A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2004)
Release Date:
23 July 2004
Independent Films / Warner Bros.
View the trailer at Gay.com.
and at Movie-list.com
Read info at :Home At End of the World DVD Notes and Videos
Plot:
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Hours" comes a story that chronicles a dozen years in the lives of two best friends who couldn't be more different. From suburban Cleveland in the 60s, to New York City in the 80s, where they meet an older woman, the film charts a journey of trials, triumphs, loves and losses. Now the question is: can they navigate the unusual triangle they've created and hold their friendship together?
Cast/Crew:
Written by: Keith Bunin, Michael Cunningham (novel) Michael Cunningham (screenplay)
Directed by: Michael Mayer
Starring:
Colin Farrell .... Bobby Morrow
Robin Wright Penn .... Clare
Sissy Spacek .... Alice Glover
Dallas Roberts .... Jonathan Glover
Notes:
~this story was reported on many news/entertainment sites:
Farrell's film nude scene axed
A nude scene featuring Colin Farrell has been cut from upcoming movie A Home At The End Of The World because the actor is "too well hung", The Sun reports today.
Apparently the naked scenes featuring the Irish bad boy caused such a stir amongst test audiences that the director decided to leave them out of the film altogether.
A source told the tabloid: "All you could hear were gasps when Colin appeared in his full-frontal pose. The women were over-excited and the men looked really uncomfortable. It was such a sight it made it difficult to concentrate on the plot, so the decision was made to get rid of it."
Director Michael Mayer admitted that it was "distracting" but added that fans would still be able to see the original scene on the DVD version of the film.
It's then another major change of tack for (Colin) Farrell as he's agreed to cut back his now usual $8 million asking price for indie film A Home at the End of the World. Directed by theatre veteran Michael Mayer and based on the first novel by Michael Cunningham – whose book also inspired Stephen Daldrey's new effort with Nicole Kidman The Hours - the film follows two boyhood friends who reunite after college and form a, shall we say, rather unusual relationship with an older woman. Farrell's character, Bobby, falls in love with the mature lady which subsequently puts a kaibosh on his gay mate's plan to father her child. Well, we did say it was an indie flick. - EmpireOnline.com
Rookie Filmmaker Has 'World' in Hand After 34 Days
Wed May 28, 2003 03:42 AM ET By Nicole Sperling
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - You think you're busy?Talk to Michael Mayer, theater director of the Tony Award-winning production "Thoroughly Modern Millie," who just wrapped his Warner Bros. feature directorial debut, "A Home at the End of the World."
Now,in between directing the national touring company of "Millie," the director will edit his cinematic adaptation of "The Hours" author Michael Cunningham's novel of the same name -- after spending 34 days shooting the production in Toronto, Arizona and New York.
Mayer blames the swiftly paced film schedule -- which required his crew to dress locations for three different decades on a very small budget -- on his not knowing any better.
"Ignorance is everything in this case," Mayer says. "I didn't know we couldn't do it, so we did it. I could not have been luckier to have the group I had."
That group, in addition to the A-list cast of Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn and Sissy Spacek, included production designer Michael Shaw, best known for his work on such independent films as "You Can Count on Me" and "Boys Don't Cry." The film centers on two boys who develop a close friendship that lasts decades and truly forms when they come together in their 20s in New York.
Shaw and his various crews found locations in Toronto, New York and Arizona to double for 1967, 1973 and 1982. Some of the most challenging included finding a 1960s-style house in a run-down neighborhood in Toronto adjacent to a cemetery. The setting was to double for Cleveland. After searching high and low, the crew found such a house next to a park, which they transformed into their graveyard.
"Toronto is like mining for gold," Shaw says. "You look and look and look and you find things that are just OK. Then if you just keep going you wind up finding that perfect thing."
According to Mayer, the film never even considered going to Cleveland to film its period piece. Because of the very limited budget, Mayer concluded that the crew needed to go to one location where it could do most of its shoot.
"Toronto doesn't have a single identity and can incorporate into many different environments," Mayer says. "It's also a film-friendly environment. I'd love to go back there. The crew was phenomenal."
But the project did cross the Canadian border. Four days were spent in Arizona, filming scenes set during the early '80s, and two days were spent in New York filming at 10 locations. Both Mayer and Shaw attribute their relatively problem-free shoot partly to the slowdown in the economy.
"Home" received some of the top crews in both New York and Toronto because of the lighter production both cities are experiencing. So how was it to work with a Broadway director on his first film? To Shaw it was an absolute pleasure.
"I think everybody on the crew fell in love with him, partly because he has a strong vision and an intuitive sense of what's important," Shaw says. "To me, that makes the difference between a real director and not. He also knew the material inside and out but let everybody do their own job."
An
End of the World Set Report
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 12:13 CDT
Command Entertainment shared with us this report from the Toronto set of Warner Bros.' A Home at the End of the World.
I just worked on the set of "A Home At The End Of The World", a Leaving Cleveland Inc. Production, Day 27, Tuesday, May 13, 2003.
I was among 20 background 'cafe eaters' for an interior scene that was filmed at a small restaurant on Toronto's Queen Street east (near Greenwood). Our holding area and crew lunch was at a former motorcycle dealership.
A lot of stars were on set throughout the shooting day including lead Colin Farrell who plays 'Bobby', Sissy Spacek as 'Alice', Robin Wright Penn as 'Clare' and Matt Frewer (the original 'Max Headroom') as 'Ned'.
The scene I was in had a tall, clean-shaven Colin Farrell (no goatee this time around) in a casual t-shirt and jeans working behind the bar in small, rustic restaurant, handling a big knife, while expertly preparing some food on a plate. The guy is well-rehearsed and made the crew laugh fondly a number of times.
Directed by Michael Mayer who produced and directed a 1998 film called "The Robber", the most interesting item on the "A Home At The End Of The World" call-sheet was the name 'Tom Hulce' listed as the first of six producers for the film. I believe this is the same man that played mad Mozart for director Milos Forman in "Amadeus" and voiced 'Quasimodo' for Disney's "Hunchback".
Talking to some of the crew, I heard that the next 2 days of shooting will include 'Yasgur's Farm', an interior of a 'Punk Club', an interior of a 'New York' bar, and an interior/exterior of the 'Altitude Bakery'. The crew travels to Phoenix on Sunday May 18.
Thanks to 'Michael'.
Reviews:
A Home at the End of the World Review
July 1st, 2004
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten Warner Independent Pictures
Grade: B+
Screened at: Review, NYC, 6/30/04
The biggest decision one can make in this life is not your choice of marriage partner, not your job, not even how many kids you opt to have. The most important judgment you can make is your choice of parents. If you choose a pair of folks who are happy with each other, preferably with money and, most important, with good genes, you've probably got it made. You will have the foundation for joy and success and love. Choose the wrong parents and you're likely to be, well, to be not so lucky. In Michael Mayer's "A Home at the End of the World," scripted by Michael Cunningham from his novel of the same name, Bobby Morrow (Andrew Chalmers as a nine-year-old) doesn't really have bad parents–in fact he has a brother that any kid would five up his X-Box to have. It's just that his sib dies in a freakish accident, his mother passes away when he's young, and he discovers his father lying awfully still in bed on one sunny morning. What's a poor kid to do?
He gets a second chance to determine his background. From the time that Bobby (now played by Erik Smith at age fifteen) begins to nurture a friendship with a geeky kid in high school named Dallas Roberts (Harris Allan at age fifteen), he re-starts his career as a teen with another family, one he can call virtually his own. He is embraced as one of her own by Jonathan's mom, Alice (Sissy Spacek), and no wonder: he introduces the prim and proper woman to the joys of marijuana, which she smokes almost eagerly at first with her two boys, and the three dance about the room in the most delightful scene in this film.
In "A Home at the End of the World," director Mayer spends most of his ninety-five minutes with Bobby at age twenty-four (Colin Farrell), who is appropriately advised by Alice to cut his long, hippie-ish hair since, after all, it's now 1982 and he's too handsome to hide behind his locks. Most important he meets Jonathan's girlfriend, Clare (Robin Wright Penn), a free spirit with flaming red hair whose relationship with Jonathan is complex considering that Bobby's friend is gay.
The film is a lovely adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham, whose "The Hours" was made into a pic that captured Oscar's attention, and is deserving of the tagline "family can be whatever you want it to be." We are taken through typical family problems, for example the friction created when Bobby steals Jonathan's girl, but we see that on the whole Bobby and Jonathan both luck out. He has become inseparable from his best friend, he achieves stability from his adoptive mom, and by contrast he is opened up to a new world from the attentions of the unconventional Clare.
The acting ensemble is just fine. Sissy Spacek is her usual charming self, ageless it seems, while Colin Farrell expands his repertory in the role of a 24-year-old who, through his new family, gains both the strength and the passion that he'd not have been afforded without the love of family.Rated R. 95 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten at harveycritic@cs.com
Julius on THE HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD with Colin Farrell Hey folks, Harry here... well here's something you don't hear about often... a new Colin Farrell movie! What, it's been 2 weeks? What is this... number 45 this year? Heh... I swear he's got to be the hardest working actor that has a reputation for hijinks aplenty around. Well, this sounds like a damn fine film. Here ya go, check it out... focus group screening of "the home at the end of the world"
Hi Harry,
Here goes:
Last night I saw what was evidently the first screening of "The Home at the End of the World", starring Colin Ferrell, Robin Wright Penn, Sissy Spacek and newcomer Dallas (Porter?), directed by first timer Michael Mayer (?) (They took my info sheet, so all the names are from memory). Screenplay by Michael Cunningham, based on his novel. Michael Cunningham is the Pulitzer prize winning author of "The Hours".
I don't want to get too much into the story, because, even though this cut of the film felt mostly complete, it appears that a major character from the novel was not in this version of the film, but filmed (one could tell by the crossed out name on the survey sheets we filled out in response to the movie). I believe there may be a version of this film where this subplot exists and that this version may be tested too. It's possible that what I saw may still see much change.
However what I saw was excellent. This was Colin Farrell as I've never even dared to imagine him, sweet, confused, sexually open and natural, crying poignantly when first making love to a woman, dancing playfully with his close male friend and kissing him sensually on the mouth. Oh and yes, there was full frontal Colin without a stitch on. I wish for the sake of women and men everywhere that that makes it into the final cut.
As the previous paragraph suggests, the film deals with sexual and romantic boundary crossing - as seen through the prism of the 60's, where the Colin Farrell character is 9, the 70's, where he is in high school, played effectively by a Colin Farrell look-alike and the early 80's, enter Colin. Dalls P. (?) plays his close friends, a substitute for the brother he lost, Sissy Spacek pays the friend's mother, Robin Wright Penn, their close friend, with whom the friends create a romantically and sexually fluid and ambiguous menage a trois. There is also drug experimentation and tragic accidents, a lot of it disturbing or "out there" but handled in a believable way. Alot of people in the focus group attested to the fact that although some of the scenes in the movie depicted situations unusual and startling for mainstream US movies, they felt real and were recognizable to many of us.
What is lovely about the film is how it depicts many ways to experience love, belonging, sexuality, without sensationalising what may read sensational on paper, without simplifying or categorizing. Affection, sex, love, attraction are fluid elements between which clear boundaries aren't set by the filmmakers. Through that approach they manage to create extremely specific relationships between the characters that will remind many in the audience of platonic, romantic, sexual connections of their life, especially adolescence and early adulthood.
The performers are all wonderful. Colin Farrell is all sweetness, sensitivity, sensuality, with a sense of a soul scared to be left alone, Penn is excellent, a bit like the wild times Jenny from Forest Gump without the selfdestructiveness, Dallas P. (?) is perfect as a very specific kind of gay man, handsome, nerdy, insecure, playful, he is very recognisable without resorting to anything stereotypical or obvious. Sissy Spacek is sublime. Just sublime. I don't know how to explain it without detailing plot points that I don't think would be right for me to divulge here.
Finally, I hope the film sees the light of commercial day in as good a shape or better than I saw it. There is much that is bold and disconforming-for-the-mall-crowd in it, but I thought it was lovely and really appreciated its depiction of relationships, love and sexuality that felt so true but is so unlike the mainstream movie perspective on these matters. Happily most of the people in the focus group interviewed after the film screening rated the film "excellent" or "very good", a few said "good", one said "fair", none said "poor".
I suppose a look at Cunningham's novel, which I don't know, would give the plot of the movie. But as I said, this screening left out a major subplot and character, evidently, and anyway, this is a film that bears experiencing without knowing where it's going beforehand, because the characters are so unique and surprising.
Thanks,
Julius