|
|
| KNOCKIN’ ON
HEAVEN’S DOOR
return to sender
IT’S A SCRIPT THAT’S BEEN ATTRACTING
ATTENTION FOR QUITE SOME TIME. NOW,
AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR BILLE AUGUST IS
FILMING RETURN TO SENDER WITH A CAST
HEADED BY CONNIE NIELSEN (OPPOSITE) AS A WOMAN ON DEATH ROW. NICK RODDICK REPORTS.
|
In the flat farmland outside the high white walls of the prison, the hot-dog man is the first to arrive, over a week before the execution is due to take place. He knows business will be good: every execution in Oklahoma draws its travelling circus of anti-capital-punishment demonstrators, angry supporters of the death penalty, onlookers, ghouls and reporters. They stand around, get hungry, buy postcards and other mementoes (don’t ask).
In Oklahoma, as in many US states, the truly dedicated can even make a buck out of the process itself: three local citizens will each be paid $200 to operate the syringes that send the lethal cocktail of chemicals coursing down the tubes and into the prisoner’s veins. It’s participatory democracy with a vengeance.
In Texas, which is only 60 or 70 miles away down I69, helping out on Death Row pays the same rate. But there, the citizens don’t operate syringes: they throw a switch. They still use the electric chair - and use it often - in Texas. Reporters who have attended executions in the state’s penitentiaries talk of having to soak their clothes for a week to get rid of the smell of burning.
It is details like these which have drawn film-makers to Neal Purvis and Robert Wade’s screenplay, Return to Sender, over the past couple of years. So it was no surprise when, at the start of this year, it finally went in front of the cameras. The driving force behind the project is Intandem Films, Gary Smith’s new production, sales and distribution outfit, with Smith and the co-founder of Intandem Andrew Brown, acting as executive producers. Return to Sender is produced by Michael Lunderskov of Danish production company MovieFan and the UK’s Stephen Woolley, and directed by Academy Award, Golden Globe and Palme d’Or-winner Bille August, who needed only the day it took him to read the script to agree to make the film.
Connie Nielsen, who plays the condemned woman, has also been involved from the get-go, while Chicago-born Aidan Quinn, who shared a Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2000, was likewise quick to come aboard, attracted by the opportunity to work with a “world-class film-maker” like August. The top-flight cast is rounded out by Kelly Preston.
|
|
|
