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“It was just about perfect,” says Friendly. “It had everything we needed to stand in for the Berkshires - hills, rivers and, especially, lakes.” Since films as diverse as Fargo, A Simple Plan and Mighty Ducks had been filmed in the neighbourhood, it also (unlike the Berkshires) had enough film crew living locally to make filming possible. Putnam, Massachusetts, was represented by Welsh, Minnesota, which was every bit as small and every bit as charming as the town imagined by scriptwriter Michael Seitzman.
Samantha’s childhood sweetheart Jasper (Josh Hartnett) confronts the couple
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A writer who hankers after a simpler time (he is currently working on an update of Lubitsch’s classic romantic comedy Trouble in Paradise for Fox 2000), Seitzman, like Friendly and Piznarski, had always intended to go straight for the heart.
“I wanted to tell a love story that was unabashedly emotional, and was both tragic and uplifting,” he says. “I think Here on Earth is different from many films that have been released recently, so I hope it will provide something for an under-served audience looking for emotion and feelings in a film.”
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HERE ON EARTH |
Fox 2000 Pictures presents a David T Friendly production.
Prod:David T Friendly; Exec prod:Jeffery Downer;Dir:Mark Piznarski;Scr:Michael Seitzman;Ph: Michael D O'Shea; Prod des: Dina Lipton; Cost des: Isis Mussenden; Ed: Robert Frazen; Mus: Andrea Morricone.
With Chris Klein(Kelley Morse), Leelee Sobieski(Samantha Canvanaugh), Josh Hartnett(Jasper Arnold), Bruce Greenwood(Earl Canvanaugh), Annette O'Toole(Jo Canvanaugh), Annie Corley(Betsy Arnold), Stuart Wilson(John Morse), Michel Rooker(Malcolm Arnold).
International
distribution: 20th Century Fox.
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Director Mark Piznarski on the Here on Earth set with Klein and Hartnett.
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And it was the power of the emotion that clinched it for Leelee Sobieski, who plays the crucial role of Samantha. Having grabbed attention for her roles in A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Never Been Kissed and Eyes Wide Shut, Sobieski won her largest audience to date when she played the title role in the recent Joan of Arc miniseries. But Here on Earth was something else.
“The script took me by the throat and grabbed me,” says the young actress. “It took me on an unexpected emotional roller-coaster ride. When I read it, I cried, I laughed - I went through many emotions. But the most important thing was that it was real.”
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