Remember Me The Movie in Milan, Italy
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Genre: Drama, Romance
Synopsis:
Emerging secrets threaten the budding romance between a troubled young man (Robert Pattinson) and the young woman (Emilie de Ravin) who helped him rediscover happiness.
Release Date: -0/12/2010
Running Time: 113
Rating: PG-13 - Parents Strongly Cautioned
http://rememberme-movie.com/
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Cast:
Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Lena Olin, Tate Ellington, Gregory Jbara, Kate Burton, Ruby Jerins, Meghan Markle, Chris McKinney, Christopher Clawson
Crew:
Director - Allen Coulter, Screenwriter - William Fetters, Screenwriter - Jenny Lumet, Producer - Nick Osborne, Producer - Trevor Engelson, Executive Producer - Carol Cuddy, Executive Producer - Robert Pattinson, Cinematographer - Jonathan Freeman, Production Design - Scott Murphy, Film Editor - Andrew Mondshein, Costume Designer - Susan Lyall, Original Music - Marcelo Zarvos, Casting - Joanna Colbert, Casting - Richard Mento, Set Decoration - Diane Lederman, Art Director - Katya Debear
Production Companies:
Underground Films
Distributors:
Summit Media
Notes:
- Notes provided by Summit Entertainment - DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT When I first read Will Fetter's script, REMEMBER ME (at that time entitled MEMOIRS), three of its many qualities struck a deep chord within me: first of all, it presented New York City at a particularly important time in its history. As a New Yorker, I reveled in the opportunity to accurately depict that time in a city that I know so well and have loved so long. Second, it presented an honest and unvarnished story of young love--a subject I'd been interested in dramatizing for many years. And third, from its opening scene, the script was imbued with a consistent and timely theme, namely: what happens when a bolt-from-the-blue collides with and shatters our well-ordered world? How does one survive these unexpected and inexplicable shocks? And how does it alter us as human beings? Simply put, while REMEMBER ME was both an intimate story of the love that grows between two young people and a finely drawn portrait of how two different families are affected by their own particular version of a sudden and tragic event, the script ultimately became an exploration of the larger themes of love, loss and the evanescence of life. --Allen Coulter SYNOPSIS In the romantic drama Remember Me, Robert Pattinson plays Tyler, a rebellious young man in New York City who has had a strained relationship with his father (Pierce Brosnan) ever since tragedy separated their family. Tyler didn't think anyone could possibly understand what he was going through, until the day he met Ally (Emilie de Ravin) through an unusual twist of fate. Love was the last thing on his mind, but as her spirit unexpectedly heals and inspires him, he begins to fall for her. Through their love, he begins to find happiness and meaning in his life. Soon, hidden secrets are revealed and tragedy lingers in the air, as the circumstances that brought them together threaten to tear them apart. Set in the summer of 2001, Remember Me is an unforgettable story about the power of love, the strength of family, and the importance of living passionately and treasuring every day of one's life. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION The summer preceding September 11, 2001 is looked upon as a time of innocence for all Americans. It is here where the romantic drama REMEMBER ME lives. Honest and gripping, the film stars Robert Pattinson (Tyler) as a rebellious NYU student wrestling with his beliefs about life and love and the realities and complexities of life itself. This becomes evident in his contentious relationship with his father (Pierce Brosnan) and the unexpected comfort he finds in love interest, Emilie de Ravin, (Ally) a girl he meets through a crass bet he makes with a friend. Pattinson brings to the role a tough exterior, a sincere emotional depth and a spirit of defiance that comes when a young man tries to move out from under his father's shadow, while at the same time, trying to connect with him. Soon after the film's opening, it is revealed that both Pattinson's and de Ravin's characters have each experienced a profound loss, a loss which draws them together. As the story develops, we are given a window into their family lives through stellar turns from Brosnan, Lena Olin, Ruby Jerins and Chris Cooper. In each family, it is clear that loss has changed the dynamic- bringing some members closer, while driving others apart. Throughout it all, REMEMBER ME remains an unforgettable story of the power of love, the strength of family, and the importance of treasuring every day of one's life. Describing the film and its author, director Allen Coulter says: "Will Fetters wrote an incredibly touching script. In its simplest form, REMEMBER ME is the story of two young people, both with a tragedy in their past, and the love that grows between these two. He's from a wealthy family, she's from a blue-collar family and they both share this unspoken and unrecognized bond, which emerges as they get to know each other. It's filled with all kinds of humor and poignancy--such a rich tapestry. It's a very beautiful love story." "The movie is about love and loss," offers producer Nick Osborne. "It's about trying to figure out one's life and why certain events occur and maybe not coming up with the answers, but approaching an answer." "I think these are questions we all deal with till the end of our days but especially in our early twenties." Robert Pattinson describes his character, Tyler Hawkins, who, in the aftermath of losing his brother is "a young guy who's a little bit lost. He has very wealthy parents, but he's very self-righteous, and a bit of a waster. He has an attitude, which a lot of twenty-one year old guys have, where they think they know better than everyone else, but don't feel the need to prove it in any way whatsoever. And he eventually meets this girl who shows him, in a roundabout kind of way, how to mature." "It's not your typical love story," says Emilie de Ravin (Ally Craig). "These two characters, Tyler and Ally, meet each other in unusual circumstances and they've both had very traumatic pasts. Their relationship is so beautifully formed and so realistic, and the movie revolves around that. It goes deep into how people really feel about each other, and the reality of, not just the fluff of relationships, but really what goes on." FINDING THE SCRIPT Osborne recalls, "It was four years ago that Trevor Engelson read the script. Trevor said, 'I think there may be something here. You should read it.' And so I read it. Will Fetters' first draft blew me away. I was utterly moved by it and I called Trevor and I said, 'We have to make this movie.' "We took it around to a lot of financiers," he says, "we took it to one actor who wanted to do it, who then fell out. And then at some point I got it to Allen Coulter. And Allen and I worked on it with Will for a while. Then Rob came on board, which really helped. It was just before Twilight though, so it was bizarre. He read the script before he really had any, I suppose, 'juice' or real name recognition within the industry." Producer Nick Osborne describes what REMEMBER ME screenwriter Will Fetters meant to the production, saying, "Without Will, we have nothing. He thought of this story and where it was going, and when Allen, Rob and I read it initially, we all felt that this is something we're going to commit to and we're going to stick with. Because it's not easy getting movies made in Hollywood nowadays, and it's definitely not easy getting dramas made. Dramas are the hardest of all." "What's interesting is that Will was Tyler when he wrote the script. He was this young, angry guy wanting to make something of himself in the world. But he didn't know how to do it and how to get there. And he had all these deep thoughts and all this kind of angst... I think what comes out of Tyler Hawkins is Will during that time. And that's why it feels authentic. All the major preliminary aspects of the production fell together based on the strength of the script. Says Osborne, "What Will brought to this is a testament to the writing on this script. Because we got the actors we wanted, we got the director we wanted, and we've built off that. We have a phenomenal film." Pierce Brosnan says the script provides a great role for an actor to play, and attests that, "Will Fetters created dimensional characters and emotional characters caught in the conflict of life. And when you get to the end of it, it really just punches you in the gut. I'm very grateful for this role. I'm at a place in my career now where I can go off and do anything I want. This is a really, really good role in the hands of a really fine director and an ensemble cast which is so well matched to their parts," he adds. Allen Coulter reflects, "Everyone who read the script, virtually to a person, was moved by it and drawn to it. It's all because Will Fetters had this inspiration. When I signed on to do it, the only thing that I really wanted was to continue to push for the story to be as truthful as I knew how to make it." "For instance, as a New Yorker I felt I needed to address the very small things that you have to be New Yorker to know, whether it has to do with character, location or just some kind of atmosphere. This was not something that Will could know because he's not from here," he points out. A 'LOVE LETTER' TO NEW YORK Both director Allen Coulter and producer Nick Osborne felt that filming on location in New York City would ensure that the city became a character in itself. Coulter remarks, "As a person who lives here, I always feel very fortunate to find anything that takes place in New York. It's a running joke with my wife--if it says on the first page, 'We open in New York,' I say, 'I like this script,' even before I've read the rest of it. "We really looked at the locations where we wanted to shoot. We didn't want to shoot at ridiculously iconic places, but at the same time we wanted to give it a real New York feel," Osborne says. "Naturally, there are obstacles you have to navigate shooting in the city but it was particularly difficult this time because of the enormous popularity and notoriety of Rob. "It's been a little crazy with the paparazzi following us around" says Coulter. "Some days we've had thirty paparazzi, some days we've had three, four hundred fans at our locations. But we got it done and I think it looks beautiful. Jonathan Freeman, the D.P., is phenomenal and I think it shows in what we've shot. But it's a New York story and something of a love letter to New York, so it's worth it because the city...there's no replacing it." CASTING REMEMBER ME: AN 'AMAZING' ENSEMBLE Allen Coulter and Nick Osborne were both intensely involved in the casting process from the very beginning. Says Coulter, "We had a meeting with Rob Pattinson after Summit expressed some interest. We had lunch with him about a year ago and liked him and were interested in him right away and he was interested too, so that sort of started the process." One of a director's greatest advantages is a production well cast and it is in Coulter's nature to be involved in the casting process every step of the way. "I can't imagine working on a project where I was not as involved as I can be in the casting," Coulter remarks. "It was just me and Nick Osborne, working with Joanna Colbert and Rich Mento, and then Summit weighed in, but really only on two or three principal roles. We ended up with a cast that both Nick and I were thrilled with. I think you'd be hard pressed to say what kind of cast it is because it's so eclectic. It has elements that you might say were from a big-budget film and elements that you might think of as an independent film," he says. "It's an interesting amalgam of people, from Pierce Brosnan, who we think of as an actor with a certain kind of reputation, to Chris Cooper, who's from a different kind of world of filmmaking altogether --but both are really fine actors. Add to those two Lena Olin and Rob Pattinson, and that's an eclectic mixture," Coulter notes. ON ROBERT PATTINSON AS TYLER HAWKINS Allen Coulter says ``Nick's and my feeling was that Robert could embody a young man who's filled with complexity --his anger, his guilt around the circumstances of the story, his frustration in his relationship with his father and his impotence to change his situation; a young man who feels lost and who ultimately doesn't know who he is." Pattinson sees his character as a young guy who has some growing up to do, which in some ways mirrored his own real-life experience, saying that "a lot of the reasons I wanted to do the film were because Tyler's at that point where you stop being so, kind of existential, from your adolescence --your early twenties and he's just starting to not feel like an island. He can actually believe that his feelings are honest about things. And he can trust himself a little bit more. He's just maturing and I guess I think that what's happening to me, sort of. Or it was at the time." Pattinson's character is afflicted with a sort of ennui, in a state of arrested emotional development: "Tyler has all these grudges and grievances which he's held for years and years and they've all just been --not even simmering; they're just old. He and Charles have had the same fights over and over and everyone else sees them as being old. Even Tyler, himself, is sick of having the same rages," he says. Pierce Brosnan describes Pattinson as "a young man who's just catapulted into the stratosphere of fame and I think what I've seen he's acquitted himself grandly. You know he has a good heart to him. He has good humility and he's courageous to find a piece like this, knowing that he has the Twilight franchise breathing down his throat and you know it will be up to him to go out there and seek these films between these mega movies that he's about to do." Brosnan continues, "He's got a great look and he's in touch with his own sensing and intuition and instincts. He's very fresh out the gate, which is great because he's malleable, but he's also very selective. I know he's been instrumental in making this movie happen and that's a great thing to see in a young man. You know, there's a protection there for someone like this. You want the best for him. You want to see him fly high and wide." Emilie de Ravin says that Tyler is a complex character who has a dramatic past, as does her own character and that Robert brought to it "all these intricate details, to the point that I thought, 'How do you come up with these things?' He made the character of Tyler just so unique." Osborne appreciated Pattinson's unusual loyalty to the project, saying, "Twilight had just come out and often once an actor becomes a known commodity, their agent calls you up and tells you, 'I'm sorry, he can't do it anymore.' But Rob stuck with it. He's been instrumental in helping us get the film made. He really has put himself out on a limb to play this character. I never thought he'd be as good as he was. He's incredibly selfless, incredibly undemanding. But he also thinks a lot. He's very curious. He took hold of that character and ran with it." Osborne underscores Pattinson's commitment to the role: "When we were working on the script we would get on the phone with Rob and download his ideas. We'd be talking back and forth about what we were doing, so he was very involved in the film and he's been wonderful. He's in nearly every scene, he's been here every day --I know he's had to work his ass off. He came off one movie, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, straight into this one." ON EMILIE DE RAVIN AS ALLY CRAIG Osborne says that Tyler's relationship with Ally is different, Ally brings calm to his life: "She's the first person who walks into his life and doesn't buy his act. This is a guy who doesn't have trouble getting young women to fall for him or come home with him and she's the first that challenges him. She strips away the protective layers he's created for himself and gets to who the true 'Tyler' is." "It's because of her, he adds ``that he is able to start mending these other relationships in his life and hopefully find a way to find some peace in his own life." "Emilie encapsulates everything which I think Ally is," says Osborne, "a blue-collar girl who's dealt with this terrible tragedy in her life, who's somewhat married to her father in this bizarre way because they've clung to each other. She's never really had fun in her life. She's kept her head down, she's doing well in school, she'll get a good job... But then this guy comes into her life who's a ray of light and shows her a different side to the world and makes her think in a different way and Emilie really helps encapsulate all of those qualities." The team underwent a long search for the perfect young woman to play the role of Ally Craig. "We really saw something like a hundred-and-eighty young women," Coulter said. "It was a very tricky thing. We wanted to find someone who could be a good match for Rob as far as the romantic entanglement, but we also needed somebody who could be tough and stand up to him. Ally is the daughter of a cop from Queens and it was important to believe she had some of that Queens attitude. Coulter explains, "She's going to NYU and already that takes her leaps and bounds beyond where her father was. At the same, her mother was a nurse, so she really comes from a blue-collar background and we needed to believe that. I thought Emilie could seem like she was from such a background. De Ravin also exuded an enormous amount of charm, which proved irresistible. "We thought, that's good for this character --Tyler's got to notice her, but she also should have this toughness about her. And indeed, when we shot the scenes with Chris Cooper, where Ally stands up to her dad, you saw that she's not easily cowed," he says. ON PIERCE BROSNAN AS CHARLES HAWKINS Coulter was drawn to Pierce Brosnan because of the film, "Matador", where Brosnan showed he was willing to take chances as an actor. ``You know, I was thinking about that while I was also trying to imagine someone who could be the father of a guy this good looking, and I thought, 'Well, Pierce Brosnan could do it.' Nick liked the idea and when we pitched it to Summit they were also thrilled with the possibility." Nick Osborne was looking for the right balance of stoicism, and perhaps some semblance of humanity in Charles Hawkins. As Osborne says, "I just felt that Charles was this powerful man who couldn't show emotion, who can't tell his son he loves him, who's pissed with his son because he couldn't get it together, as far as he's concerned. Pierce was everything I believe the character was from the get go." For Robert Pattinson's part, he says, "Pierce did a really interesting performance. He's a really, really lovely guy as well. It's so strange having that sort of an iconic person playing your dad. I mean it --it was quite a strange experience." He describes his characters relationship with his father, Charles, saying, "I think Tyler is very similar to his father and I don't think it's really about missing the love of his father. He wants his father to behave in a certain way, but he doesn't really know what way that is, and so he's never going to be satisfied with it. I think his father is just growing more and more despondent with his behavior towards him because he thinks he's behaving like a perfectly capable father." He continues, "He's pretty supportive of him and he puts up with a lot of nonsense that Tyler gives him, but I don't think he's missing the love. I think he thinks almost everybody in his life should behave completely differently than the way they do behave, but Tyler never really has an answer to give anyone. He can never actually tell anyone what he wants, because he doesn't know what he wants, so I don't really think it's the lack of love." ON CHRIS COOPER AS SGT. NEIL CRAIG According to Nick Osborne, there's not much more you can say about Chris Cooper except that he's a "brilliant, brilliant actor..." "Everything he does in this film," he says, "from the opening scene where he's grieving for his wife... the way he's protective of Ally --he just brings it." And Allen Coulter concurs, saying, "He's just an amazing actor and it we were lucky to get him. If he hadn't liked the script, it would have been the end of the discussion. Also, if his wife, Marianne, hadn't like the script, that also would have been the end of the discussion, but once he read the script it wasn't a struggle. Before we started, I called a friend of mine, Billy Ray, who had directed Chris in the film ``Breach, and he just went on about him --'Greatest guy you'll ever work with,' and so on. It turned out to be true. It would be a big arm wrestling contest between Pierce and Chris to see who's the nicer guy, because they're both just the best to work with." Robert Pattinson says that what's most surprising about Chris is how strong he is, physically:"I mean, it's unbelievable. You really don't see it, even when you're kind of going through the motions. He looked quite a lot smaller than me when I was standing next to him. And then we got to the parts where he's beating me up --he could pretty easily beat me up in reality... Which was a shocking thing!" ON LENA OLIN AS DIANE HIRSCH Nick Osborne and Allen Coulter talk about what Lena Olin brings to the role of Tyler's mother. Osborne remarks, "I really felt for Lena as I was watching the dailies. This is a woman who's still grieving her son who committed suicide six years earlier. Yet as the movie progresses, you feel life start to flow back into her --that there's a certain level of enjoyment of life, so you don't want her to be hurt anymore." "I had just seen Lena's performance in ``The Reader," he says, "and I was so impressed with her --her humanity and her naturalism and unpretentiousness, that I immediately said, 'She would be a great parent for this beautiful boy... and with Pierce Brosnan and Lena Olin? 'Nobody will question where he came from.' She just leapt out at me." Pierce Brosnan says, "Lena left an indelible impression on me years ago with The Unbearable Lightness of Being and has done so in every role that she's ever done since. Our characters have very little time together on the screen, but nevertheless, she is a very beautiful seductive player. The opening sequence with the family, when they're all introduced in this ice cream parlor after the memorial service, just blew me away. Blew me away. Just the life, the emotion that she brought to it. The simplicity of playing and her own beauty." Or as Emilie de Ravin puts it, " When you have families in films, sometimes there's this disconnect. You just don't believe it. But Lena brought such a reality to the family element, playing Tyler's mom." ON RUBY JERINS AS CAROLINE HAWKINS Pierce Brosnan has called her "a button of a beauty," and Nick Osborne too was wowed by Ruby Jerins' talents. He says, "She's amazing: you truly think that she and Rob are brother and sister in this film. He just fell in love with her on the set and he was just amazed at how much she could give, how she could improvise... "I think she's what makes Tyler a better person," he continues, "because he's so wound up in his own neuroses and Caroline is the one person who Tyler is totally and utterly devoted to, in a kind of selfless way." Robert Pattinson's takeaway in working with Ruby was that, "Ruby has something about her which is really easy to play off. It's quite nice being in a scene where you can just watch someone and be completely unaware that you're in a scene," he says. ON TATE ELLINGTON AS AIDAN HALL Tate Ellington provides some comic relief in contrast to Robert Pattinson's character, Tyler Hawkins. Says Coulter, "Tate was a little bit of a leap of faith because he's not quite what we pictured --neither myself nor Nick nor Summit. But Nick was very encouraging of my instincts to go with Tate. When I was talking to Tate the last time, when we were finally committing to him, I said, 'Don't you know anybody like this?' And he said, 'Yeah, actually, a good friend of mine,' so we talked about that and he described his friend and I said, 'That's the guy.' Well, Tate brought all of that to the role --and he turned out to be an incredible improviser as well. He added lines here and there throughout the script that were really charming and just right." ENGAGING THE AUDIENCE One of the filmmaker's primary goals is to engage the viewers to identify with conflict of the characters. "Everyone has felt loss in their life," says Osborne, " at some point or other. Everyone has felt frustration; most people have had that incredibly passionate first love affair, which I think this invokes. We've all been frustrated by our parents and I think what's wonderful is that, to a certain extent, our characters work out those issues through the course of the film." And Allen Coulter agrees, "I think people will relate very much for that reason. And presumably it will help the audience understand these characters, each of whom has something in their past that has caused them great personal and emotional agony. " Osborne sees an opportunity for the audience to reflect on the big questions in their own lives, after seeing the film: "You go away from it and you think about what's important and the barriers you might have with the certain people and why those barriers are there? Are they there out of genuine reasons or are they there because you're too angry or too bitter or too upset or jealous ... And are those things really important in the end? If you could actually strip those things away, maybe you could rebuild some of the relationships you've lost in your life.." In this regard, Osborne and Coulter are very much of the same mind. Says Coulter, "I hope they feel it's a very accurate picture of falling in love. I hope that they enjoy the twists and turns and the surprises and that they enjoy the wild ride of the story. And, of course, I hope that they're moved in the end and that they leave the theater filled with questions and thoughts about their own lives." GETTING THE LOOK DOWN Director Allen Coulter talks about working with director of photography, Jonathan Freeman, and other department heads and how they came up with the look and color palate of the film. ``I worked very closely with Jonathan Freeman, who shot Hollywoodland and "Rubicon," a pilot I did for AMC. We've worked together numerous times. Jonathan and I are very close friends as well as collaborators, so we talked about it a lot and ultimately came up with the idea that it should just simply feel real, which is kind of strangely bland sounding, but we just didn't want it to look affected. We didn't want to tweak the color too much, or make it look too mannered or too stylized. ``Hollywoodland was fairly stylized, but that seemed appropriate for that material But we did decide to give the palate a slight patina, to suggest the recent past, which is very subtle. I think one could conceivably watch this movie and presume it's the present because the differences are not vast. It's not like the difference between, say, the fifties and the sixties, where you really get a sudden shift in the culture that's obvious in terms of all the period and the visual detail. So we decided to play it very simply, visually, and then with Scott Murphy, the production designer, and Susan Lyall, the costume designer, basically what we said was, let's keep everything kind of muted. Let's just give it a slight dusting of the past so it just feels like one step removed, but in ways that I don't think people will really notice. I think it'll just be a subtle, ambient feeling that comes off of the movie. DIALECT: GETTING IT DOWN Rob, Emilie and Pierce all have there own indigenous accents in real life, and this is a New York movie, in a New York voice... Was there a worry about making sure everyone could play the New York characters? Osborne replies, "We never had to worry with Rob. He does an American accent brilliantly." "But Pierce had never been asked to do one, interestingly," he says, "or as far as we could tell. He decided to go with this Brooklyn accent, a Mike Bloomberg type of thing. A guy who'd grown up in Brooklyn, but had now made a lot of money and it was still there. I think he nailed it." And Coulter adds, ``I liked the idea that the guy came up from the streets. It made him seem tougher, made him seem like a guy who wouldn't take any shit from anybody and Pierce embraced it. He loved the idea and we had a really good dialect coach with Pierce on that." "And then, Emilie's accent as well," says Osborne. "Emilie and I spoke about whether she should have a Queens accent," says Coulter. "But we met a cop from Queens, who was our advisor. He had two daughters who were similar in age to Ally and neither of them had a Queens accent, so we decided, 'you're father still has the Queens accent, but you've sort of left that behind', as people will do." "Also of course," Coulter recalls, "we had the Queens accent from Chris Cooper, who's really more Midwestern. So, in the end we have this American story played by all kinds of actors from other places. It's just like New York, a real melting pot." "If you don't have accents." Osborne says, "if you don't have actors that can do it, you're in trouble. But these guys could do it, and we had a great dialogue coach." ALLEN COULTER'S FAVORITE SCENES REMEMBER ME offered some unique challenges and unexpected pleasures for the director. Allen Coulter describes a few moments in detail: There's a very serious physical confrontation between Tyler (Pattinson) and Neil Craig (Cooper) that I enjoyed and they were both really good. There's another very strong scene between Tyler and Charles, a powerfully dramatic confrontation. There's also a scene of Tyler waking up one particular morning--he's in love and he's feeling good about the world --and because for that one day in the year, the sunlight comes in the window, he's making a bird shadow with his hands. I think that's a very haunting image -this young man making bird shadows, because, for one moment he's regained his innocence, Any scene with Ruby Jerins (Caroline). I had never worked with a young girl like Ruby before, and so I have to say that anything we did with Ruby, for all of us, the actors too, was a real delight. For that matter, the same was true for Emilie de Ravin. But I liked all the scenes with Lena as well, so it's hard to pick one. There's a really arresting scene, I should say, on the subway platform that happens at the beginning of the movie and we had to coordinate the trains coming in and out and we had Joe Reidy, the assistant director, who was masterful or we would not have finished, there is no question about it. Literally, the first shot of the movie, we got in
