Production
The film's producer, Mike Kaplan, saw the play performed by the Trinity Repertory Company while he was visiting Rhode Island on family business. Kaplan, who had met Lillian Gish many years earlier when he was a publicist involved in The Comedians (1967), decided immediately that the role of Sarah Webber was a role that would introduce new generations of filmgoers to the great talent of the "First Lady of American Film", who had begun her film career in 1912.
As opposed to the original stage production, the movie made it possible to showcase stars who were the age peers of the characters. Actors and actresses of a certain age and stature were contacted to see whether they were both interested in and physically capable of playing the roles. Many screen greats were approached to play a role but demurred because they suffered from various infirmities, e.g., Shirley Booth, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred Astaire, Paul Henreid. Other greats turned down the producers' overtures for other reasons, e.g., Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Katharine Hepburn, John Gielgud. Even Davis and Gish turned down the parts more than once before being persuaded to star in the film.
This film marks a reunion between Bette Davis and Vincent Price, after 48 years, having last appeared on screen together in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).
Berry, Lindsay Anderson (the director), the cinematographer, a location scout, and Kaplan traveled by water taxi to several islands in Casco Bay searching for a location that would provide the necessary ambiance and ocean vistas for the film. In the end, the film was shot on Cliff Island a few miles down the Bay from the site of Berry's family cottage on Peaks Island from where, in fact, the characters and story were drawn. The film's premiere in New York City on October 14, 1987, was followed a few weeks later by a State of Maine premiere in Portland, Maine, which was attended by both Berry and Kaplan.
The film proved immensely popular in Tokyo, running for a full year there. David Berry authorized several stage productions in Japan after the film premiered in Tokyo in 1987, the most recent being in 2005. Authorized stage productions have been presented overseas in several countries including Russia, Greece and Great Britain.
Read more about this topic: The Whales Of August
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“[T]he asphaltum contains an exactly requisite amount of sulphides for production of rubber tires. This brown material also contains “ichthyol,” a medicinal preparation used externally, in Webster’s clarifying phrase, “as an alterant and discutient.””
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)