|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Movies for Seniors
Nostalgia Stirred for Seniors by New Film 'Marilyn
Hotchkiss'
 Fulfillment
of 40-year old promise to meet at the ballroom dance school
March 29, 2006 – A movie that's sure to arouse
nostalgia in many a senior citizen opens in theaters on Friday. "Marilyn
Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School" takes us back to the
1960s, when dancing was hand-in-hand – and occasionally, if lucky,
cheek-to-cheek. It's also about unforgotten teenage love of 40 years
earlier.
The story begins when Frank Keane (Robert Carlyle)
is consumed by grief over his wife's death. When fate intervenes, he
pulls over to help a stranger in a car wreck. The man (John Goodman),
near death, begs Frank to fulfill a promise made 40 years ago that he
would meet his childhood sweetheart at Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom
Dancing and Charm School where they first met as kids.
Frank attempts to deliver the man's regrets, but
instead meets his own destiny when he encounters Meredith (Marisa Tomei)
and the invigorating world of dance, which opens his heart to find love
again.
The film also stars Mary Steenburger, Sean Astin,
Donnie Wahlberg and Danny DeVito.
The film began over 15 years ago as a short film
about innocence and nostalgia-- about a twelve-year-old boy in 1962 who
gets his first kiss and discovers that “girls aren’t so bad.” Although
it was a quintessentially American short film featuring American slang
and such American institutions as cotillion, the short film spoke to
audiences around the globe. It racked up 17 international film awards
from places as remote as Malta, France, Spain, Belgium and Aspen.
This final version premiered at the 2005 Sundance
Film Festival and the producers describe it as "a beautiful film that
celebrates the reawakening of the spirit."
Written and directed by Randall Miller, the short
was loosely based on the writer/director’s own experience having
attended cotillion once as a boy growing up in Pasadena, California.
Clearly that one evening had made an indelible impression on him. Miller
was born and raised in Pasadena, where he still lives with his wife and
two young children. As in "Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm
School," Pasadena often figures into his work.
"I was blessed in this movie to work with so many
truly great actors," says Miller. "Great actors feed off of each other.
When they respect the work, they dig deeply into the souls of their
characters. That is when really exciting things happen. I am eager to
work with every one of the actors in "Marilyn Hotchiss" again. They are
the heart and soul of this movie.
How the short film evolved into a feature is a
question both Miller and his wife and creative partner, Jody Savin, are
often asked. “The feature is in many ways a metaphor for the process of
its own genesis,” says Savin. “One of the main themes of the feature is
about opening oneself up to the odd turns one’s life might take and how
those unpredictable paths can lead to resolution and contentedness one
could not have personally conceived or engineered.”
Miller has also had a successful run directing
television shows like “Thirtysomething,” “Northern Exposure” and
“Popular.” He directed the pilots for the Nickelodeon kid sensation,
“Salute Your Shorts,” and for the Warner Brothers series, “Dead Last.”
He got a DGA nomination for "H-E Double Hockey Sticks," a children’s
movie for the Wonderful World of Disney.
“A director learns from directing,” says Miller. “I
learned from every one of the movies and shows I directed.”
But Miller had a passion to direct his own
material—something completely different, something personal. Miller and
Savin had written and sold many scripts only to watch them stall
somewhere along the way in development or pre-production. And the only
way they could see to break the feature film perception of Miller as an
urban comedy director would be to actually make something completely
different, something personal.
That was when they ran into Morris Ruskin who
remembered the short film and suggested they go back (all the way back
to where they had begun in the movie business) and turn that short film
into a full-length feature. The suggestion stuck with them.
Miller and Savin had each recently lost a parent.
And they were living with the imminent loss of several dear friends to
terminal illnesses. One of these friends, Patricia Fraser, played the
title character in the short film. (The feature version is dedicated to
Patricia.)
The feature film takes on that loss and much more.
Although the ten-year-old boy’s first kiss is still in the movie, it is
now part of the fabric of lost youth, lost innocence, and one man’s
attempt to reach back in time that becomes the rickety bridge to another
man’s future. The storytelling is complex but the emotions are clear and
honest. It is a movie about people.
The honesty and beauty of the script spoke to a
group of wonderful actors. Momentum built when Carol Bodie and Chris
Andrews of ICM read the script and responded enthusiastically. Andrews
represents Robert Carlyle, an actor who brings incredible nuance and
dignity to every role he takes. Carlyle was perfect to play the lead. He
read the script immediately and signed on.
“Bobby, who is Scottish, was originally going to
do the part with an American accent,” says Miller. “But after thinking
about it, he thought that a foreign accent would heighten the
character’s alienation and serve the overall movie better. He opted for
an Irish accent which we all agreed was better since his Scottish can be
a challenge to understand.”
Incredibly enough, Carlyle had never worked in the
U.S. so getting him a visa in short order was a bit of a trick. “Bobby
is an amazingly committed actor. If he was not on set, he was in his
trailer thinking about his character, never even turning on the
television or radio,” explains Miller. “His focus is extraordinary and
his narrative sense was a gift to me as a director.”
Other talent agents and managers read the script
and lent their support. Sue Leibman of Barking Dog recommended it to her
client, Marisa Tomei, who signed on to play the damaged Meredith
Morrison. From the get-go, the chemistry between Robert and Marisa was
evident. In life and in the movie, they are characters from two
different worlds that seem to have been destined to connect.
Marisa Tomei is an incredibly versatile actress who
has taken on the gamut of roles in her career. One thing that remains
consistent in all of her performances is a singular attention to detail
that gives each of her characters so much life. As Meredith Morrison,
she had to contend with certain physical challenges and she worked
diligently and often not comfortably to make every choice true to the
character.
The cast was falling into place. David Paymer, who
had worked with the couple before, came on board to play Rafael
Horowitz. Consistently supportive of independent cinema, Sean Astin
responded to the filmmakers’ passion and offered to play the tragic and
funny character of Kip Kipling.
Danny DeVito got hold of the script and offered to
do a role. DeVito brought the script to his agent, Fred Specktor, who
also represents John Goodman, a powerhouse of an actor and the ideal
Steve Mills. Goodman and Carlyle were both very excited to work with
each other. Both men are generous actors and they seemed to feed off
each other in their work. Adam Arkin, Camryn Manheim, Ernie Hudson,
Miguel Sandoval and Sonia Braga all signed on shortly thereafter.
Two roles remained to be cast: Randall Ipswitch and
Marienne Hotchkiss. The roles where challenging, both emotionally and in
that they required the actors to dance masterfully. When the filmmaking
team met with Donnie Wahlberg they knew they had found Randall Ipswitch.
He had a unique understanding of the complex
character and the body of a dancer. He had never done ballroom before
but he had danced and they were confident he could learn. Wahlberg was
perhaps less certain but Miller and Savin did not let him say no and
soon the actor found himself spending all his free time in ballroom
dance studios imbibing the world and the language of the peculiar
character he was working to inhabit.
Hardest perhaps was to figure out who could play
the daughter of the grande dame, Marilyn Hotchkiss. In the years since
the making of the short, Patricia Fraser, the actress who had played
Marilyn Hotchkiss in the short film, had become one of Miller and
Savin’s dearest friends.
A larger-than-life woman and actress, her passing
on December 31 of 2003 in many ways heightened the sense of
responsibility the filmmakers felt in awarding her the perfect daughter
to complete the cycle in the movie. Furthermore, the role demanded
superior dancing and a certain unsettling self-possession that would be
a great challenge for any actress.
Mary Steenburgen signed on two weeks before
shooting began. A cha-cha champion in her youth, Steenburgen began
practicing her dance routines every free minute she had—in Little Rock,
in New York City, in Los Angeles, in airports, in dance studios, at home
until she felt confident with the role of this teacher. Steenburgen and
Wahlberg’s commitment to their parts, to the movie and to the dance it
required of them was a gift to the movie and everyone working on it.
Steenburgen is the perfect Marienne Hotchkiss.
Miller and Savin know in their hearts that Patricia
Fraser would be proud to be her mother.
The lead of the short film was ten years old when
he played Young Steve Mills. In the movie he grows up to be John
Goodman. In real life, he grew up to be an excellent actor in his own
right. His name is Elden Henson. He has starred in The Mighty Ducks, The
Mighty, and The Butterfly Effect.
When Savin and Miller met with Henson all these
years later, they knew they had to find another role for him in the
movie to underscore the unique process of the making of this film. What
actor can play two different roles in a movie simply because he was
allowed to grow up between takes.
Catching up with the other actors from the short
was an amazing thing. Young Lisa grew up to be an accomplished dancer
and choreographer. The other kids grew up to be a policewoman, an
oceanographer, a professional football player. One of the actors now
works as an FBI agent; another is a successful rock video director.
Lives had changed but everyone remembered the experience of the short
fondly and they were all excited to re-visit it as a feature.
“I had made an off-handed suggestion but when
Miller and Savin came back to me with the finished script, I fell in
love with it beyond my wildest dreams,” says Morris Ruskin. Miller and
Savin teamed with Ruskin who had produced many independent films
including Glengarry Glen Ross, The Man From Elysian Fields, The Visit,
and Price Of Glory.
Miller and Savin were determined to make this
Pasadena-centric movie in and around Pasadena. With all the tax and
labor incentives everywhere but in Southern California, this is all too
often prohibitive. Staying “home,” however, made it easier on the cast
(except for Carlyle who came a long way from home to do the film). It
also made it attractive to a level of crew they had always dreamed
of—but never counted on—working with.
When Miller started considering D.P.’s, one man’s
work stood out—a young D.P. named Jonathan Sela who had also gone to AFI
(and who had also, like Miller and Savin, coincidentally but perhaps
synergistically, met his future wife at the Institute).
Only twenty-five years old when the shooting began,
Sela proved himself a gifted artist of light and a great ally on this
enormous undertaking. Sela brought with him an amazing crew of veteran
camerafolks who all clearly recognize the promise of the gifted young
man.
Other notable crew are Academy Award winning
make-up artist Lynn Barber, veteran choreographer JoAnn Jansen, ballroom
dance champions Tony Meredith, Phillip Gott and Mary Murphy, and Academy
Award winning sound designer Lon Bender. Every single person who worked
on this movie made a creative or personal choice to do so and that made
for a very happy set.
The film is a homecoming in many ways. Miller
hasn’t worked in Pasadena since directing his very first film. This was
a chance for him to return to personal and creative roots. Like Frank
Keane, the lead character played by Robert Carlyle in the movie, and
like all of Frank’s friends from his grief counseling group (Arkin,
Hudson, Sandoval, Astin, St. James and Paymer), and like many of the
other characters in the movie, the filmmakers opened themselves to an
opportunity they could not have foreseen. And Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom
Dancing & Charm School has certainly changed their lives.
The story for the feature Marilyn Hotchkiss
Ballroom Dancing & Charm School could not be told in a straightforward
linear structure. A story of great loss, past wonders and new beginnings
-- to successfully tell this story required jumping back and forth in
time, according to Miller.
"Essentially there are three stories at play within
the greater narrative and to write it chronologically would segregate
and confine the emotional arcs of the characters. These emotional arcs
could only be honestly conveyed by interweaving the narrative threads,
thereby demonstrating their effect on the journey of the main
character," he says.
"That said, the interweaving of the stories changed
from the script to the movie. Often in storytelling, what serves the
read may not ultimately serve the movie itself," he added.
Click here to Search SeniorJournal.com for more on
this subject
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
