http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/details/payitforward.html
http://payitforward.warnerbros.com/Pay_It_Forward/
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=4579&s=Interviews
http://hollywoodmovie.about.com/library/weekly/aa101700a.htm
 

Directed by:
Written by:
Music by:

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Budget: $ million
Box-Office: $ million in the U.S., $ million worldwide
Rentals: $ million in the U.S.
 
 

At the time of Deep Impact’s release, director Mimi Leder said: "I'm not going to [get pigeonholed]. Therefore, it's very important for me, for my next movie, not to do an action movie, not to do a movie with effects. And I won't."

Eugene Osment, who plays the mustachioed cop giving directions, is Haley Joel Osment's father and acting coach.

The overhead shot of the wounded Trevor is almost identical to the overhead shot of the wounded Dr. Crowe at the beginning of The Sixth Sense (1999), even down to the position of the injury. Both films star Haley Joel Osment.
 

As much as young actor Haley Joel Osment responded to the material, he was equally attracted to the chance of working with Spacey and Hunt.  “I love watching them do scenes,” Osment says.  “I’ve learned so much just watching them.”

        Since the relationship between Eugene, Arlene and Trevor was the key to making the film work, director Leder was inspired by how Osment held his own with the two Oscar-winning stars. “Haley went toe-to-toe with Helen and Kevin and challenged them both,” says Leder.  “He’s a truly amazing and very, very honest actor with a knowledge and maturity far greater than his years.  He brought tremendous dignity and honesty to the character of Trevor.  He thinks and feels every
word he speaks.”

        Rock star and actor Jon Bon Jovi ("U-571") jumped at the opportunity to join the cast of "Pay It Forward" as Ricky, Trevor's deadbeat dad.  "I was willing to fight for the role and to be in the company of Kevin, Helen and Haley, let alone Angie Dickinson and everyone else," he says.  "Just to be part of this film, with this caliber of actor, was an amazing experience for me."

        Similarly, Jay Mohr muses, “the script was just great.  I originally read for the part of the homeless guy Trevor brings off the street [played in the film by Jim Caviezel]. But a couple of days later, Mimi called and asked if I was interested in another role.  I was thrilled anyway, because the part I got has more lines.  But, honestly, there really isn’t a bad role in this film.”

        Angie Dickinson, legendary star of countless film classics and the landmark series “Police Woman,” felt liberated by the opportunity to play the disheveled, alcoholic street person, Grace. “It has taken me this long to get to play a really non-glamorous character,” says Dickinson.  “I’ve tried for roles that were a bit non-Angie-ish before, but I didn’t get them.  Shirley MacLaine, Faye Dunaway or Jane Fonda would get them.  But I’m older now and ripe, so I can do anything.  It’s fun.  It’s a shocker.”

        As much as Dickinson craved a rich character part, she found herself somewhat hesitant at first.  “I was apprehensive about the role because it required me to look god-awful,” Dickinson confesses.  “I was telling my friend Gregory Peck about it and he was ashamed of me for thinking I might not want to do it.  He really helped me to feel that it would be okay to just look as awful and true to the character as possible.  He was right: This role is a great jumping off point for me to be able to play all the good dramatic roles that my glamour-puss image has worked against.”

“I made her read two times for it,” says Leder. “I should be shot.  I know she thinks it’s because I wanted to see what she looked like, but it was because this was such a different role from anything she’d ever done.  Or anything I’ve ever seen her in.”

        According to Leder, Dickinson more than delivered.  “She dug deep,” says the director.  “She is real and honest, just fantastic.  Everyone on this set is in love with Angie Dickinson.”

        When the time came to determine a location for the film, Leder decided to take the film to Las Vegas.  “Las Vegas was perfect in many ways,” says Leder.  “The script immediately said desert to me with several of these characters, especially Helen Hunt’s, on the edge, barely holding on to their world.  When we scouted, Las Vegas offered every contrast you could imagine between the haves and have-nots, between the harsh reality of our characters’ world and the fantasy oasis of a perfect life.”

        Leder took full advantage of the Las Vegas backdrop, frequently designing shots to accentuate the contrasts. When the design team created a homeless camp on the outskirts of the city near Mandalay Bay Road, where Trevor (Osment) meets Jerry (Caviezel), Leder shot it so that the pyramid-shaped Luxor, the skyline of New York, New York and the southern part of the Las Vegas Strip rises mightily in back of the garbage-strewn camp.  Similarly, Eugene’s (Spacey) modest apartment and Arlene’s (Hunt) tract home both show glittering Las Vegas in the background, shimmering like a desert mirage.

        Centennial High School was chosen for Eugene and Trevor’s school for its location outside the city, about 30 miles northwest of Las Vegas, near Red Rock.  For  Leder and production designer Les Dilley, who teamed previously with Leder on “The Peacemaker” and “Deep Impact,” its relatively remote location was the perfect metaphor for the film’s isolated characters and complex emotional relationships.

        Dilley describes the landscape as “rock garden barren -- on the edge of nothing.  Unfinished sidewalks and roads leading nowhere.  You get the sense of hanging on the edge, struggling to hold on.”

        School was in session during the two weeks of filming.  More than 125 students and a dozen teachers and administrators worked as extras for the film, with cast and crew timing their scenes in the hallways and parking lot between the period bells.  Hundreds of middle and high school students often watched Spacey, Hunt and Osment in scenes before running off to their next class.

        Numerous locations in the heart of Las Vegas were also used, including the Royal Motel on Las Vegas Boulevard, the All American Sports Park, the Oasis Apartments, the towering Stratosphere on the Strip, as well as the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino and the Union Plaza Hotel and Casino. Cast and crew also shot on streets along the Glitter Gulch, including canopied
pedestrian mall known as the Fremont Experience. The nightly laser light show played in the background during filming of a scene at the Union Plaza Hotel’s fishbowl-shaped Center Stage restaurant where Eugene and Arlene have their first date.

        “Las Vegas is hard to beat for interesting visuals,” says Oliver Stapleton, director of photography.  “It’s over the top in terms of color, clutter and light. We contrasted it with a gray-blue palette of colors for Eugene’s apartment, which is neat, but dreary and shows he has little aspiration to brighten his life or live in an environment that’s comfortable.  Here is a man who has been shunned by so many people for how he looks.  He avoids anything flashy in an effort to maintain a low profile.”

        The character Eugene’s low profile was in stark contrast to that of the actor Kevin Spacey’s during production.  The week principal photography began in Las Vegas in February 2000, Spacey and his 11-year-old co-star, Haley Joel Osment, found themselves in the spotlight as they and their films were nominated for numerous Academy Awards. Spacey, who previously won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “The Usual Suspects,” was nominated for Best Actor for his work in “American Beauty,” while Osment’s performance in “The Sixth Sense” nabbed him a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  Spacey went on to win his second Academy Award as the film also took home the coveted Best Picture Oscar.

        “The Oscars were a lot of fun,” said Osment, who celebrated his 12th birthday on his final day of shooting “Pay It Forward.”  “But since we started filming the same week, I was mostly focused on this film.  It was good because it gave me something else to concentrate on.”

        At the conclusion of filming in Las Vegas, the production moved to Los Angeles. First up were scenes in Eugene’s classroom from Centennial High School, which had been duplicated on a stage at The Lot (formerly Warner Hollywood).  While several scenes were shot in a classroom at the school; other scenes required the ability to move walls and bring in
equipment that would have been impossible at the location.

        Similarly, Dilley also reproduced the exterior of Arlene’s house on interior stages, actually moving the front shell of a house from the northeast corner of Lailani Street and Sunrise Avenue in the eastern foothills outside Las Vegas.  When filmmakers scouted for Arlene’s house, production logistics as well as the necessity for a Vegas vantage point, landed them
on a vacant lot in a suburb.  So, Dilley and his crew simply built a façade, complete with a gated yard, working garage and garage door and semi-furnished front room.  After the house was shot in Las Vegas, it was dismantled piece-by-piece, taken to Los Angeles, and rebuilt on a soundstage on The Lot.  This time, however, there was a complete interior as well, including a fully furnished front (living) room, dining area, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms.

        The filmmakers also shot at various locations including Griffith Park, the Wilson-Harding Golf Course, the Lunark Park in Sylmar, Glendale Adventists Medical Center, the old Lincoln Heights jail and the Stock Exchange nightclub.  The opening of the film, which includes a hostage situation during a dark, rainy night, was shot on Fremont Place in Hancock Park.

        Over several nights, cast and crew shot the sequence, which also included a stunt requiring two cars to collide and others to narrowly miss oncoming picture cars in a steady downpour created by rainmaking machines.

        Filmmakers also shot in industrial areas in downtown Los Angeles, as well as along the MTA Railroad, where a stunning graffiti mural was painted and is maintained by an organized group of taggers and artists.  The nighttime scene, where reporter Chris Chandler (Jay Mohr) meets Grace (Angie Dickinson), is illuminated by firelight and framed by an abandoned boxcar.  Similarly, a key scene involving Arlene and Grace was set in a makeshift homeless encampment where the only light amidst the rubble of discarded neon signs came from campfires.  In both instances, Leder used the firelight to not only underscore the scenes’ intimacy, but to underscore the illuminating impact of the encounters as well.  Leder, the first woman accepted to study at the American Film Institute’s cinematography program, is known as one of Hollywood’s premiere shot makers.  As she did on her huge action films, “The Peacemaker” and “Deep Impact,” Leder employed a wide variety of camera rigs, lenses, cranes and camera movements to tell the story.  Although “Pay It Forward” plays out on a more intimate scale, Leder still took advantage of her camera and lighting know-how to create interesting and involving scenes.

        For example, when Chandler tracks down Thorsen (Gary Werntz – Leder’s real life husband), the man who “paid it forward” to him, he has to chase the reluctant attorney down a set of stairs before he’ll explain the concept of paying it forward.  The scene was filmed at the historic Ray Bradbury Building, which boasts famed ironworks and staircases under a domed skylight. For this scene, Leder devised a shot in which the camera tracks them both vertically and horizontally down the
long staircase. This was done by suspending the camera on a platform rig, which descends seamlessly with the characters from the beginning of the shot to the bottom of the stairs.

        “Mimi is the total filmmaker,” says executive producer Mary McLaglen.  “She’s an expert shot maker who not only knows camera and lighting, but is also wonderful with the writer and actors.  She’s open to ideas, always calm and generous.  An absolute dream to work with.”

Producer Peter Abrams, whose company Tapestry Films scooped up Catherine Ryan Hyde’s unpublished manuscript within days of him reading it, agrees that Leder is a talented filmmaker always looking for the next challenge.  “You can’t say enough wonderful things about Mimi,” says Abrams.  “She’s always pushing herself, testing herself, like great directors do.  She’s a great leader who’s also open to suggestions, which makes the whole process more creative, exciting and interesting.”

        Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Bel-Air Entertainment a Tapestry Films production of a Mimi Leder Film, Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment star in “Pay It Forward.”  Jay Mohr, James Caviezel, Jon Bon Jovi and Angie Dickinson also star.  The film is edited by David Rosenbloom, A.C.E.  Leslie Dilley is the production designer.  Oliver Stapleton, B.S.C. is the director of photography.  Music is by Thomas Newman.  The film is executive produced by Mary McLaglen and Jonathan Treisman.  Based on the novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, the screenplay is by Leslie Dixon.  Produced by Peter Abrams, Robert Levy and Steven Reuther, “Pay It Forward” is directed by Mimi Leder.