Hated it on first watching, but it's growing....question (spoiler)

According to the short story, the girl died of something like SIDS/Crib death. No freezer.

I'm glad to hear that the film rewards a second viewing. I always believed it would.

In the book, the daughter dies of SIDS. Our little actress was too old for that. For several story reasons, we were drawn to the idea that she suffered a chronic illness of some kind. We chose cystic fibrosis.

That's a nebulizer little Alisha is breathing from in the tent scene (not a bong, as some students at a film festival insisted). And if you really listen to Marilyn's (Debra Winger's) urgent instructions as they wheel the girl into the hospital, you'll catch a quick mention of "CF."

The freezer images, like the train images, are not to be found in the book. The freezer, to me, was always an association Barlow had with his father (played by Larry Brown in the movie...and in the freezer). It comes up in his childhood memory of the father's casket, in his imagination, and on the road, in his real life. Or does it?

Like other recurring images in the film, it's not always clear how much of what we're seeing is in Barlow's mind and how much is "real." The idea is that memory and imagination are the same thing, and that thing often overwhelms our experience of "reality."

By the way, I differ sharply with you on Arliss Howard's accent. It's the only authentic Mississippi accent in the movie (besides Larry Brown's). That's partly my fault--the guy playing the judge had a beautiful local accent, but when I rewrote his dialogue, I took all the indications of dialect out so as not to direct how he'd do it. Being new to acting, he took the revision to mean "talk with no accent." Which he tried manfully to do. There was no time to have him rework the speech.

You win some, you lose most. I find it amazing that this movie got made, and love the fact that it engaged you enough to post a comment here. Thanks.

-James Howard