HOME PAGE SYNOPSIS TRAILER STILLSProduction Notes (3)“Alan, to me, is one of the greatest actors in the world, and there’s nothing he can’t do.” He has “such subtlety and such intelligence and he’s quite dry in that sort of withering way that Alan has and (has) great irony … I feel really spoiled to be working with him again. “The dynamic between Alex and Linda is such an interesting one because he’s roamed the world and she’s always been in this house and this backyard and this little town. But I think in an odd way, they kind of surprise and give each other so much. She learns a lot from Alex and he learns a lot from her. It becomes a very interesting kind of ‘odd couple’ situation for them.” The last piece of the casting puzzle was the role of Maggie. And that came together, again, through a happy coincidence. The producers had sent the script to CALLUM KEITH RENNIE (BLADE: TRINITY, WHISKEY ECHO and the upcoming POOL HALL PROPHETS with Ving Rhames) - who plays John Neil in the film - through his agent Elizabeth Hodgson. Hodgson loved the script and thought there was a role that would be a perfect fit for another one of her clients – CARRIE-ANNE MOSS. Fichman says: “Those are the magical times, when you get a call from someone like Carrie-Anne Moss’ agent who says ‘she read your script and was wondering if you’d consider her.’ You kind of go whooooaaa! Those are magical moments. This particular project was blessed with not one, not two but three of them. Three amazing actors who are all great and generous, beautiful people and great artists.” In art as in life, the news is not always good. The financing of the film proved to be an ongoing challenge and the constant delays meant the snow was melting in Wawa. But those were concerns that Fichman and company tried hard to keep away from the cast so they could focus on their characters. Fichman says, “My role I guess is to kind of make sure that the actual core of the film, which to me is the script and the creative process, is as protected as possible from the outside, financial turmoil. I see my job as making sure that the artists working on the film have as much - to the best of my ability - comfort and space, the mental and emotional space, to feel as free as possible because what they have to do is so hard anyway.” The ‘mental and emotional space’ Fichman speaks of was an invaluable commodity for Sigourney Weaver in particular. She devoted nearly a year to reading about and researching autism, spending days at an institute that specialized in working with autistic people. She even lived with one woman with autism for a number of days to observe her behaviour. “I feel relieved that our production was postponed,” Weaver says, “because in the end, I had almost a year to research this and I really needed that much (time).” Weaver says the temptation to generalize about autism, a condition that has so many gradations and nuances that it’s referred to as a ‘spectrum’, is something she consciously resisted, in part due to the extraordinary people she met during her research. She discovered that people with autism have a huge range of feelings, that someone with Aspergers may want to socialize with people while others on the other end of the spectrum prefer to be alone. It was crucial to her to get it right, but it wasn’t easy. “I just think often when you’re with someone on the spectrum, what they present to you is quite different from the way they are in private. This woman (she studied) was generous enough to let me see both sides, or all the sides,” foibles and all. In Linda’s case, these quirks manifest in various ways, including pathological control over the state of cleanliness in her kitchen, a fear of taking out the garbage and a general disdain of, and indifference to, the people in her midst. “She (Linda) was refreshingly frank, she is very straightforward, up front about her feelings about things, (and) I think looks down on neuro-typical people as people who waste a lot of time with all this social rubbish.” |