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Part of the series MOTHER CUTTERS.
Unsure of herself, two months pregnant and feeling trapped, Natalie Ravenna leaves her sleeping husband a note and drives away from her Long Island home one rainy morning to find herself. Natalie is the heroine of Francis Ford Coppola’s intensely moving The Rain People. Ahead of its time from both filmmaking and feminist points of view, the film took Coppola and his eight-vehicle crew through 18 states, lending this poignant tale a realistic rootless tone.
Joining the production on its journey was assistant editor, Marcia Griffin - soon to be Marcia Lucas. At the time, Lucas had already accepted an offer to work on Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool with Verna Fields. Fortunately the shooting schedule for Medium Cool was delayed, which allowed Lucas to complete her assignment on The Rain People before joining Wexler's production.
During the production, George Lucas - who had met Coppola on Finian's Rainbow - documented the film's cross-country shoot with a 30-minute documentary, Filmmaker, editing the film with Marcia.