For Brooke English of Palatine and the cast of her movie “Between Us,” the road to Hollywood begins at her parents’ house in Lake Forest. And not just in a sentimental way, either. Mostly because it made a good set for many of the scenes in the movie.
The price was right too. “Between Us” is English’s first feature film. She wrote, produced and directed it and even played a part. She convinced investors to finance it and has made arrangements to enter it in Robert Redford’s annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January.
The effort already has begun to pay off too. Even though the film has not yet been released, it has attracted the attention of Hollywood proper and enabled her to get the wheels rolling on a second feature film that could have a budget of as much as $10 million.
“We’re making `Between Us’ for about $200,000,” English said during filming at her parents’ house recently. “That’s nothing in Hollywood terms, but we’ve been able to pull it together and shoot in 35 mm. A lot of independent productions have to shoot in 16 mm, which is a compromise I didn’t want to make.”
Because of the smaller frame size, films shot in 16 mm always look amateurish even if they’re not, English explained.
“Between Us” tells the story of four distant siblings forced to iron out their differences and come to grips with their dysfunctional past when their elderly father becomes seriously ill. They gather at their childhood home for the first time since their mother’s death, five years before.
The Warner siblings, two brothers and two sisters, hardly know each other. None has spoken directly with any of the others since their mother’s death.
Only bits and pieces have filtered through, passed on by their father, the only member of the family to stay in touch with everybody else. During the emotionally charged week they spend together, the siblings learn about themselves and each other, and something about what it means to work together as a family.
Whether they’ve learned enough to carry on together is left to speculation and an interesting plot twist. You’ll have to see the movie to find out.
“It’s very character-driven and deals with issues that many families face, whether they want to or not,” English said. English plays the part of Sarah Warner, the youngest of the Warner clan, and a woman who has a hard time reconciling what she sees as the opposite ideals of philosophical passion for life and the practical matter of achieving success in the real world.
That’s not a problem shared by English. The 34-year-old Renaissance woman, a journalism graduate of Northwestern University, has written for a variety of media since her teens, including freelancing for the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. She also has written commercials for television and radio and has acted in television and theater. She writes music, too, and studied theater at the Piven Theater Group in Chicago.
“Between Us” is her most ambitious project to date, she said. She wears most of the hats on and off the set and put in most of the legwork to pull together the financing and talent to make the film happen. “I really wanted to take the things I was doing off the page and put them together into a larger artistic vision,” she said. “As to getting the money to do it, that’s just like anything else. You have a product and you do your best to sell it.”
English bases her business at her home, where a handful of scenes for “Between Us” were shot. Little other than brainstorming happens there, though. Despite the glamor normally associated with the movie business, most of the steps involved in actually making a movie can best be described as grunt work.
For example, it took about 20 people to shoot the scenes in Lake Forest. Cast members, camera operators, lighting and sound technicians, and the staff of a rolling film lab built in a converted motor home all had their jobs to do, and if anybody screws up, everything grinds to a halt. Screwups, thankfully, were kept to a minimum.
“It’s a great experience, working together with all these people,” said Paula Toay, English’s personal assistant and the person who kept shooting on schedule. “It’s all part of a continuous flow, with everybody playing their part together.”
Shouts of “quiet on the set” are heard regularly during filming, as even the slightest disturbance can be picked up by the sensitive microphones used to record the soundtrack. Unwanted noise also can distract the actors and necessitate multiple takes, which are expensive. About 40 people were involved in the entire project, English said. Because of the size of the production, the only union represented at the shoot was the Screen Actors Guild.
In Hollywood, working within the rules established by potentially dozens of unions can be an enormous expense and one that English couldn’t afford. Everybody involved in her movie worked on a negotiated contract, she said.
“This project has given me a lot of feel for what it really takes to pull a movie together,” said actress Nora Newbrough, 26, of Chicago, who plays Lori Kendall, a former girlfriend of Jack Warner. “Everybody has to come together to make it happen. It has definitely given me the itch to do more.”
For Newbrough and other Chicago-based actors, there’s plenty more to do. “Between Us” is part of a thriving local film industry that has grown from $870,000 in total local expenditures in 1976 to $101 million in 1996, according to figures supplied by the Illinois Film Office. Much of that money comes from Hollywood-based studios that use Chicago for location shooting, but more and more of the business is generated locally by independent filmmakers such as English.
“Our job as a government agency is to attract people to Illinois and get them to spend their money here,” said Ron VerKeylen, director of the Illinois Film Office, a subsidiary of the state’s Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. Movie money is like convention money, he explained, in that people come to Illinois, spend a lot of money, pay a lot of taxes and then leave. They don’t need new schools, police officers, water systems or other expensive public amenities, so the money they leave behind is pure gravy for Illinois taxpayers and residents who work in the movie business.
“But the indigenous, independent base right here is our hope for the future, so we make sure we nurture them in any way we can,” VerKeylen said. “Brooke came to us to get information on locations and permits and we helped her out. She and her team are real self-starters. They were fabulous. It’s our hope that `Between Us’ will get a lot of attention and that then she’ll come back and make big-budget movies here too.”
She may be back soon. English and co-star Ellen Litas, 28, who plays Jessica Casey, a neighbor of the Warners in “Between Us,” have formed EL Films Inc., a new production company. The company’s first film, a psychological thriller titled “Mind Games,” will start production later this year and will be shot in the Chicago area. The pair wrote the screenplay and knocked on $10 million worth of doors to get the financing they needed for a big-time production.
“This will not be a festival film,” Litas said. “This is a major, feature film for mainstream audiences that will be widely distributed.”
Robert Seigel, an entertainment attorney and principal with Cinema Film Consulting, Inc. in Manhattan, is looking forward to the pair’s next film, based on “Between Us.”
“I thought the performances (in `Between Us’) were very solid, very natural and not overly melodramatic, especially given the nature of the story. Good production values, too. They prove that low-budget doesn’t have to mean gritty or cheap-looking.
“They’re new filmmakers, but they’re not coming at it like twenty-somethings would. It’s not about urban angst or violence. Most of those stories have been told. This is a good story that makes you care about the characters.
“Their film is very straight-ahead and very professional. I’m very intrigued by what their next film will be,” said Seigel, who is currently working with Norman Mailer on “Ringside,” which is due to be released next year.
An accomplished writer, actress and comedian, Litas met English while auditioning for “Between Us.”
The pair clicked immediately and found that they had very similar goals. What they both needed, they decided, was a like-minded partner to help them achieve those goals. “It’s like we’ve known each other for years,” Litas said of the newborn partnership. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself just to believe that I’m actually doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing. I’m making movies. It takes a lot of work, but I’m where I’ve always wanted to be.”
