Irish director Mary McGuckian’s latest feature, ‘The Making of Plus One’, has wrapped its shoot on location at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film tells the story of a crew working on a fictional documentary of the movie ‘Plus One’, which is based on Claire Fordham’s book ‘Plus One: A Year in the Life of a Hollywood Nobody’, which is a satirical look at the Hollywood film industry.
The UK/Canadian co-production is being shot in two parts, with the second instalment lensing in September 2008 in France.
“The book is a memoir on Claire’s time in LA, where she found herself becoming the ‘plus one’ guest of her sister, singer/ songwriter Julie Fordham, at lots of showbiz parties,” explains McGuckian to IFTN. “We originally wanted to make a feature based on the book, but it was taking a long time to get off the ground so we decided to make a fictional ‘making of’ film instead.”
McGuckian wrote ‘scenescapes’ for the $6 million dollar budget film, with actors asked to improvise the dialogue. The film features an international cast including Canadian actor Michael Ecklund, US Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan Lori-Parks, Spanish actor Jordi Molla, Geraldine Chaplin (The Age of Innocence, Jane Eyre), UK actress Sarah Stockbridge (Tipping the Velvet, Intervention), Oona Chaplin (Inconceivable), Jennifer Tilly (The Initiation of Sarah, Intervention), Amanda Plummer (My Life Without Me) and Scottish actor John Sessions (The Good Shepherd).
’Plus One’ is produced by Canada’s Prospero Pictures (Hotel Rwanda) and the UK’s Scion Films, with McGuckian’s Pembridge Pictures in charge of development.
“This is the fourth film we’ve done with a revolving cast and crew, the first three being ‘Rag Tale’, ‘Inconceivable’ and ‘Intervention’,” says McGuckian. “‘The Making of Plus One’ is interesting because the actors played the crew of the fictional feature ‘Plus One’, our crew played themselves and our financiers and executives played themselves which was kind of amusing. Mike Goodridge, editor of Screen International, plays himself in the film and all the bankers and lawyers that we used in it all play themselves.”
DOP on the shoot was Marc Wolff, with production designer Max Gottlieb and Irish woman Sally O’Sullivan in charge of costume design.
‘The Making of Plus One’ will be edited in the UK, with the film expected to be delivered in early 2009.
