Hard Times on Showtime

While researching his role as an impoverished, blue-collar worker in Showtime’s “Hidden in America,” Beau Bridges discovered the complexities of poverty.

“It has many sides,” Bridges explains. “I remember when I was a young child, the church that we went to in our neighborhood had a thing written on the top of the building: ‘Ask and you shall receive.’ It seemed so simple, but it’s tough to ask and it’s tough to receive, because there’s pride involved. If you have it, you want to protect it.”

The subject of America’s disenfranchised hungry is close to the heart of Bridges and younger brother Jeff, who is one of the film’s executive producers and has a cameo as a doctor.

“Hidden in America,” which also stars Bruce Davison, was written by Peter Silverman and directed by Martin Bell, the team responsible for the 1992 Jeff Bridges film, “American Heart.”

In 1983, Jeff Bridges founded the End Hunger Network, a nonprofit organization that works with the entertainment community to create and support media projects, programs and events aimed at ending hunger.

With “Hidden in America,” Jeff says, “one of the things we wanted to do was to find a way of dramatizing the issue of hunger here in America. It took us many, many years to really come up with the story we wanted to tell--and then to come up with the screenplay to tell the story that didn’t come off like a big public-service announcement. We wanted to tell the issues in a dramatic way and really engage people.”

From the outset, Jeff involved his brother in the project’s creation. Says Beau: “Jeff and I never knew how we would specifically be creatively involved. But we wanted to create this vehicle. There were a number of different versions of the script, written by different people. I even wrote one, which my brother rejected. I think rightfully so because Peter Silverman wrote a really excellent script.”

With the script in place, producer Jeff asked actor Beau to play proud Bill, a laid-off factory worker and recent widower trying to provide for his two young children, Willa (Jena Malone) and Robbie (Sheldon Dane), by working part-time flipping burgers in a fast-food restaurant.

Davison plays a wealthy doctor and father of Willa’s best friend, who tries to help the family get back on its feet.

Beau Bridges says most people are unaware how quickly their financial situations can change.

“A priest told me, first you are the person standing in your house and looking out your window and you see see some guy who is hungry and pushing a cart. And you think, ‘God. That poor guy out there. How is he going to survive?’

“Then suddenly, one thing can happen--a medical emergency, a financial disaster, and boom, you are the guy out there and you’re looking at the guy staring at you from the window and you’re thinking, ‘How am I going to survive?’ Then if there are children, it’s even more tragic because they become the ultimate victims.”

Though “Hidden in America” depicts a white family experiencing hard times, Beau Bridges personally believes hunger in the United States is the direct result of racism.

“I think it’s probably true throughout the world,” he offers. “When you see some horrible act of man to man, meaning mankind, you can trace a lot of it to racism and people being unaccepting of other cultures and races. And yet here you’ve got a white family telling a story about hunger. It bothered me at first and then I thought, ‘It does exist. It does happen.’ ”

The actor spent time before production began at the Los Angeles Mission, talking with the homeless and going to various relief agencies. At the suggestion of a family relief executive, he even went for an interview as his character, Bill.

Bridges was worried the case worker would recognize him. But that didn’t happen.

“Apparently, the guy, if he saw my films, wasn’t very impressed,” Bridges says, laughing. “He just accepted me as Bill. Everything was going fine. I wasn’t prepared, though, so when he asked me how much I was getting paid flipping burgers, I said, ‘8 bucks an hour,’ thinking that was pretty low.”

The case worker informed him that, at that salary, he didn’t qualify for emergency aid but did qualify for food stamps, “which meant I had to go to another place. It’s different in every city, but there’s always some kind of entanglement or educational process that has to go on before you even begin to get your aid.”

Bridges witnessed several “tragic scenarios” at the relief agencies, including a 17-year-old girl with a young baby who was living in a bus station.

“When you are in a position where you can help, you see someone like that and your instinct is to take that person home, but then, there are a million people like that and you think it’s impossible to get rid of hunger in this country. That’s unfortunate because it’s not true. It’s a very winnable battle, but you just have to pick your shot and make your contribution in a way that counts.”

Showtime programming president Jerry Offsay says the cable network made a conscious decision to air “Hidden in America” between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“It smacked us in the face that it was the obvious choice,” he says. “Though we debated as to whether we should go with the holiday spirit of everything warm and cozy and comfortable or whether we go with our instinct, which is to remind people that not everybody is warm and cozy and comfortable.”

“Hidden in America” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on Showtime.