychological therapy for me," she said. "Because you put that stuff out of your mind. It's not a pleasant memory, so you put it out of your mind ... It was a chance to exorcise my past, to deal with all the stuff I didn't get to deal with because Steve died so suddenly."

AT THE SAME time, Marckx began writing her own book, not fully believing that Moore and Towne would do justice to her relationship.

That book, titled "Pre Destiny: My Life and Afterlife with Steve Prefontaine," is finished, but Marckx has decided that it will never be published.

Some of the recollections in that book, however, have been woven into the fabric of "Without Limits." Because Marckx had not liked a number of aspects of the Moore treatment that formed the foundation of the original screenplay, and made her objections known. And by the time Marckx saw a script from Towne - by now, sometime early in 1996 or so - she still thought that the script showed "a straw female character who was nothing like me, and nothing like my relationship with Steve."

Before filming started in Eugene in the summer of 1996, Marckx came to Eugene for a meeting with Towne, sure that he wouldn't listen to her, knowing that he had no contractual obligation to do so, ready to beg him to write her name out of the script. To her surprise, Towne listened. They went through the script, scene by scene, Marckx telling him why Pre would never have done this or that, Towne even getting angry but still listening, and ultimately making changes.

"I can't say enough good things about Robert," she said. "He's a genuinely nice person. His goal wasn't just to do the story right, but to do me right, because I had shared a personal part of myself."

In the end, Marckx liked how her relationship was captured, and how Potter portrayed her. "I like Monica a lot," she said. "I thought she did a great job, and she became a really good friend. I thought her portrayal was fabulous." Marckx also praises Billy Crudup, who captured Pre's charm as well as his brashness.

In the years since Prefontaine's death, Marckx worked for Nike for a number of years in Oregon and in Western Europe. She lived another time in Eastern Europe as a teacher. She has lived on both coasts, and is back in Portland again, writing.

And over the years, Marckx said, she has had other relationships. But Steve Prefontaine was a truly unique individual, a person of great charisma and star quality, with an aura so strong and enduring that Marckx felt his very presence on the set as the movie was filmed in Eugene, where so many of the events had happened, longer ago but never forgotten.

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