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Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine) Sept 1, 1998 The parent trip. (the story behind the new film 'The Baby Dance')(Brief Article) Author/s: Gail Shister Jane Anderson didn't just write The Baby Dance. She lived it--at least her screenplay version, which debuts August 23 on cable's Showtime network [check local listings for times]. When Anderson wrote the stage play in 1990, she and her spouse, Tess Ayers, hadn't even considered having children. Five years later, ensconced in a hotel room in Paraguay for three months with Ayers and their almost-adopted infant son, Raphael, Anderson pounded out the screenplay on her laptop while waiting for the bureaucratic breakthrough that would let them leave the country as a family. The Baby Dance, executive-produced by Jodie Foster and directed by Anderson, stars Stockard Channing and Peter Riegert as a high-powered Los Angeles couple longing to procreate. After enduring endless medical procedures to no avail, they go the classified route and advertise for a baby. Enter Wanda (Laura Dern) and her unemployed husband, Al (Richard Lineback), of Shreveport, La. They live in a trailer, their four kids camp out at her mom's, and Wanda is six months' pregnant. What ensues is the emotional tale of two disparate families awkwardly trying to lead and follow in "the dance." For Anderson, 43, and her partner of 16 years, the dance began in 1994. After each woman had suffered unsuccessful pregnancies via artificial insemination--Ayers had aborted her Down's syndrome-diagnosed fetus at five months, and Anderson had miscarried at two months--the couple hired a Los Angeles lawyer who specializes in private adoptions of American babies. Through newspaper ads, "he kept hooking us up with low-income women in obscure parts of the country," says Anderson, a big-screen writer (How to Make an American Quilt) who won an Emmy on the small screen (HBO's The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom). Six months later, after being presented with birth mothers "living every nightmare you can imagine," Anderson says the out couple decided to go to China. That went nowhere, Anderson says, because a homophobic agency worker sabotaged their paperwork. Undeterred, the wanna-be moms were referred to a private agency that set up adoptions in Paraguay. Since both women spoke Spanish and loved South America--Anderson had just returned from a screenplay-researching trip to Brazil--they began the process. "At that time there happened to be a lot of babies moving out of Paraguay," says Anderson. They soon got a call from a Cuban contact in Florida that a baby boy born one week before could be theirs. His name was Raphael. With nothing to go on but a photograph, "we took a leap of faith," Anderson muses. "After years of utter heartbreak, miscarriage, Down's syndrome, getting strung along due to homophobia, you reach the point of desperation and despair," she continues. "You so ache for a child that every time you see somebody with a baby, you fall apart. We knew Raphael was meant to be our son." (For the record, Anderson--who came out when she was 23--was advised to adopt Raphael as a single mother, lesbians not being considered poster moms in South America)