Author: OZ
Date: 09-03-05 20:43
It seems a little inappropriate to be talking about entertainment when people are suffering in Louisiana. I just want to say that the thoughts of people all over the world are with the victims and I hope that their distress will soon be relieved.
The Post:
It’s just over two months since we first heard Home of the Giants mentioned on these boards. In late June, Fair posted a news report from a Terre-Haute paper saying that Haley was attached to the project but that the story by Indiana writer/director Rusty Gorman could be filmed in North Carolina. Two days later Fair turned up another story from the Greensboro NC News&Record stating that the production, with Haley, was coming to the Greensboro home base of independent filmmaker Sympics International. I’m as anxious as anyone to see him on screen again and I really wanted it to be true. But days and weeks passed with no official announcement from KA and nothing in the trade press and I began to have doubts. Could film-struck lawyer and Sympics principal L Charles Grimes be talking up the project before he had actual signatures on contracts? All became clear in mid July. Haley travelled all the way to the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy where he announced his new film in person, followed shortly thereafter by stories in the trades.
I clearly remember the year of Secondhand Lions when we spent many months finding and posting news about the production and the filmmakers. That was the first medium budget feature for writer/director Tim McCanlies but we came to know him quite well through some lengthy interviews he gave. Now we can start all over again with Home of the Giants.
So, what do we know about Rusty Gorman? Not much if we stop at IMDB where his sole previous credit is “director: marine unit” on the independent 2001 pic Madison. That was a based-on-a-true-story hydroplane-racing movie financed by a consortium of Chicago investors. Written by William (Bill) and Scott Bindley, it was directed by Bill with the boat racing sequences directed and largely shot by Rusty Gorman. It was also Jake Lloyds first acting job after Star Wars Ep.1 and had Haley co-star Jim Caviezel in the lead. Madison went to the January 2001 Sundance Film Festival, then sat on the shelf for over four years. For reasons that can be guessed at, its backers could not secure a distribution deal. And poor Jake Lloyd’s acting career seemed to sink along with the movie. The film eventually got a limited theatrical opening in April 2005, and will be released on DVD on September 13 2005.
Haley could sympathise with the troubles surrounding Madison. He's been through it himself.
IMDB often does not have the whole story. Some convoluted web-crawling reveals that Bill Bindley and Rusty Gorman are 1984 graduates of Northwestern University film school in Chicago/Evanston. Just after graduation, they collaborated on a sports themed short film. Technically, they were no longer students but the professor turned a tolerantly blind eye to their use of film school equipment while the two friends crashed on the dorm room floor of Bill’s freshman brother Scott. They took the finished short to a couple of festivals, won both and secured an agent on the strength of it.
They apparently pursued separate careers, though their paths crossed on projects such as Miracle Beach (1992) where they are both credited as associate producers.
It seems that Rusty would do anything because his name turns up in a 1996 dentists magazine as owner of a production company making promotional videos for dentistry practices. His father Jack was a dentist widely respected in the profession. I wonder if Rusty will take an interest in Haley’s teeth once they get together on set?
RUSTY: What lovely teeth you have. False?
HALEY: No, it’s perfectly true. They are lovely teeth.
In 1993 and 1994 he worked as production manager on three short comic films directed by Chris Elliott who is better known as an actor. A certain Jon Felson was assistant director. Felson and Gorman would team up as screenwriters.
This is how Felson tells it on www.writersbootcamp.com
“After film school, I began directing television commercials. Six years into productions, I found myself filming a sport sandal commercial in the Grand Canyon. I turned to Rusty Gorman, my producing partner (eventual writing partner), and asked, “We’re not makin’ movies, are we?” He shot back, “Nope, we’re selling shoes.” That was it! We went back to LA and wrote King Bee. We spent the next couple of years learning to write. (I took Writers Boot Camp in here) You have to write a lot of bad scripts before you learn how to write a good one. We wrote Food of the Gods with input from Jonathan Mostow. (Director: Terminator III, U-571). We learned a lot from him. This represented another big turning point.”
King Bee was based on a short story by novelist T.C.Boyle. Back in May 2000, industry buzz had it set for production but it did not go ahead. Similarly, the remake of H.G.Wells’s Food of the Gods has not happened yet.
The Felson/Gorman team next pop up in June 2004 with news that Columbia Pictures has bought their pitch for a ghost story called Ghost Story. It concerns the 11-year-old son of a newly inaugurated President who sees ghosts in the White House. Trouble is, it sounds like West Wing meets Sixth Sense meets First Kid. We won’t really know until it’s made which isn’t on the horizon at present.
Then January 2005 brought word that Cinergi Pictures Entertainment had bought their story entitled No Quarter Given. Sounds like a man who is mean to panhandlers but it is really about the US Olympic Rugby Team of 1924 and their Gold Medal victory over the highly fancied French team. Did everyone know that the USA is currently the Olympic Rugby football champion? It’s true. Although 1924 was the last year that Rugby was an Olympic sport….
There’s no more word about No Quarter Given either. However, of all the screenplays sold, only a fraction are produced and it is quite possible to scratch a living as a screenwriter while never getting a credit for a produced script. Tim McCanlies had great affection for his Secondhand Lions story because he sold it a couple of times before finally getting the chance to direct it himself.
Rusty Gorman is in a similar position. He also seems to be a seasoned writer, now in his early forties and he is finally getting the chance to direct an actual feature with a real budget and a full sized crew. Best of all, it’s his own story. Maybe we will find out how long the story has been cooking. Perhaps for quite a while as sports seem to be a recurring theme in his work right from his student short with Bill Bindley. I hope that Rusty will talk about this over the next year or so.
If Haley has chosen this independent project after several years of “looking at scripts” there must be something about the story that captured his attention. I can even imagine that his character is a bit like him, a basketball loving high schooler that never grew quite tall enough to make it in high school competition but keeps in contact with the game, and his heroes by becoming a school sports reporter.
With production starting very soon, I wish him the best of luck and hope he has a lot of fun.
OZ
I'm tired of chasing my dreams. I think I'll just ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Post Edited (09-03-05 23:33)
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