COLIN FIRTH IN

SOME NOTES ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
A Thousand Acres began to materialize as a film in 1991, prior to the publication of Jane Smiley's novel. Smiley's agent sent the manuscript to both Kate Guinzburg and Lynn Arost, who, serendipitously, had offices next to one another at the time. "We were given the book in galleys," Guinzburg recalls. "Michelle Pfeiffer and I had started our production company, Via Rosa Productions, and our offices were right next door to Lynn Arost and Jessica Lange's. Lynn and I became friends, and were actively looking for material for Michelle and Jessica to play sisters. When we read A Thousand Acres we knew that was it. We decided to join forces to make the movie."

Inspired by Shakespeare's epic tragedy, "King Lear," Smiley tells the story of a father dividing his kingdom amongst his daughters, bringing on the terrible consequences that divide his family and force them to face the truth about themselves and each other.

It was the story's connection to "King Lear" that attracted director Jocelyn Moorhouse to the project. "Ever since studying `King Lear' in school, I thought I'd love to make a movie out of it," Moorhouse says. "It's a story that has moved me for as long as I've wanted to be a director. Jane Smiley took the `Lear' story and told it from a different point of view, from the outlook of the daughters, Goneril and Regan, who become Ginny and Rose."

While Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer had committed to the film very early in its development, the actresses didn't automatically decide which sister they would portray. Gradually, Lange turned towards Ginny, the well-intentioned but repressed eldest Cook daughter while the role of Rose, the blunt-speaking, tightly-wound middle sister, attracted Pfeiffer. "I think their choices show very good instincts," notes director Moorhouse. "Both Jessica and Michelle are very sharp, film-literate and deeply passionate about the project. Jessica often plays these vital, almost wild characters and here she is playing someone who is very repressed and introspective, kind of on a slow burn and I think it's great. I don't think she's done that before, not to this degree, and that gives her character so much power, so much magnetism. And Michelle, it's exciting to see her playing such an angry, passionate part. She's played fiery characters before, but not with this character's edge, there is a scary edge to Rose and Michelle is compelling playing her; she is such a brave, tragic fighter. It's exciting for me to have them doing these characters in this movie because they've never worked together on-screen."

With two of the three leading roles set, the crucial casting of the remaining sister proceeded. The role of the indecisive youngest sister, Caroline, who detonates an explosive family secret, ultimately went to Jennifer Jason Leigh. "I think Jennifer looks as if she could be their sister," Moorhouse says, "because in appearance she is a bit of a mixture of Jessica and Michelle. I thought it was also an advantage that she is a fair bit smaller than them and I liked that because in the story she is psychologically like their daughter.

As Jess Clarke, a childhood friend of the Cook sisters who returns home to further fracture the already divided family, Moorhouse cast British actor Colin Firth. "I didn't deliberately cast a Brit," says the director. "I was just looking for an intensity and an unusual troubled quality. I loved him in Valmont and Apartment Zero, and thought he was really good in Pride and Prejudice, too. He has a very strong presence."

Although the story is set in Iowa, most of the filming took place on several farms in Illinois, their rambling white clapboard houses and acres of corn serving as interior and exterior sets. "I see the Cooks as a royal family and their empire is their land," Moorhouse says. "The corn is visually both claustrophobic and very serene and expansive, which is an interesting contrast. Because of the flatness, there's no privacy. They can see into each other's houses, into each other's lives and Daddy can see them all. I'm interested in that because he has a certain level of control over them if he can see them."

The color scheme of these interiors, as well as more elaborate ones production designer Davis erected on locations and sound stages in Los Angeles, tended toward muted earth tones of putty and pale green. "For a story as dramatically charged as this one, simpler is always better, so I chose more restrained and understated colors," Davis says.

While in Illinois, the film company was based in the small farming community of Rochelle, a town which provided an uncanny replication of the one that harbored the Cook family in the novel. Surrounded by a sea of corn, bordered by several highways, themselves flanked by prosaic shopping centers and a ubiquitous Wal-Mart, Rochelle boasts a small downtown that is home to a bank, a post office, a pharmacy, a card shop, an antique shop, a women's clothing store, a pub known as The Pour House and several clubs, including a VFW Lodge and a Masonic Temple.

Costume designer Ruth Myers, whose goal was to create a wardrobe that was an authentic representation of the clothes worn in a small-town farming community, found her inspiration, as well as the actual items, in the village of Rochelle and surrounding environs. They look like real clothes because they are, as opposed to a Hollywood version of "country" and that's been the fun of it, really. Myers assigned each character a distinct palette and cut of clothing, both of which would change slightly as the events of the story affected their lives. [Sourse: Hollywood Online. Click here for the full text ]