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Not everyone in "Powder's" cast is engaged. It just seems that way. "We do have a wedding date, but I won't be disclosing that to anyone," Steenburgen said as she sat in her trailer, a diamond engagement ring on her finger.
She was waiting to join Danson in England, where they'll make a miniseries of "Gulliver's Travels" for NBC.
Though she was eager to leave and join him, Steenburgen said Powder has been "a special production for me."
"The two most amazing things besides the birth of my children (during her marriage to Malcolm McDowell) happened to me in Houston," she said.
"I got engaged, and I saw the Beatles in concert (in 1965). So Houston's been a good town for me."
There's also synchronicity in the fact that she and co-star Sean Patrick Flanery - who grew up in Houston - have made movies back-to-back.
The first was "The Grass Harp," based on a Truman Capote story. It was shot in Alabama just before their Powder work began.
"Here we are, within a couple of weeks, playing completely different characters in other scenes together," Steenburgen said. "It's almost like doing rep (repertory theater)."
As for Lance Henriksen, he'd been with girlfriend Jane Pollack, an artist, for two years "and we decided, `If we're gonna do this, let's do it,' " he said.
With love in the air, "it's been very positive on the set," Henriksen said. "You can see it in people's eyes. I know I'm a little bit happier about life than I've ever been. You get that walking-on-a-cloud feeling."
And Flanery ? Forget it.
"I know everyone's engaged, but for me it's kind of difficult," he said with a laugh. "Nobody will look at me without any hair. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed."
The Houston-raised actor, who rose to fame as TV's Young Indiana Jones, is now tackling a role so different and demanding that he keeps to himself while his colleagues chatter and talk honeymoons.
When Steenburgen laughingly calls for a "group hug" before a shot and gets an embrace from producer Grodnik, Flanery stands apart, lost in thought and speaking to no one.
When Henriksen and Goldblum playfully pose for a photo (they get so chummy that Henriksen says they're "almost making out"), Flanery is out of sight, back in his trailer, waiting for the work ahead.
It's not that he's aloof - just doggedly focused.
A polite fellow of 29 who answers "yes sir," Flanery feels he needs such focus to play a character with whom he has little in common. And if being a loner helps him to tap Powder's loneliness, so much the better.
Conceived by Salva, who also wrote the script, Powder is a boy who was long ago struck by lightning and has grown up in rural isolation, living with an elderly couple, akin to Superman's Ma and Pa Kent.
When they die, Powder is discovered and taken to a small Texas town for assimilation into society -which isn't easy. For one thing, he's totally hairless and has strange, milky-white skin. For another, he has an astonishingly high IQ and the ability to read minds and move objects via thought.
For the 9 1/2-week shoot, which ends this week, cast and crew have ranged throughout Houston's outskirts and neighboring towns, using scenery and buildings in Sugar Land, Wharton, Texas City, Richmond and Conroe.
But in Houston, apart from a scene shot at Henderson Elementary School, work has been done on specially built sets, avoiding white backgrounds to help Powder stand out (a rule that extends to wardrobe).
"Powder is using 90 percent of his brain compared to our 10 percent,"Salva said. "As a result, he has the gifts Einstein predicted we'd have if we evolved far enough.
"But those gifts make people nervous, because you can't lie to him. He can read your thoughts. And in this society, we hide a lot."
While Powder looks like "a teen-ager from outer space," Salva said, "he's really a sweet, gentle soul.
"He sees people's fear of him, but he also sees their pain. And he really opens windows for the people he meets."
Powder's body also proves to be a superconductor for electricity. That's discovered in a scene in which the boy, joining teacher Goldblum's science class, inadvertently attracts an arc of electrical current and starts to levitate.
While the film contains such fantastic elements, at heart it's "a very human story about the timeless struggle of growing up different,"Salva said.
"Victor and I like to get the work done, but we also like to have fun,"Grodnik said. "You do better work when you're rested. And we want people to have a life apart from this."
Henriksen has visited Galveston's Moody Gardens, while Steenburgen has spent time with her two kids and her family visiting from Arkansas -not to mention dining with Danson at restaurants such as the Grotto on Westheimer.
As for Flanery , he's attended a Houston Aeros ice hockey game, but mostly he holes up in an apartment he rented.
The actor, a Louisiana native who moved to Houston as a toddler, then left for Los Angeles in 1989, has made time to see family and friends. His mother, Genie Flanery , has visited the set, and on days off he's met his old chums from Dulles High School and the University of St. Thomas, where he started acting in his junior year.
Seeing them and longtime best friend Kim has been good, Flanery said.
"But when you're working, it's also distracting. I really need to be away from people so I can concentrate. It may come easily for some people, but this is hard for me."
Flanery 's boyish good looks, which made him a teen favorite as Young Indiana Jones, are submerged to play Powder. His head is shaved daily, and his pasty makeup can take up to two hours to apply.
He's also created "a walk, a style, a voice, a way of holding his body,"Grodnik said. "Sean has created Powder."
Because of the role's demands, Flanery said he won't take another part until he's had time "to regain some normalcy" after this shoot.
"I know that sounds ridiculous, almost pretentious, but I need to get some rest and do something important solely to myself. I have to retain my sanity."
As for why the other cast and crew seem so happy by contrast, Rick Ferguson of the Houston Film Commission has a theory - and it goes beyond all the impending matrimony.
"I think it comes down from the top," he said. "Also, I think good feelings come from this story. It's a dynamite script about a good, kind person who affects people's lives in a positive way.
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