(p.22 f): For Bacon's very '90s better half, Koepp is thrilled to have found Erbe, a longtime veteran of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre group. Koepp, who asserts that "shrinking violets aren't much fun to watch on film," recalls that "at one point, we said, 'Lool at this woman! She's perfect! She wears a tabk-top, she carries a knife, she wakes her husband up in the middle of the night for sex! What more do you want?'"

Erbe herself is thrilled with both her director and with Bacon, about whom she raves, "He's fantastic! He's really smart, really giving, really supportive."

Erbe's casting has an eerie whiff of destiny to it, thanks to a tattoo on the actress' arm. [Webmaster's note: Mistake in the article - the tattoo is on her shoulder, not on her arm.] "I'd been thinking about getting a tattoo for some time," she says. "My husband and I went out to eat, and I said, 'Screw it! I'm gonna do it, right now! Put me in a cab, and I'll get this tattoo!" The resulting skin art is a heart with the initials "T" and "M" on it, standing for Terry (her husband, Body Snatchers' Terry Kinney) and Maeve (Erbe's daughter's name.)

But they also could stand for Stir's embattled main couple, Tom and Maggie, which Erbe did not realize, of course, until she read the script. "Pretty cool, eh?" says Erbe, who then strolls over to another end of the warehouse for a quick espresso.