In A Shallow Grave - Press Information Article

IN A SHALLOW GRAVE

The year is 1944. Garnet Montrose, his face and hands grotesquely scarred by an explosion at Guadalcanal, returns from the war to the isolation of his family's farm in Virginia. The rest of the world is still at war but Garnet's house is as silent as a stone; he is the last of his line. His pre-war romance with the widowed Georgina Rance is all but over. The only person who seems able to see past the nightmarish face to the man beneath is Garnet's black farmhand, Quintas Pearch. Into this household comes Potter Daventry, a fresh-faced young drifter seeking work. Garnet hires him, using him as a go-between to deliver his courtly, tentative love letters to Georgina. A strange bond begins to grow between Garnet and Daventry, until Garnet begins to suspect that Daventry is using his visits with Georgina to further his own romantic ends. Soon the threesome are enmeshed in a dangerous triangle of love and desire, paranoia and frustration.

American Playhouse Theatrical Films in association with Skouras Pictures, Lorimar Home Video and Film Trustees, Ltd., present IN A SHALLOW GRAVE, based on the novel In A Shallow Grave by James Purdy. Michael Biehn, Maureen Mueller, Michael Beach and Patrick Dempsey star in the film, written and directed by Kenneth Bowser, produced by Kenneth Bowser and Barry Jossen, with Marilyn Haft and Lindsay Law as executive producers.

"It's a film about people who have lost their sense of worth and about the redemptive power of love," says writer/director Kenneth Bowser. "Through the eyes of a disturbed young man, they begin to find the value in their lives and they realize that there's a way out of their terrible suffering."

Internationally acclaimed author James Purdy's novel is also about the healing of a nation, its recovery from the wounds of war, in this case, World War II. Bowser was so impressed when he read Purdy's book, In A Shallow Grave, five years ago that he immediately attempted to acquire the film rights. It was under option at the time but he and his partner, Marilyn Haft, approached Purdy directly. Purdy was wary since Bowser had no directorial track record but he eventually consented to an adaptation of one of his short stories, Sleep Tight. The resultant short film, written and directed by Bowser with Haft as executive producer, was picked up by Rank Films for foreign theatrical distribution and by Show time and the Arts and Entertainment Network for domestic television. Sleep Tight was the first Purdy story to reach the screen and Purdy was "stunned and very pleased" with it. When the prior option expired on In A Shallow Grave, Purdy gave it to Bowser, even though other well-known directors were vying for the work. "No one has been as understanding of my whole body of work as Ken has," says Purdy, "I trust him and his vision."

The next hurdles were the script and financing. "As a first time director, without a lot of money, I knew that the key was to have a property that everyone would be interested in and then to write the script myself," explains Bowser. Haft, with her legal skills and contacts, began the lengthy process of courting investors and putting the deal together. "The script sold the film," says Haft. "American Playhouse, Skouras Pictures, and Film Trustees, Ltd. (the European distributor) all were enthusiastic and committed." Award-winning cinematographer Jerzy Zielinski (Cal, Shivers, Stars and Bars), a client of Haft's, signed on soon after.

Haft and Bowser first met six years ago, when he brought her his first original screenplay, entitled Be My Baby. (Cannon bought the option but have not yet produced the film). Their collaboration is now personal as well as professional. They married several years ago and feel that their relationship works because their professional talents complement each other. "I've learned a lot about movies from Ken -- he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the industry," says Haft. "From me, he got the willingness to take on the business side."

Bowser says they cooperate on both the business and the artistic aspects of filmmaking. "Of course, it was a little hard for me to participate in casting in L.A. when I was in New York, eight months pregnant," says Haft. Baby Samantha Danielle was born April 1, 1987, and was a fixture on the Shallow Grave set during production.

Bowser's first choice to star as Garnet Montrose was Michael Biehn. "I had been so impressed with Biehn in "The Terminator", recalls Bowser. "I knew he had the right combination of strength and vulnerability to play Garnet. And he's so handsome that it compounds the pain and difficulty of his loss."

Biehn received the script on a Friday; the following Monday he said yes. "I don't think there's a better piece of literature than this book," Biehn comments, "and I loved Ken's script -- I told him I wouldn't change a thing. I try to do good films but there are very few. You have to do what excites you."

Both Patrick Dempsey (Can't Buy Me Love, In the Mood) and Maureen Mueller were cast against type. Potter Daventry (Dempsey) is described as an angelic blond in Purdy's book but when Patrick came in and read, he was wonderful," explains Bowser. And blond Maureen Mueller's agent told Bowser that despite his request for a brunette actress, she knew he'd want to see Maureen. "She was one of the few actresses who could be sad, beautiful, distant, and alluring, all at the same time," says Bowser. The last lead to be cast was the part of Quintas Pearch, Garnet's farmhand. The role went to Michael Beach, a young actor only a year and a half out of Juilliard but who had already done three feature films.

One of the most difficult challenges posed by the filming of IN A SHALLOW GRAVE was the makeup of the horribly scarred war veteran, Garnet Montrose. The task was taken on enthusiastically by makeup designer Michele Burke, an Academy Award winner for her work on Quest For Fire and an Oscar nominee for Clan of the Cave Bear. Burke is an expert in creative and difficult makeup requirements. For this job, she went to the Bronfman Burn Center in Los Angeles, as did Bowser and Biehn, to study photographs of burn victims and to research skin grafts. Burke's research included not only general inquiries into the scarring caused by burns but also into how a severe burn such as Garnet's would have been treated by doctors in the 1940s. Her makeup design is thus not only accurate to the injury described by Purdy but accurate for the period. Still, as terrible as Biehn's injuries are in the film, they stop short of the reality.

"What we saw was so horrific, I had to pull back," says Burke. "The audience has got to believe that underneath the trauma, he's a beautiful person. I didn't want to take too much away from Michael; I wanted people to look at him, not the makeup. He has to act the disfigurement, it has to be believable. What we did was actually tame compared to the real burn cases we saw." Burke's method was to first make plaster casts of Biehn's head and hands, using them to create molds on which the burn appliances were sculpted. For the appliances themselves, Burke turned to a material never before used in film makeup -- a plastic used to create dentures which, Burke discovered, closely matches the texture and translucency of the keloid tissue that replaces burned skin. The application of the makeup was a process that took three hours every day. Biehn valiantly wore the mask/makeup through twelve-hour days in the heat and humidity of a Virginia August, sipping his lunch through a straw. He admits that it put him in a bad mood but says that it made him feel closer to the suffering of the character he portrayed. Bowser searched six states for the perfect location to film IN A SHALLOW GRAVE and was pleased to find it in Virginia.

"I felt a moral obligation to film in Virginia, since that's where the story is set. The Virginia Film Commission was extraordinarily helpful -- they gave us the Governor's plane to fly allover the state, searching for the right farm." With their help, Bowser discovered, in New Castle, north of Roanoke, the farm of 97-year-old Mrs. Hattie May Goode. As a newlywed in 1916, she and her husband Ralph had built themselves a house in a lush valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Goodes felled great oak trees on the 300-acre property, dried the wood in their kiln, and completed the house by Christmas of that year. Mrs. Goode was thrilled to have her house chosen for the filming. She says the only difficulty was that, since she stayed with relatives while the house was occupied by the film crew, she missed church. "I've been playing the organ at church since 1913," she explained.

As in Purdy's story, the Goode home had seen several generations of a family being born, growing up and moving away. Filming there "was like going back in time". Production designer David Wasco (El Norte, Smooth Talk) enhanced the existing atmosphere with period pieces collected locally.

"The authenticity of the locations and its history stimulated emotions for the actors -- Hattie Goode's house and our story merged together until they were one, for the cast, the crew and myself."

Several coincidences occured during the production that touched the story and brought it to life. A period car was needed for the film. One was found at the home of a neighboring farmer -- a 1940 Oldsmobile purchased by the farmer in 1941 for a son who had gone off to war. His son never returned from the Pacific and the car sat in the garage for 46 years, until the filmmakers came looking. The vintage Buick rented for the widow Georgina Rance still bore the decal, Remember Pearl Harbor. Purdy's book called for a deserted dance hall in the middle of the woods. The Virginia Film Commission photographed a hundred possible sites and the filmmakers searched throughout the state for a building which could be transformed into the hall. Incredibly, they found the real thing -- the last remaining building from the now-defunct Blue Healing Springs Spa. The spa's dance hall, built during the Civil War, reached its heyday in the 1920s. It now stands in near-collapse, hidden amid trees on a country road in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

MICHAEL BIEHN (Garnet Montrose) has been best-known for his heroic roles in action-adventure films. IN A SHALLOW GRAVE represents a complete departure -- as the grotesquely disfigured Garnet, Michael's handsome face is concealed beneath a plastic burn mask. He had to create his character using his voice, his eyes, and the nuances of body language.

"It's a terrific story and that made up for the difficulties of playing Montrose," says Biehn.

For five weeks, Biehn submitted to a daily ordeal of three hours of makeup but the procedure gave him sympathy for his character.

"Garnet is a person who has been destroyed. He really clings to life for every little joy... then Daventry comes into his life and turns up the fire."

Prior to his days as an action/adventure star, Biehn displayed his full range in his earlier starring roles. He played a succession of memorable villains -- a schizophrenic doctor in the top-rated ABC miniseries, Deadly Intentions; a loathsome, amoral cop in a three-part episode of Hill Street Blues; a sinister military school cadet in the Franc Roddam film, The Lords of Discipline; and the flipped-out admirer who stalks Lauren Bacall in the 1980 film, The Fan. In 1984s monster hit, The Terminator, Biehn played a man from the future sent to modern-day Los Angeles to stop a murderous cyborg. His position in the action genre was solidified when Terminator producers John (should be 'James') Cameron and Gale Ann Hurd cast him in their next film, Aliens as the sergeant of the platoon of Marines accompanying Sigourney Weaver, Biehn was simultaneously dymanic and sympathetic -- the best combination for an adventure hero. However, rather than settle into a pattern of playing similar roles, Biehn has chosen to continue stretching his talents with a variety of characters. Apart from IN A SHALLOW GRAVE, he has recently completed two other films -- Rampage, in which he plays a lawyer prosecuting a psychopathic killer, and The Seventh Sign, a romantic thriller also starring Demi Moore and Jurgen Prochnow.

Born in Anniston, Alabama, the son of an attorney, Biehn was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he began performing at an early age in community theatre. He attended the University of Arizona on a drama scholarship and came to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He currently lives in Hollywood.

Young star PATRICK DEMPSEY (Potter Daventry) has already made his mark, at the ripe age of 21. Like Biehn, Dempsey makes a departure from his best-known roles in IN A SHALLOW GRAVE. Dempsey has starred in two films, both released in 1987 -- the hit romance Can't Buy Me Love and In The Mood, co-starring Beverly D'Angelo. Dempsey brings several years of stage, screen, and television experience to his performances. A native of Maine, Patrick developed an interest in acting as a teenager. At the urging of one of his teachers, he pursued several unusual hobbies, including juggling, ventriloquism, and unicycling. Following a stint with the Maine Acting Company, he headed New York where he soon found himself appearing in several talent showcases. Upon displaying his abilities in the Talent America competition, he won the coveted role of Eugene in the touring company of Neil Simon's Tony Award-winning play, Brighton Beach Memoirs. Following a year on the road, Dempsey made his television debut in A Fighting Choice, a made-for-cable movie which aired on The Disney Channel. He also enjoyed a recurring role on the series Fast Times at Ridgemont High, followed in short order by his feature films. Patrick has two new films in the works -- Iron Will, filmed in the Soviet Union, and Sisters, a drama to be filmed in Montreal.

MAUREEN MUELLER (Georgina Rance) makes her feature film debut in IN A SHALLOW GRAVE as the lonely young widow loved from a distance by Garnet Montrose. No shy newcomer, however, Mueller has already had two successful careers. She left her Denver home and six brothers and sisters at age 18 to tour for three years with a band, singing rock'n'roll, blues, and jazz. Discovered by a French modelling agent, she left for Paris where she spent another three years as a top international model. Returning to the States in 1983, she moved to Chicago, having heard of its great reputation for theatre. She trained at Second City and Steppenwolf and soon she and two friends started their own theatre company, Famous Door.

Only a year and a half out of the prestigious Juilliard school, MICHAEL BEACH (Quintas Pearch) is on a roll. Since graduating in May 1986, he has completed Suspect, starring Cher, The End of the Line, Streets of Gold, the CBS-TV movie Open Admission with Jane Alexander, and now, IN A SHALLOW GRAVE. Beach prepared for his role as farmhand to the scarred veteran Garnet Montrose by going to New York's Schomburg Center Library of Black Culture to research southern blacks in the 1940s.

"But I tap into a part real quick -- I follow my gut feelings."

Beach escaped the harshness of inner-city life in Boston when he left home at 14 to attend Noble and Greenough Prep School on a football scholarship. When his athletic career was interrupted by an injury, he fell into acting and, upon graduation, he decided against Harvard and Brown in favor of a full scholarship to Juilliard. There he performed in 17 plays, and in 1984 he won their Drama League Award for Outstanding Achievement. Other awards include first place in the NAACP 1982 National Drama Competition and a New York Shakespeare Festival award in 1986.

"I just love to act, to play the melody of the written word," says Beach. In his spare time, Beach shares that love as a volunteer in the South Bronx, writing plays and teaching kids to act.

KENNETH BOWSER (Writer/Director/Producer) makes his feature directorial debut with IN A SHALLOW GRAVE, though he has been working in the film industry for fifteen years. His passion for Purdy's work gave him the tenacity to nurture this project for five years, until it finally came to fruition.

"Since I was eight years old, I wanted to make movies," says Bowser. He started at age 17 as a production assistant and worked through the years as a unit manager, sound mixer, production manager, and assistant director on a variety of commercials, industrials, and feature films. In 1981, he dropped out of the production end of the business to concentrate on developing his own projects.

"Having done all these different jobs in film helped demystify the directing process to the point where I felt fairly comfortable with the idea of doing it myself." In 1984 he sold his first screenplay, Be My Baby, to Cannon Films. That same year he attempted to acquire the rights to the novel, In a Shallow Grave. After being turned down by William Morris because of his lack of directing experience, he managed, with the help of his partner Marilyn Haft, to persuade the author, James Purdy, to allow him to produce one of Purdy's short stories. The resulting short film, Sleep Tight, was picked up by Rank Films for foreign theatrical distribution and by Show time and the Arts and Entertainment Network for domestic television. The success of the film (adapted, produced, and directed by Bowser) convinced Purdy and the William Morris agency to option In a Shallow Grave to Bowser. "All the characters in the story are outcasts; they have to learn to accept themselves. James Purdy has been somewhat of an outsider in American literature and, in my opinion, very much under-appreciated. In some small way, I guess, I relate. It's been hard for me to break into directing. I dropped out of high school, I worked my way up through the ranks of the film industry, outside the mainstream. It's been hard to find my own way. Maybe that's why I was so touched by James' story and why I resolved to bring it to the screen. But, it's a universal tale too because almost everyone, in some way, feels like an outsider."

Author JAMES PURDY was born in rural Ohio in 1923. He travelled extensively as a young man and spent several years in Mexico and Spain where he studied Spanish and was greatly influenced by the Spanish picaresque writers, particularly Cervantes. Mr. Purdy taught English in pre-Castro Havana before moving to New York, where he later taught at New York University. A writer from his youngest days, yet unable for years to get anything published, Mr. Purdy sent his stories to Dame Edith Sitwell. She hailed him as one of the greatest living American writers and her influence was responsible for getting Purdy's work published in England. Ten years later, when he was finally published in the States, reviews were extravagant and have remained so throughout sixteen books.

Mr. Purdy's work has been translated into more than twelve languages. Three of his novels, Color of Darkness, Malcolm, and The Nephew have become classics. Malcolm was adapted for the stage by Edward Albee. In a Shallow Grave was first published in 1976 and is the first of his works to be made into a feature film. In describing the story, Purdy says, "I think one of the great things in life is self-knowledge -- we often don't know who we are. Garnet is so afraid of himself, and his emotion. He finally falls onto his knees and has to beg -- he has to admit he needs someone else. It's a study of pride; he has to humble his pride. It is a kind of religious allegory, about salvation. Garnet's entire world is destroyed; he fashions a new world out of the ashes. Man has to transcend his own nature to find himself."

Purdy has received numerous awards including two Guggenheims, a Ford Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, a National Academy of Arts and Letters Fellowship, and a William Faulkner PEN nomination in 1985. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York. Says Purdy, "When you write a novel you never dream someone will make a film of it. You can only hope to satisfy yourself and hopefully some readers. But it's wonderful to have your work transferred into another medium."

BARRY JOSSEN (Producer, with Kenneth Bowser) is pleased with the fine production values IN A SHALLOW GRAVE attained on a modest budget. "We tried to get the very best people and a lot of good people wanted to work on this film." Immediately preceding IN A SHALLOW GRAVE, Jossen produced Home Fires, a four-hour miniseries for Show time. Previously, Jossen was the Executive in Charge of Production and Administration for Telepictures Productions, prior to their merger with Lorimar. Before that, he was Director of Production for the Konigsberg Company. As an Associate Producer of television movies, Jossen's credits include Act of Vengeance, Right to Kill, Wet Gold, The Glitter Dome, Divorce Wars, and Coming Out of the Ice. He also was the Executive in charge of Production for the ABC film Surviving and Associate Producer for the CBS mini-series, Ellis Island. Jossen, who studied at UCLA, the University of Hawaii, and North Carolina State University, also supervised production on such television series and movies as Rituals, A Christmas Without Snow, The Pride of Jesse Hallam, Breaking Away, and Guyana Tragedy: the Story of Jim Jones.

MARILYN HAFT (Executive Producer) explains, "I got behind Ken on IN A SHALLOW GRAVE because he believed in it so much." Haft, a well-known entertainment lawyer, now shares that enthusiasm. "It's a very moving and important story. It's about outcasts, about healing -- but it has larger meanings, about race, about war, about prejudice... we're in a time when people are re-examining war in the movies and this is another visual lesson but, this time, we are showing intimate and personal details of the ravages of war."

Haft had a successful legal career in politics before shifting into entertainment. A graduate of New York University School of Law in 1968, Haft began in international finance law, spending a year in Geneva. From 1970 to 1976, she served as full-time counsel to the National Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, specializing in prisoners rights, gay rights and women's issues. During the same period, she authored law books and was an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. After a year as a full-time legal consultant to the documentary division of NBC News, she joined the Carter White House as Associate Director of the Office of Public Liaison. From 1978 to 1979, she was Deputy Counsel to Vice President Walter Mondale, advising him on justice and national security issues and on national issues concerning the arts. In 1979 she returned to New York to run the primary re-election campaign for President Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale in New York City and was appointed that year as one of six full-time representatives to serve the United States at the United Nations. During that time, she met a number of heads of motion pictures studios who were also involved in politics.

"Politics and the arts are both about communication," says Haft. "They're both powerful communicators." In 1981, Haft decided to shift into entertainment law, setting up a private practice in New York. She represents prominent individuals (primarily producers, writers, and directors) and companies in the U.S. and abroad in film, television, and theatre. She currently has projects in the works with Ken Bowser (now her husband) and legendary agent, Lucy Kroll, among others.

LINDSAY LAW (Executive Producer) is the Executive Producer of American Playhouse and oversees all aspects of each of its productions. For American Playhouse, he produced the musical Working, the hit Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, and Reynolds Price's original drama, Private Contentment. He was instrumental in bringing the acclaimed miniseries Concealed Enemies; to television, serving as its executive producer. The miniseries won the Emmy Award for Best Limited Series in 1984. Educated at New York University's School of the Arts, Law has compiled an impressive list of credits. He has produced The Girls in their Summer Dresses by Irwin Shaw with Jeff Bridges and Carol Kane; The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan with Patti Lupone and Kevin Kline; You Can't Take it With You, by Kaufman and Hart with Jean Stapleton, Art Carney, Blythe Danner and Harry Morgan; The Good Doctor by Neil Simon with Lee Grant, Marsha Mason, Ed Asner and Richard Chamberlain; The Most Happy Fella by Frank Loesser with Giorgio Tozzi; and The Eccentricities of a Nightingale by Tennessee Williams with Frank Langella and Blythe Danner. He has also produced works by D.H. Lawrence, Eugene O'Neill, Anton Chekhov, Peter Nicholls and Heinrich von Kleist, and served as Associate Producer on Cyrano de Bergerac with Peter Donat and Marsha Mason.

He was producer of specials for Warner Brothers Television, Head of Drama for WNET/New York, and producer of the Peabody Award-winning series, Theatre in America. He serves on the advisory board of the Independent Feature Project/West, the United States Film Festival and on the American Film Institute's Television Committee. He resides in Roxbury, Connecticut.

JERZY ZIELINSKI (Director of Photography) came to IN A SHALLOW GRAVE immediately from directing the photography on Stars and Bars for Columbia Pictures and David Puttnam. His first involvement with Puttnam was in 1983 when he was hired to shoot Cal, after Puttnam had seen his work in the Polish film Shivers. Since 1979, Zielinski has lensed twelve feature films as Director of Photography. He began in still photography in his native Poland and then proceeded to the Polish National Film School in Lodz, graduating in 1975. He next studied on a scholarship in London. His first feature as Director of Photography, Aria for an Athlete (1979), won him the Best Cinematography Award at the Festival of Polish Feature Films and the film was presented at the New York Film Festival. He next shot Children on Strike (1981) and then Shivers. Cal, (British entry at Cannes, 1984) was his first film outside Poland and he has since shot the documentary Asylum for the BBC, Flight of the Spruce Goose, Valentino Returns, and Stars and Bars for director Pat O'Connor. Between films, Zielinski teaches at Film Polski and at Copenhagen.

"There are similarities between the way I shot Cal and IN A SHALLOW GRAVE," says Zielinski, "but it's difficult to explain. My work is very abstract -- it's light, movement, rythym, and composition. You have to use very technological equipment to create something very abstract."

"I'm very concerned about a script and the crucial communication with the director. Sometimes Ken (Bowser) just gave me a few words and then I expressed the idea in lighting." Zielinski continues, "I wanted strong colors without diffusion but we were shooting in August, on hazy 100-degree Virginia days, so naturally I had to compromise!"

JONATHAN SHEFFER (Composer) is a native of New York City, educated at Harvard, Aspen Music School, and Juilliard. His work includes two musicals, Ladies in Waiting and Going Hollywood; songs for two revues, Diamonds and Let Freedom Sing; and two short operas, The Mistake and Camera Obscura, the latter written under a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and produced at the O'Neill Center. He has written the scores for the feature films On Valentine's Day and Courtship, for the American Playhouse production The Rise and Fall of Daniel Rocket, and for the ABC Afterschool Special, Wanted: The Perfect Guy.