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| 4/18/2005 3:00:00 PM |
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‘Madison’ shines on
stars
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| Scott and Willian
Bindley |
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| Jake
Lloyd | |
Family values attracted actors to
film
| | The writer,
writer-director and five of the stars who were in town for the
premiere last night of “Madison” had press conferences with
groups of journalists in the City Council Chamber and the
adjoining conference room at city hall earlier in the day.
Each lasted about 20 minutes.
Here are highlights from
the press conferences, where journalists from Madison,
Seymour, Marion, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati and
other cities asked questions. The Madison Courier was
represented by editor Elliot Tompkin and reporter Peggy
Vlerebome.
William Bindley, Scott
Bindley
Brothers William and Scott Bindley were
asked whether “Madison” would have come out sooner if it had
been a studio film instead of being
independent.
“Whenever you make an independent film,
the good part about that is you generally have the creative
freedom to tell the story you want,” William Bindley said.
“You trade the creative freedom with knowing the film will
come out. ...The odds are stacked 1,000-to-1 against it. It’s
a good story (so they knew the movie would make
it).”
Asked if “Madison” is like “Breaking Away” or
“Days of Thunder,” Scott Bindley said, “I always felt being
from Indiana, I always felt it was closer to “Breaking Away.’
We spent more time in Madison with the three main characters.
It always just felt a little bit close to that because of the
family aspect.”
Asked if a story “about rural Indiana”
could sell coast to coast, William Bindley said: “I think good
stories work everywhere. I don’t think this movie is made for
boat racing fans any more than for people from small
towns.”
About shooting the movie here: William Bindley
said “Being able to shoot in Indiana was great. This was the
only place to shoot. ...Look at this place. It’ s like a back
lot. It’s so cute. It’s just a great town.”
Mark
Fauser
Mark Fauser, who has lived in Marion for 10
years, writes movies and works at the nonprofit Community
School of the Arts in Marion where 437 children learn dancing,
acting, ceramics and theater. “It’s been a fun, touching
experience for me.”
A movie that doesn’t go directly
from production to viewing can carry a stigma. “Waking Up in
Reno” was one such film. It “did not do very good” at the box
office, he said. “There was a negative perception it’s been in
the can for so long there must be something wrong with it.
This movie (‘Madison’) is the opposite.”
“Madison,” he
said, is about “the American dream.”
The Bindleys gave
him the script to read about 10 years before the movie was
made. He loved the part of goofy, clumsy Travis. “I said if
you ever make this movie, would you give me this part. The
casting director said this guy (Fauser) is not the picture of
Travis.” But he got the part.
Fauser said that living
in “the Bible belt,” he often hears people say, ‘Why don’t
they make good movies. ...Well, here it is,
folks.”
Independently produced “Madison” could have a
huge impact on the U.S. filmmaking industry, he said.
“Independent films are not as big as they used to be. ...This
one film could turn everything around....This is family,
family, family, and it’s the American dream.”
The movie
isn’t just for Regatta fans, he said.
“I’m not a big
boat racing ran, but I don’t think you have to be to enjoy
this movie. ‘Madison’ is “a throwback to where community was
community.”
He said his role was fictional, but someone
told him they knew the person it was based on. In the role of
Travis, he has difficulty handling tools and small parts, and
the character who plays Madisonian Tony Steinhardt, who was on
the crew for the 1971 race, gets cross at him. Fauser said
that as a child, he didn’t know tools, so his clumsiness
needed no practice. And the expression on his face in one of
his encounters with Steinhardt, played by Brent Briscoe, also
wasn’t practiced.
“When people yell at me I can’t think
right,” Fauser said. When he made the facial expression, he
was told to do it again for another shoot, and that was easy
enough when Briscoe yelled at him. The second shot was
used.
His current work, in addition to the children’s
arts program, includes writing a tribute to Marion native
James Dean for Warner Brothers.
He has a Web site,
www.markfauser.com and an e-mail address,
mfauser@indy.rr.com.
Chelcie Ross
Chelcie
Ross’ character, Roger Epperson, is based on the late Bernie
Little, owner of the rival Miss Budweiser.
“I don’t
understand it,” Ross said in mock earnestness. “ I’m such a
nice man. Out of about 45, 46 films, they let me play a nice
guy maybe three times.”
His interview was interrupted
by Bill Bindley, who came back into the room to say he and his
brother support a bill in the General Assembly to give
incentives for films shot in Indiana. Since “Madison,” they
have worked in other states and Canada where incentives are
offered. It’s important for Indiana and other states to offer
incentives “It’s about keeping more work in the United
States,” he said. In Indiana, he said, “I think it’s important
because we want to come back.”
“Hoosiers,” “Rudy” and
“Madison,” “are among many treasures” in his career, Chelcie
said. They are about “my kind of people.”
He decided to
take the part because he knows the Bindleys and he read the
script “and it reminded me a good deal of ‘Hoosiers,’” he
said, adding, “Hoosiers on the Water.”
“I’m a Christian
man. I have raised a family in Chicago because I didn’t want
to raise them in Los Angeles,” he said.
He chooses his
work, he said. “My manager and my agent...find me scripts that
have the values I subscribe to and try to live by,” he
said.
Ross said Caviezel and “Passions” director Mel
Gibson had large parts in getting “Madison” to the screen,
Gibson because he put a trailer for “Madison” at the beginning
of “Passion” more than a year ago and Caviezel because he
asked Gibson to do so..
He said he has never known
anyone to work harder to get a movie into theaters, saying it
is “the most amazing” example of “tenacity and absolute
hard-rock belief in a project....Bulldog tenacity that I’ve
not personally experienced. ...This is wonderful.”
Ross
said his voice got him his first part. As a student in 1962 at
what is now Texas State University, he went over to the
theater to help build sets, but when the director heard him
talk, he was given a script to read and was cast in a part for
the production.
One particular quality of “Madison”
attracted him, Ross said. “The one that I speak to
specifically, this is a story about a family with a lot of
differences, a lot of pressures, an inability to make a living
in the place they are, marital problems and there’s a boy
involved. It’s about a family that works through those
problems and stays together.”
He said he didn’t want to
prepare for the role by talking to people about what kind of
person Little was.
“I learned a long time ago it’s
dangerous to meet a person you’re playing. ...We don’t always
see ourselves the way others do,” he said.
Jake
Lloyd
Jake Lloyd is 16 now. “I was thinking about
driving up to the premiere,” he said, an impish smile on his
face. He has moved to Carmel from Los Angeles. “I went back to
L.A. and I felt that movie blood in me again,” he
said.
Lloyd starred in the Star Wars movies before
“Madison,” and will be at the Celebration 3. Asked if he does
a lot of appearances for Star Wars, he said, “We’ll do
anything for them. They’ve treated us so well. Their heart is
in the right place.”
He recently resumed auditioning
after being out of acting.
“I just needed a bit of a
break so I could grow up on my own,” he said. Being in the
spotlight all the time means “you make one mistake and it’s
downhill from there,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd said he doesn’t
remember much from his months in Madison for the filming, but
enjoyed living here.
Asked if he had become frustrated
because of the delays in releasing “Madison,” he said, “I
stopped caring. I gave in. I stopped focusing on it. If this
film comes out I don’t really care. ...What I really enjoy is
that corroborative creativity. I love the fact that you can do
that with film.”
Film is where his career will be, he
said. “I love film. I love the creative process. I plan
college for film” and to graduate with a degree in some aspect
of film, “cinematography, producing, directing, writing, I
don’t care. I’m so excited to get to do it
again.”
“Even as an adult...I don’t want to have to
take it so unbelievably seriously,” he said.
Lloyd’s
name is known when he goes for auditions. “The name seems to
carry a lot of weight. ...We don’t take advantage of that. We
have had a lot of opportunities. ...We just want to have fun
with it.”
His mother, Lisa Riley, who was co-producer
of the movie, said Lloyd “was kind of upset with me” over the
decision to get out of acting for a while. “I thought it would
be better for him and our family if he took some time off, go
to school,” she said.
She said it is difficult “going
through puberty in front of millions of people.” Lloyd’s face
turned red and he said, “Do you have to use that word? I
tactfully used ‘growing up.’”
She amended her phrasing.
“There’s a certain age where it would be nice not being in
front of millions of people. Developmentally they have had a
hard time focusing and (they) need to be in school.” Lloyd
still was embarrassed.
Riley said she wanted her son to
“see what it was like, daily life without acting, because he
was so young when he started acting.”
Riley said there
“was a huge, huge uproar” when she moved Lloyd from Los
Angeles. “People were calling and saying, ‘You’re destroying
his career.’ ...I’m raising a son.”
Lloyd said the
money he was paid for his starring role in “Madison” is out of
his reach, and he intends to keep it socked away.
“I
can’t touch that money until I’m 18,” he said. ...”I think it
will go to good use when I ...have children.”
He said
he wouldn’t spend it on a luxury car because “I’m going to
crash that thing sooner or later.” He said he is very proud of
his car, a 1995 GMC Jimmy.
Later in the interview, he
said, “I sound like a mama’s boy” but he and his mother
“usually disagree.”
Lloyd said he is more interested in
doing independent films, like “Madison” and the Star Wars
series, than studio films. The freedom of an independent film
is “so much more important than making the money off it,” he
said. He said a choice between them doesn’t have to be made,
because a couple of studio films can be done and then an
independent film. “You do what you can to do what you want,”
he said. “I just want to do what’s fun.”
Jim
Caviezel
Jim Caviezel was driving home from filming
“Frequency” in New York City when he got a telephone call
about doing “X-men” as his next movie. “My wife said, ‘Forget
about that movie’” and do “Madison” instead, he
said.
“I take her opinion seriously,” he said. “It was
a very good script. It takes a long time to find a good
script.”
What sold him on it was the story, he
said.
He recalled another Indiana movie that had
influenced him, “Hoosiers.”
“I remember Siskel and
Ebert in ‘86-’87, I was a senior in high school. They were
talking about the movie.” Caviezel’s high school basketball
team was at the state semifinals, and he and the other team
members were shown the film for inspiration. “We believed we
could beat them and we did,” Caviezel said. “The problem was,
the team we played the next game saw the movie,
too.
“It was hardly a basketball movie. It’s a film
that has endured and always will. The same thing goes for this
movie. The story is about us, you see, and American dreams. In
this country you can make anything in your life.” And the
movie was about the family. “It touched me,” he
said.
Caviezel said the “Madison” story lines reminded
him that even when there is a lot of sadness, “it’s important
not to turn and walk away. They were down and out, and it (the
boat) wasn’t going to work out.” It’s a movie “where the most
valuable information came from the losses and the struggles.
...Without the losses and struggles there’s no
character-building.”
“Madison” was filmed before “The
Passions of the Christ,” which catapulted Caviezel into
worldwide recognition and fame.
He got to talk twice
with the recently deceased Pope John Paul II — once during
filming and once after, and received a “well-done” compliment
along with advice. “John Paul said, ‘You have a
responsibility. You can make evil look good and good look
evil’.” The pope also told him, Caviezel said, “Americans need
to understand choice is not doing the things you want but
having the freedom to do what you want.”
Caviezel flew
over with President Bush and the official U.S. delegation to
attended the pontiffs funeral.
One of his meetings with
the pope lasted 10 minutes. A reporter remarked that “10
minutes with a pope is a long time.”
“Yeah,” Caviezel
said. “That’s a lot of time with Jesus, too.”
Caviezel
said he still suffers and always will with shoulder pain
caused by hypothermia from being exposed to high, cold winds
on the cross in the “Passions” movie. The hypothermia also
gave him “big-time gray hairs,” he said.
Hypothermia,
which is dangerous chilling of the body, caused Caviezel to
become so cold that he could not get warm. A heating pad for
his shoulder was so hot his wife could not sleep in the same
bed, he said.
Up on the cross, Caviezel would get numb.
“Once I started getting numb I couldn’t breathe,” he
said.
He also was struck by lightning during filming of
“Passion.”
The way that family was handled in “Madison”
appealed to Caviezel. Some family films, he said, are
“sugar-coated...sentimental hogwash,” he said. “The good ones
are great but you don’t have to pander.” He places “Madison”
in the good-ones category.
“When I look for material, I
look for something that has redeemable value,” he
said.
At the Sundance Film Festival, “Madison” was
shown but wasn’t in competition. The Sundance audiences are “a
ruthless group,” Caviezel said. But they gave “Madison” a
standing ovation. The movie moves people, he said.
“It
does something to your heart.”
Paul
Dooley
The Bindley brothers loved Paul Dooley as
the father in “Breaking Away,” so when they wrote “Madison”
they knew who would play Mayor Vaughn.
“They wrote the
part for me years before,” Dooley said.
He was born and
grew up on the Ohio River in Parkersburg, W. Va., “so this
feels like my hometown.”
“I love the atmosphere of any
of these small towns, especially on the river.”
He has
written a movie about growing up there, but hasn’t sold
it.
Dooley said that getting ready for his role didn’t
take long. “I wish that I could say that it took months of
preparation,” he said. “After 50 years of
acting...”
|
Reader Comments
Posted: Tuesday, April 19,
2005
Article comment by:
Alan
Stewart
Interesting
piece. One correction that needs to be made, though. The movie
Mr. Caviezel starred in was titled, "The Passion Of The
Christ." Not "The Passions" ... it's singular.
http://www.thepassionofthechrist.com/splash.htm
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