| The
Safety of Objects
Unlike
most scripts that are either adapted from a written source or drawn
out of a screenwriter's imagination, THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS was inspired
by numerous short stories as well as the real-life suburban experience
of writer/director Rose Troche.
It
was writer A.M. Homes' critically acclaimed short stories that filmmaker
Rose Troche fell in love with. Recognizing a common thread, she
was inspired to write a script incorporating them into a single
narrative. This proved to be challenging due to the fact that the
seven stories chosen by Troche had different characters, took place
at different moments in time, in different settings. Troche not
only wanted to merge these characters and story lines into four
families, but also into a unified story to entwine their lives.
It
took Troche a year and a half to combine the stories into one fluid
tale. "It was like shuffling a deck of cards and every single
time I would try to consolidate more and more until it felt like
one story rather than a bunch of little disparate stories,"
recalls Troche.
When
it came to finding producers to help bring her script to life, Troche
turned to the two women who had produced her previous films. Christine
Vachon of Killer Films executive produced Troche's directorial debut,
Go Fish and Dorothy Berwin of InFilm Productions produced Troche's
second film, Bedrooms and Hallways. After working on Troche's first
film, Vachon had wanted to work with her on a bigger project. "Go
Fish was an incredibly innovative film, that showed a lot of passion
and a lot of moxy," states Vachon. "With very little means
the film had real visual panache so I knew that given a bigger budget
Rose would grow exponentially."
For
Troche there was also the perplexing task of choosing one main theme.
"The challenge was to pick what THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS was going
to be about - what sort of journey do all these characters have
in common?" Troche realized that the characters "have
invested their emotions, their sense of self in the wrong things
- that they have come to define themselves either by the things
around them or by their job. During the film the characters learn
that they need to redefine themselves in order to keep going...to
live."
Unlike
many recent portrayals of suburbia by Hollywood, Troche did not
want to villain-ize the suburbs nor did she want the audience to
become like voyeurs looking into the lives of four families. Rather
she wanted them to feel intimately connected with the characters
- even if they did not condone their actions. "These characters
have so many different motivations. They bring everything to their
lives - who they were, who they will be and who they are now. I
think when we see that, we see a character who can do messed up
things but that doesn't necessarily make them a bad person,"
says Troche.
With
such real and profound characters plus such a witty and moving script,
Troche was able to attract some of Hollywood's finest actors, one
of them being Glenn Close. Although having an extremely busy year
shooting in London and Australia, Close knew Troche's script was
not something to let pass. Close was attracted to the character
of Esther Gold, a wife and mother whose tragedy began a year earlier
when her son was in a car crash. Now nursing her comatose son at
home, Esther isolates herself from her family, her emotions and
her grief. "I like it when characters are multifaceted and
don't always behave as we think they should. I think in many ways
Esther's struggle is the most moving aspect of the movie and I think
she does what she does at the end to save her family."
When
it came to casting Jim Train, Troche knew that it had to be Dermot
Mulroney. He was her first and only choice. Mulroney was drawn to
the script for many reasons but he particularly liked how the different
elements sparred with each other. "In the script the humor
is played against more tragic scenes. This, I think, gives a wide
array of emotional impact as well as being funny. I mean, it's a
strange movie, and that's what I love about it."
"What
Rose has done is cast instinctively," says producer Dorothy
Berwin. "The actors actually are the characters - they are
as close to their characters in real life as you could imagine.
I think the casting is extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary."
Rounding off the cast is Jessica Campbell as Julie Gold, Moira Kelly
as Susan Train, Robert Klein as Howard Gold and Joshua Jackson as
Paul Gold.
Weaving
together this exceptional cast with a complex script, writer/director
Rose Troche has created a darkly humorous tapestry - a poignant
drama that quietly asks, "What do you put your trust? What
makes you feel safe?"
|
