Stolen Summer (2002) September 28, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , trackbackDirected by: Pete Jones
One million dollars is a lot of money for any aspiring filmmaker to even comprehend spending on their first feature - but imagine if Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and producer Chris Moore gave you just that. Well that’s the position insurance salesman Pete Jones found himself in after he was selected as the winner of the first Project Greenlight competition - a ‘Hollywood dream’ story befitting of a movie itself.
This is however, not the movie, but in fact an HBO television show that documented the experience of a first-time writer/director (selected from thousands of entrants) as he tries to make a low-budget feature based on his own script, for Miramax films. It’s an intriguing idea, and one that proved fairly popular (in this early season at least) giving a unique look at all the pitfalls and disagreements behind the scenes of shooting as well as pre- and post-production. The result of the show was Stolen Summer, a heartfelt piece about faith and growing up in Chicago.
Set in the mid-1970’s, the story is centred around Pete O’Malley, an eight year old Catholic boy who makes it his summer ‘quest’ to convert someone to Catholicism, believing this to be the only way to heaven. His choice is Danny, a local boy who has cancer. Unfortunately Danny is also the son of the town’s rabbi, which causes problems for Pete’s parents but not for the slightly more open-minded rabbi, who seems warmed by any interest in faith. So, unbeknownst to his parents, Pete sets about testing his friend with a series of decathlon events, in order to prove Danny (and himself) worthy of entering heaven.
Having watched twelve half-hour programmes on the making of this movie means it is difficult to have completely unbiased opinion about it. This is only made worse by the fact that the material was undoubtedly skewed towards showing the problems and events that went wrong, because nobody wants to watch a reality TV series where everything just runs smoothly. Despite this, there are plenty of things to say about the film that I think are evident whether you followed its production or not.
Firstly, the performances from a cast including Aidan Quinn, Bonnie Hunt, Kevin Pollak and Brian Dennehy, are generally very good. The child actors Mike Weinberg and Adiel Stein put on a good show too, although both have their shaky moments during scenes when they are exclusively together. As well as this, the 1970’s world these characters inhabit is effectively recreated, so credit to the production designers for managing so much on such a small budget.
Pete Jones’ script is, for the most part, very effective. He judges the child and adult dialogue appropriately and weaves a tale that attempts to cut through the differences between religions and highlight the true meaning behind it all: faith. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the final product quite lives up to what the story could have been, leaving a highly emotional narrative feeling rather flat at times. The side-stories, such as Joe O’Malley getting over his own pride to allow his family to be helped by others, don’t play out too strongly either – does his decision to change show a true turn of character, or just his relenting to his wife’s wishes?
For producers Matt, Ben and Chris, the experiment was only half a success (Stolen Summer made little money during its limited release), although the popularity of the series allowed them to try twice more in subsequent years. As for Pete Jones, well it’s an accomplished piece of work for a first time director: dramatic and touching, albeit not exactly solid. Of course, as the TV series shows us, Pete was surrounded by people who did know what they were doing and it’s their influence that makes the film what it is. Knowing that the production was constantly under time-pressures, you start to pick up on the mistakes – a camera shake on the beach, for example – that they clearly had no chance to correct. But putting these minor errors aside, it’s a wonderful example of the Cinderella story come true, so even if the movie is of no interest to you, the television series still might be worth checking out.
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