The Stars Come Out in Pawtucket to film Normal Adolescent Behavior
BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

PAWTUCKET -- Hollywood took over a normally tranquil residential street off of East Avenue yesterday to shoot scenes for the film Normal Adolescent Behavior.

Both ends of the pretty street, a place of leafy trees and pseudo-Tudor houses that Beaver Cleaver or Ozzie and Harriet would be at home in, were blocked by orange cones and sawhorses. Young women with walkie-talkies and earphones stood at the barricades ready to shoo off anyone who was not a resident or member of the movie crew.

Several of them scurried back and forth, carrying tall ladders or big frames of white cardboard. Others shouted things like, "Quiet! We're rolling."

A camera sat on a track in the side yard of one house, trained on a black Audi parked out front. Behind the car was an enormous portable air conditioner, its fat, clear plastic tube hauled to the back window on the driver's side during scene set-ups to wheeze in cool air.

Across the street, under a white tent, director Beth Schacter sat waiting in front of a flat-screen video monitor for her stars -- Amber Tamblyn of TV's Joan of Arcadia, Ashton Holmes of the David Cronenberg film A History of Violence and Daryl Sabara of the Spy Kids movies. Between set-ups she nibbled a chocolate-covered ice-cream bar and sipped from a cup of red slush from Mr. Goody's ice cream truck which had found a gold-mine location at the corner, just out of camera range.

It's the first time Schacter, who has directed and written for the stage in New York, is behind the camera on a feature film. Normal Adolescent Behavior is based on her own script which, unlike too many teen comedies today, is not some anything-goes, slapstick romp about sex-starved teens. "No drugs. No smoking. No blood," she says with a laugh.

"Well, a little bit of sex," she adds teasingly. "These are teenagers after all. But safe sex!"

Producer Brad Wyman found Schacter's synopsis of her script late one night on an Internet Web site geared to independent filmmakers. He immediately asked to meet with her the next day. He calls Normal Adolescent Behavior sort of like "a John Hughes film, but a little more adult because kids are growing up quicker every day." In the mid 1980s, Hughes was the director of choice for teenagers, exploring their problems and frustrations with a great deal of honesty and openness in films such as The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. "It's a drama for kids," adds Wyman who has produced such films as Monster, which won the best actress Academy Award for Charlize Theron playing a serial killer.

There are no serial killers in Normal Adolescent Behavior, which has shot scenes in Wickford and at the Rocky Hill School in East Greenwich and will wrap up next week after 19 days of shooting. So far it's right on schedule on a budget of less than $5 million. Last week's rainy weather didn't hamper shooting. "We lucked out by being inside when it was raining and outside when it was sunny," said Wyman.

The plot revolves around Tamblyn's Wendy, part of a tight-knit high school clique who finds herself in conflict with them when Sean, played by Holmes, moves next door.

In this scene, which is finally ready to roll after a couple of quick rehearsals, Wendy has driven Sean home after meeting him in class, discovering to her surprise that he is her new next-door neighbor. Sabara, who plays her younger brother, is in the back seat. The scene involves the teens getting out of the car, having a few words and then walking into their respective houses.

Three houses are actually being used, although it will seem like only two on screen. Holmes' next door house will be used for both exteriors and interiors. But the one Tamblyn and Sabara are entering is only for exteriors. Its interiors will be shot in a house across the street. Production designer Gabrael Wilson of Los Angeles explains that besides designing the interior bedrooms with posters and original artworks from local artists and Rhode Island School of Design students, "you have to make sure the window treatments of this house," he says, pointing to the house where the camera is set up, "match the window treatments of that house." Making two houses look like one on screen is all in the details.

Schacter, who says her cast and crew can number up to 75, is asked whether she feels as though she's commanding an army.

"I feel more like I'm commanding a special ops group than an army. It's more like threading a needle than taking over a country. It's more exacting. It's not like 'run, jump, kill!' "

Wearing a black dress and engineer boots ("Ya gotta have boots, the true secret of doing this job is good shoes"), her short hair is pulled back by a burgundy silk scarf. She looks beneficent, sort of like the Earth Mother to a large brood who are forever asking questions, although one whose right breast and arms have been decorated with small tattoos. On her upper left arm are the words "mystery luck chance," although she says none of those things apply to this case.

Schacter says she wrote Normal Adolescent Behavior "'for myself when I was in grad school at Columbia." She later took it to the Independent Film Project in Los Angeles for guidance in developing it. "But you can't write it thinking you're going to get $5 million or even $100,000 for it. You have to write it for yourself."

It was its honest and, well, "normal" qualities that appealed to Wyman, who grew up loving those John Hughes films. He calls Schacter "the John Hughes for 2006."

Wyman says lots of local kids were hired as extras in the film and some even got speaking roles. "Part of going on location is trying to take advantage of the location," he adds, even raving about the meals served by West End Cafe Catering of Cranston.

On the other hand, you're also dealing with people who don't usually have movie and TV stars turning up in their neighborhoods and the excitement that can engender. A recent report in the Boston Herald that co-stars Stephen Colletti of Laguna Beach and Ricky Ullman of Phil of the Future were chased by a "stampede" of screaming teenage girls in Wickford, Wyman says, was exaggerated. "They got some crowds," he acknowledged, but added that it was not like "The Beatles in their heyday," as the newspaper column alleged.

In fact, on this quiet street in Pawtucket yesterday, only the arrival of Mr. Goody's ice cream truck caused any kind of stampede.

www.projo.com   6/21/06