Alright all you Ben Affleck maniacs out there. Alright all you Sandra Bullocks maniacs out there. Alright all you Steve Zahn maniacs out there. (BTW there are a lot of Steve Zahn maniacs) Here's a report from the set on their latest flick... FORCES OF NATURE
Here you go, pal. An exclusive ON-SET report from yours truly:
The weather Saturday night on Victory Drive was peculiar.
The stifling humidity stopped at 10:30 and was punctuated by a brief but intense hailstorm. Another one followed a few moments later. Then, a bit later, another bounced nickel-sized pellets of hail around the Kmart parking lot and sent everyone scurrying.
A machine was speeding across the parking lot of this Kmart here in Savannah, spewing from a fat tube the "hail" into a pluming arc over Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck. They were sopping wet and breathless, with Sandy (as they called her on set) holding a trash can lid against the heavens, they raced toward the store's front door, pelted by the whirring machine as fake lightning flashed above them. Ten minutes later, they sprinted again for the door. Then again. And again.
"They're being incredible sports," director Bronwen Hughes told the small assembly of press that had gathered that night of her leads in FORCES OF NATURE. The DreamWorks film crew started shooting the movie here in Savannah on June 23rd. The producer, Ian Bryce, told me that the company will be around town for about another month.
So far, Bryce said that everything's been great while they've been here . The Savannah Film Commision, the police, the City Council, and he stressed how helpful they'd all been to the shoot.
I barely talked to Hughes for a small bit but luckily, I was able to manange a few words from her before shooting began. She said that they love Savannah and that they were trying their best to explore every inch of it while they're here.
I also discovered that in addition to Sandy and Ben, the romantic comedy also stars Maura Tierney (Jim Carrey's wife in LIAR LIAR), Blythe Danner, Joe Don Baker, David Strickland, and Steve Zahn (OUT OF SIGHT, that thing you do!).
The story for this flick folows Ben's character named, ironically, Ben Holmes. This guy has two days to get from New York to Savannah for his wedding to Bridget (Tierney). When his plane skids into New York's Flushing Bay, he saves the life of his seatmate, (Sandy's character) the eccentric Sarah. She becomes his faithful, if not particularly wanted traveling companion. And you don't exactly need a slide rule and a flashlight to figure out who Ben winds up falling for (I guess all films like this tend to have cliches', huh Harry?)
Together they face all sorts of travails. Like that plane crash, of course. And a hurricane. And, yes, a nasty hailstorm in a Kmart parking lot. I asked how it all turns out and I was laughed at and told I'd just have to pay my five bucks and see by Hughes.
Once the filming is completed here in Savannah, Bryce said the FORCES OF NATURE crew will move up the coast to Richmond, Va., and Washington, then back to North Carolina, where filming should be completed around Labor Day. The movie, he said, should be out sometime in the spring.
