Entertainment Cover Story

12.14 04-11.qxd
12/16/2005
feature
1:20 PM
film:
Page 8
FINDING
HOME
Finding Home
Award-winning Filmmakers
Triumph Over Adversity
by Tony Medley
W
hen
writer-director
Lawrence David Foldes
and his wife, producer
Victoria Paige Meyerink decided to
make the new film Finding Home (opening in Los Angeles this week), it was a
labor of love. “We felt creatively unfulfilled with the films we had been making, even though they were commercially successful,” says Foldes. “We
started looking to do something we
could be passionate about, a serious
piece, one that could touch people.”
Foldes is no stranger to the world
of cinema, having produced his first
film at 18, the teenage cult hit Malibu
High – making him the youngest professional filmmaker at the time. He met his
wife Victoria, a former child star who
co-starred with Danny Kaye on his
weekly CBS variety show, and with
Elvis in the MGM movie Speedway, at
an awards show. The two quickly
formed a filmmaking partnership, with
him directing and her producing. After
collaborating on several successful lowbudget films (including the actionadventure Young Warriors starring
Ernest Borgnine, and the romantic
comedy Prima Donnas), the pair decided
to look for a project that would be more
intellectually and emotionally rewarding.
It was at this time that Victoria was
diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a
benign but deep-seated brain tumor in
the auditory canal that, if left untreated, could grow and put pressure on
vital brain structures resulting in blindness and hydrocephalus – and ultimately become fatal. They dropped everything and focused all attention to finding a treatment that would not have the
serious side effects often associated
with surgery.
With the options available,
Meyerink could have become completely deaf on one side, suffered permanent facial weakness or paralysis,
and loss of balance. She was determined to find a better treatment, so she
and her husband took matters into
their own hands. After interviewing
over 40 doctors and 120 patients, they
created a groundbreaking new procedure combining two types of radiation
treatment. Meyerink became the first
person to go through with this new
procedure, now known as FGK
(Fractionated
Gamma
Knife
Radiosurgery). Since then more than
60 patients have undergone the new
procedure. In the six years since
Meyerink’s treatment, she’s had a 44%
reduction in tumor size, with no side
Victoria Paige Meyerink with Danny Kaye, 1965.
effects, and it continues to decrease.
The couple’s research, efforts and
sheer tenacity has had a major impact
on the medical community, and has
improved the quality of life for others
with such tumors. The life-altering
challenges they encountered with
Meyerink’s medical condition changed
their outlook on life, and ultimately
their approach to filmmaking.
“It was during this time that we
began to think about the legacy that we
would leave behind as filmmakers. Did
we want to be known for a shelf full of
action movies at Blockbuster? Or could
we use our talents to create something
more meaningful that would enhance
the lives of audiences for generations,”
recalls Foldes. “We felt that we could do
something more than simply baby-sit
audiences and sell popcorn. We have the
Lisa Brenner and Sherri Saum on location in Deer Isle, Maine.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2005
8
ENTERTAINMENT TODAY
ability to use the powerful medium of
film to have a positive impact on peoples’ lives,” adds Meyerink. Foldes concludes, “Victoria’s illness and her
resiliency in the face of such adversity
forced us to confront our mortality and
allowed us to mature as filmmakers, and
as human beings.”
While she recovered, the couple
went to Maine to teach at a film school
in Rockport. A student, Steven
Zambo, came up after class with a
story idea, a simple treatment. “It happens a lot,” says Foldes. “Victoria wasn’t up to reviewing them at the time.
This one kept calling for months, very
persistent. After six months, she read it
and was so moved she gave it to me,
and the story touched me as well. We
called him and told him he should try
to get it off the ground, that it was a
Producer Victoria Paige Meyerink
worthwhile project to pursue. He surprised us by saying that he wanted us to
make the film, and that the company
he worked for had part of the funding.
In fact, it turns out that the reason he
came to the class is that his company
wanted to move into the feature film
area from the video production they
had been doing.
Foldes and co-writer Grafton
Harper then wrote the screenplay,
spending over a year researching the
field of traumatic and repressed memories with the medical community’s top
experts and their patients. The story
highlights the tricky and sometimes
terrifying nature of memory. Foldes
and Harper elaborated on the student’s
story to include relevant social and psychological issues and powerful messages about the importance of family,
sexual responsibility, and the consequences of the choices we make in life.
The film is the culmination of six
years of intense work for Foldes and
Meyerink who invested their entire life
savings in finishing the picture.
Premiering at the Montreal World Film
Festival, the film has been invited to
over thirty festivals worldwide, winning
twenty-one awards, including five Best
Picture nods.
Shot on a $5 million budget,
Finding Home is a bewitching, evocative
romantic mystery of repressed and
false memories. 21-year-old Amanda
(Lisa Brenner) gets a call from Katie
(Geneviève Bujold) telling her that
Amanda’s beloved grandmother,
Esther (Oscar winner Louise
Fletcher), has died. Amanda had been
suddenly taken away from Esther when
she was 11 by her mother, Grace
Continued on next page
12.14 04-11.qxd
12/16/2005
feature
1:20 PM
film:
Page 9
FINDING
HOME
Continued from previous page
Finding Home
(Jeannetta Arnette), and has been
troubled by jarring memories ever
since. She returns for the funeral to the
island and the inn Esther owned, The
Cliff ’s Edge Inn (the actual location is
the Felsted House on Deer Island,
Maine, commissioned by world
renowned
architect
Frederick
Olmsted, designer of New York’s
Central Park and San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Park), and her world is
turned upside down. As Amanda
unravels the mysteries of her family’s
troubled past, she makes discoveries
that cause her to re-evaluate her own
life and values in much the same way as
Foldes and Meyerink.
Foldes shot the picture in the wide
screen Super 35mm format because he
wanted to capture the wide expanse of
the rugged Maine coastline and give
the picture the sweeping epic feel of
David Lean’s films Ryan’s Daughter and
Doctor Zhivago. He designed four distinct visual looks for the film to differentiate Amanda’s present state of consciousness from her childhood memories and interpretations of her grandmother’s diary. Each of these looks
was designed with varying transitions
between them. “With Amanda’s fond
remembrances of her childhood, we let
the viewer drift into her memories in
the same way we do in our real lives: we
get distracted, start thinking about
something, then bounce quickly back
to reality,” says Foldes. Amanda’s traumatic memories and dreams are disturbing and consist of rapid-fire fragments; random bits of lost memories
that are not linear or cohesive. They
appear several times throughout the
film, adding new information and
angles with each repetition, becoming
more cohesive as Amanda struggles to
piece together the chain of events leading up to her traumatic departure from
her grandmother’s island resort years
before. Amanda’s visions of the events
written in her grandmother’s diary
reflect her interpretation of a young
woman’s coming of age in the 1940’s.
The location of the story on an
island is not happenstance. Says Foldes,
“It served as a lovely metaphor because it
was as difficult for the character of
Amanda to physically access the Inn and
the island as it was for her to emotionally access her memories and her past.”
Foldes and Meyerink erected a full
service temporary movie studio on the
remote island and faced the challenges
of marine filming and 14-foot tidal
shifts. They also had to extend the
New England “fall color” from Labor
Day until Christmas. The challenge was
to keep visual continuity throughout
the change of seasons. You’d never
know by watching the footage that
everyone in 1940’s summer attire was
freezing and there was snow just
beyond the frame line. When the temperature fell below 45°, the actors had
to suck on ice cubes before each take
to eliminate their breath from the cold
air. An unexpected benefit to the
extended schedule and shift in weather
was the filming of the climactic night
fight scene in the water. Had it been
filmed when it was originally scheduled, the water would have only been
lapping gently on the beach, although
Director Lawrence David Foldes , Lisa Brenner and Geneviève Bjuold.
the water temperature would have been
tolerable for the cast. As it turned out,
the scene wasn’t shot until late
November when the water and air
temps were near freezing. Even though
the actors wore special wet suits under
their wardrobe, they were only able to
remain in the water for a maximum of
four minutes at a time with paramedics
standing by. However, the stormy
weather created a pounding surf, which
added tremendously to the intensity of
the scene, and the icy water pushed the
actors to emotional extremes.
Due to the unpredictable weather
patterns on the Maine coast, the production company had to be prepared
to switch from exteriors to interiors at
a moment’s notice while filming on
Deer Isle. The old Maine axiom “if
Director Lawrence David Foldes and Jason Miller, on set.
ENTERTAINMENT TODAY
9
you don’t like the weather, stick
around for five minutes” proved true
as bright sunshine turned to hail with
little warning. In anticipation of this,
Foldes and Meyerink devised a plan
with the lighting and art departments
to pre-rig the entire house, surrounding cove and dock with thousands of
feet of electrical cable, enabling the
crew to plug in lights anywhere in the
network (dubbed ‘The Ring of Fire’)
within minutes. The art department
dressed both the interior and exterior
sets around the cabling, creatively
merging it with the natural surroundings and effectively hiding it from
view. “The Felsted House effectively
became one big ‘hot set’,” says
Meyerink. Often two or three different time periods were filmed in a day.
Not only were all the departments
scrambling switching back and forth
between decades, Foldes and the
actors faced the challenge of maintaining emotional continuity.
Oscar nominee and Golden
Globe winner Geneviève Bujold was
a last minute replacement for AnnMargret, who was originally cast for
the pivotal role of Katie, but had to
pull out because of a serious injury.
As a result, in order to accommodate
Bujold’s accent, the script was
revised to explain that Katie is a
native of Quebec who had moved to
the island many years ago. Even in
her ‘60s Bujold is still as striking as
she was in Anne of the Thousand Days
(1969), with a Gene Tierney-type
face that is still one of the more
uniquely beautiful ever to appear on
the silver screen.
The supporting cast is equally
notable. The character of Prescott is
played by Oscar nominee Justin
Henry, who was the little boy in
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Sandy Ward,
who played Julian the lobsterman,
passed away during post-production.
He is so convincing that Foldes asked
citizens of Maine at a screening if
they thought he was an actor or really
a local. A large majority voted for the
latter, so effective were his demeanour
and mannerisms. Jason Miller plays
Esther’s attorney, Lester Brownlow, in
the final role of a prolific, eclectic
career. As a writer, Miller won a
Pulitzer Prize for his Broadway play
That Championship Season (1972). As an
actor he was an Oscar nominee for
the part of Father Damian in The
Exorcist (1973). He passed away
onstage of a heart attack in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania while
the film was still in production.
This is a film that shows a deep
love and affection between Amanda
and her grandmother, Esther, and
Brenner (who co-starred in The
Patriot) does a sensitive job of
expressing Amanda’s unrelenting
sense of loss. Especially impressive
is the way Foldes captures the desperation Amanda feels for having
her relationship with Esther abruptly
broken, and losing her without any
further communication.
The film carries a weight that
Foldes says would not have been possible for them to convey in the earlier
stages of their career. “Had we not
gone through Victoria’s harrowing
ordeal, we would not have had the
emotional depth to make this film. We
were meant to make Finding Home, and
we were meant to face the challenges
along the way. Out of the most
adverse moments of your life can
come the most rewarding and positive
experiences you’ll ever have. We can
choose to look at adversity in a negative way or we can see how our lives
can be enriched by it.” And keeping
true to this philosophy, a portion of
the film’s proceeds are being donated
to fund further research of acoustic
neuromas at the New England
Gamma Knife Center at Rhode
Island Hospital.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2005
12.14 04-11.qxd
12/16/2005
1:20 PM
Page 11
ENTERTAINMENT TODAY
11
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2005