By John Sullivan from the April 2002 issue of Sci-Fi Channel Magazine
The transition from childhood to adulthood can be
trying under
the best of circumstances. But when you're living on the run, relentlessly
hunted by the madman who killed your parents, and even a momentary loss of
self-control can set off real fireballs - well, that takes adolescent angst to a
whole new level.
That's the problem Charlene "Charlie" McGee faces in
Firestarter: Rekindled, a two-part original miniseries airing on March 10 and 11 at 9pm
ET/PT on the SCI FI Channel. The project is a continuation of Stephen King's
1980 novel, Firestarter. The novel was also adapted into a 1984 film starring a
young Drew Barrymore as the pyrokinetic Charlie, and George C. Scott as John
Rainbird, the sociopathic government agent who wants to mold her into a weapon.
Firestarter: Rekindled picks up the story in the present, with Marguerite Moreau
as the grown-up Charlie and Malcolm McDowell as Rainbird.
A lot has changed since the events of Firestarter. Charlie has grown into a
young woman, carefully hiding from the government agency that created her. Her
devastating powers remain, and may even have matured a bit with her.
What hasn't changed is Rainbird's obsession with Charlie.
Rainbird has
continued the Lot 6 experiments that led to Charlie's birth and now has his own
squadron of psychic children. He's been eliminating survivors of the original experiments with the unwitting help of
researcher Vincent Sforza, who thinks he's tracking down beneficiaries of a
class action settlement.
By the time Sforza learns the truth, he's already delivered
Charlie into
Rainbird's hands. A showdown is inevitable, and Charlie has reached a crucial
turning point in her life, a struggle that will decide who will control her
destiny.
Firestarter: Rekindled took its time getting to the screen. The project was
championed for years by executive producer Tom Thayer. Thayer approached
screenwriter Philip Eisner to write the screenplay. "I started working on
the script in the fall of 2000," says Eisner, who also wrote the
science-fiction thriller Event Horizon. "We had a green light before we had
a finished script. It was one of those things where the project was strong
enough and SCI FI's enthusiasm was strong enough that we moved very
quickly."
Casting also went quickly. For the lead role, the producers cast the first
actress they saw. That almost never happens, but Marguerite Moreau walked in
and nailed the audition. The young actress is best known as Connie from the
Mighty Ducks films. But, after taking some time off for college, she's been
having a break-out year, including roles in Wet, Hot American Summer and Queen
of the Damned, the follow up to Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.
"I'd just finished working on Queen of the Damned," says Moreau,
"where I spent half a year playing the only mortal in the film. And I had
to sit around and watch all the other actors have so much fun. So I read this
script when I got back home and said, 'Oh, I have to go be supernatural!'"
It also helped that Moreau devoured King's novel, to the point that on the
set she became the stickler for continuity details. "I'm kind of a book
nerd," she admits.
Casting the villain was almost as easy, although not without
continuity problems of its own. John Rainbird was presumably killed at the end
of the original story. According to Eisner, "We honestly sat down and said,
'Can we come up with a better villain than Rain bird?' And the answer was
no."
Eisner takes some solace in the idea that Firestarter:
Rekindled technically is a sequel to the novel rather than the film. "In
the book, Charlie sets him on fire, and people have been set on fire and
survived," he explains. "I think in the movie, you actually see him
blow up. Can't do much about that."
Since Rainbird's very survival involved taking some
liberties, it wasn't that much more of a stretch for a character who started out
as an American Indian and then became George C. Scott to end up English. Malcolm
McDowell, with his flair for the villainous, had long been executive producer
Thayer's first choice. McDowell signed on, attracted by the complexities of the
character.
"Malcolm has played cinema heavies before," says
Eisner, "but he really brings a humanity to Rainbird where it would have
been easy to just go, 'Grr, look at me, I'm a villain.' From Rainbird's
perspective, this is a love story, and Malcolm really got that."
Danny Nucci was cast as Vincent Sforza, the normal guy who
begins to recognize the dark conspiracy he's enmeshed in even as he discovers a
growing attraction for Charlie. Nucci previously played Leonardo DiCaprio's
ill-fated best friend in Titanic as well as roles in Crimson Tide and
The Rock.
Rounding out the cast is Dennis Hopper in the pivotal role of
James Richardson, a half-mad professor who may hold the key to Charlie's
survival.
With its cast in place, shooting got underway in Utah in the
spring of 2001. The casting may have been a breeze, but the team paid its dues
on location with a rash of problems, from the merely annoying to the potentially
catastrophic. Filming was shut down by a freak blizzard, and an actor suffered
an attack of altitude sickness and had to be rushed to the hospital. The
producer's on-site office was even trashed by marauding raccoons.
"All these things happened to our production," says
Moreau, "like sets not being ready, and things not blowing up. You name it,
it happened."
Normally, of course, "things not blowing up" is
considered very good, but in this case it was a problem. When she got the part,
Moreau says she "didn't even think about 'oh, you're going to be around
fire all the time.' My mother was like, 'so how are they going to do this? Are
you sure it's safe?' And it was quite safe and really exciting because we'd blow
something up and then they'd say 'That wasn't big enough! Let's do it again!'
And the next time would be bigger and hotter. It was terribly fun."
The casting of McDowell and Hopper also demanded some
adjustments to the script, according to Eisner. "After we cast it, we
realized here are our two best-known actors and they don't have a scene
together!" In fact, despite both having careers that have spanned three
decades and included some of the most important films ever made, it turned out
McDowell and Hopper had never shared a scene. Eisner got to work and came up
with a way to bring them together in the story's second night.
The crew knew they were seeing movie history. "I was on
the set the day we shot it," says Eisner, "and every corner of the
room that wasn't going to be in frame was packed. They finally had to clear the
room. It's not a big room and the film crew's maybe 20 people. Then we had
probably 40 other people packed in there because they wanted to watch."
When Firestarter: Rekindled airs, viewers will get to share
that piece of movie history. They'll also see a story that works on different
levels. For Eisner, Firestarter: Rekindled is, much like the novel, essentially
about "what parents will do for their children and the limitless potential
a child has."
Moreau says Charlie "feels like such a freak and she
feels so disconnected. I think she wants to be normal and she just desperately,
desperately wants to be loved."
On the other hand, Eisner sees Rainbird's view of Charlie as
basically paternal. "If you're a parent, you want the best for your child.
You imagine a great destiny for your child. She wants to have a normal life,
but that's not what she's destined for, and he's going to bring her to do great
things even if he has to drag her kicking and screaming."
In that sense, the film's story is a classic struggle between
a father and a child on the edge of adulthood—an experience shared by any
number of normal families. Of course, this "family" is anything but
normal, and this time the pyrotechnics are right out in the open. As Moreau puts
it, "It's ultimately a girl in tight pants blowing stuff up."
© 2002 Sci-Fi Channel Magazine
Archived 2002-10 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net