Editing The Straight Story (section)

=== Development ===
In 1994, 73-year-old [[Alvin Straight]] rode a lawnmower across roughly 250 miles of the American Midwest to visit his ailing brother.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news |last=Smith |first=Patrick |date=14 April 2017 |title=How an old man and his lawnmower made David Lynch weep: the making of The Straight Story |work=[[The Daily Telegraph|The Telegraph]] |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/old-man-lawnmower-made-david-lynch-weep-making-straight-story/. |url-access=registration |access-date=2022-11-14}}</ref> [[Mary Sweeney]], David Lynch's frequent collaborator, read about Straight's story in ''[[The New York Times]]'' that summer.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |last1=Fagerholm |first1=Matt |date=2022-08-04 |title=You Want People to Enter the Dream: Mary Sweeney on Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and The Straight Story |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/you-want-people-to-enter-the-dream-mary-sweeney-on-lost-highway-mulholland-dr-and-the-straight-story |access-date=13 November 2022 |website=RogerEbert.com}}</ref><ref name="Ebert.com">{{cite web |last1=Olcese |first1=Abby |date=February 18, 2021 |title=Getting to the Heart of America in David Lynch's The Straight Story |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/features/getting-to-the-heart-of-america-in-david-lynchs-the-straight-story |access-date=13 November 2022 |website=RogerEbert.com}}</ref> Said Sweeney, "Growing up in [[Wisconsin]], I easily connected with that kind of stoic, non-verbal, stubborn, idiosyncratic American character. I get how hard it is to have quiet pride and dignity when you're old and poor and are living in the middle of nowhere. I understand what these people's dreams and frustrations are. And I loved how much his journey captured the national imagination, so, wearing my producer's hat, I started trying to secure the rights."<ref name=":1" />

Producer [[Ray Stark]] had already acquired the rights to Straight's story and envisioned the project as a potential star vehicle for [[Paul Newman]].<ref name=":1" /> Straight died in 1996, and the rights to his story became available again. Sweeney co-wrote the script with John Roach, a childhood friend; the two retraced Straight's route in the process of writing.<ref name=":1" /> When Lynch saw the finished script he immediately took to it, saying "it became, for me, very real."<ref name=":1" />