hazeleyes
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| Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 5:32 pm Post subject: Conn Post Review of RR |
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 Conn Post Review of RR
'Reservation Road' plays true to setting
JOE MEYERS jmeyers@ctpost.com
Many critics have not been kind to the new Fairfield County-set movie "Reservation Road," opening nationally Friday, but a packed house cheered the film at a special advance screening in Stamford earlier this week.
The Avon Theatre hosted the state premiere of the Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo drama that was shot largely in the Stamford area, but also includes several key sequences filmed around the Bluebird Cafe in Easton.
"Even knowing as much as I did about the movie, I got choked up," said Stamford actor and director Lou Ursone, who worked throughout the shoot last fall, as Ruffalo's stand-in and also helped the producers cast some of the extras who were used in the movie.
"Reservation Road" begins with a hit-and-run accident near the Easton cafe and then follows the grief-stricken family of the dead boy and the guilt-ridden man who fails to stop at the accident scene.
Ruffalo plays the hit-and-run driver and Phoenix is the father of the accident victim.
The movie is based on a critically acclaimed 1998 novel by John Burnham Schwartz, who attended the Stamford screening to talk about the long process of getting his book on the screen.
Schwartz said he and the filmmakers have been surprised by some of the more negative reviews "Reservation Road" received when it debuted in New York and Los Angeles last week.
The film is part of a wave of very serious movies opening in the early fall that have — by and large — produced disappointing ticket sales.
The kidnapping drama "Gone Baby Gone;" two post 9/11 political stories, "In the Valley of Elah" and "Rendition"; and the business corruption thriller "Michael Clayton" have all failed to get adult audiences out of their homes and into theaters in significant numbers.
"I've been on the road with the film for the past six weeks, starting with a gala screening in Toronto, and I've seen how deeply the movie has affected audiences," Schwartz said of "Reservation Road."
The novelist worked on the screenplay for several years, but the final version of the script was put together by the director, Terry George, who made major changes in the original narrative.
George heightened the suspense aspects of the story by having the two men meet much earlier in the narrative.
Schwartz grew up in New York City, but visited Connecticut often as a child.
The author's godparents had a home in Salisbury and he attended a private school in Wallingford.
In one of many changes made in "Reservation Road" on its way to the screen, the setting was shifted from northwest Connecticut to Fairfield County.
The writer's publisher, Random House, has launched a new film division with "Reservation Road."
"I think it's a very good idea," Schwartz said of book companies becoming more actively involved in film production.
"They couldn't be more enthusiastic about the movie," the author said of Random House, which is reissuing the novel this month in both mass-market and trade paperback editions (Schwartz has a new novel, "The Commoner," that will be published in January).
"The idea is that the movie helps promote the book and the book promotes the movie," Schwartz said of the three-year deal between Random House and Focus Features (the same company that produced and released the movie version of the Annie Proulx story "Brokeback Mountain" two years ago).
For Ursone — who runs Stamford's Curtain Call Theater — last year's filming of "Reservation Road" was a chance to observe the director of "Hotel Rwanda" and actors he admired for the nine weeks the company was in Connecticut.
"As soon as I heard who was involved, I was interested," Ursone said of juggling his theater job and the movie. "And the fact that they were filming it right here in Stamford made it perfect." As Ruffalo's stand-in, Ursone worked on every one of the actor's scenes.
A stand-in allows the actor time to prepare his characterization — and preserve his energy — while the lighting and camera movements are set.
"It was really terrific to be in there with the director on every scene and then to watch him work with Mark, who couldn't have been nicer," Ursone reported.
"I've been a fan of Mark's for so long — I saw him on Broadway in 'Awake and Sing!' a few years ago — so to watch him creating every nuance of a character was a thrill," he added.
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