‘Strangers’ find familiar location

The verbal bombshell fell during lunch at Beverley Restaurant in Staunton’s historic district.

The bombardier was movie director Zackary Adler. The guy with the metaphoric bull’s-eye on his head was producer and Albemarle Country resident Barry Sisson.

The two had dropped in for lunch after visiting Warrenton, where they had scouted out a possible location for the film “Familiar Strangers.” The movie opens Nov. 14 at Regal Cinemas 6 on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall.

From the moment the car turned off Interstate 81 and headed into Staunton, Adler’s head had been on a swivel. By the time they arrived at the restaurant, it was bombs away.

“Zack started talking about what a great location Staunton would make for the film,” said Sisson, producer of the picture. “This is just three weeks before we’re scheduled to start shooting, and we were pretty much set to film in Leesburg.

“It’s another nice little town, and we had found most of our locations there. We had only been in the restaurant a few minutes when Zack says, ‘Barry, we have to shoot here. We got to do it.’

“I said, ‘Zack, our locations are pretty much locked up up north.’ But artists don’t worry about how hard something is. They expect producers to make it happen, and we do.”

As soon as Sisson finished his sausage-and-egg omelet, he started working on making Staunton the principal location for the picture. With a great deal of help from the Virginia Film Commission and the people of Staunton, the production stayed on track and shooting started in early November 2006.

For 22 days camera, sound and lighting crews followed actors throughout Staunton and the surrounding areas as scenes. Sisson kept hearing the same comment as hurried from one potential problem or bottleneck to the next.

“People from Hollywood kept telling me that Staunton looked like a Hollywood back lot,” Sisson said. “They would say, ‘This is what we would build in Hollywood if we wanted a perfect American town.’

“Now that people are starting to see the film, the comment I hear more than anything else is, ‘This family reminds me of my family.’ That’s great, because it means we’ve touched on some universal truth.

“ ‘Familiar Strangers’ is about a family going through a very natural transition. The children have grown up and formed their own identities. Now they’ve come back together for a traditional family Thanksgiving and have to figure out how to relate to each other as adults.”

This is the first feature movie created by Charlottesville-based Cavalier Films, which Sisson started with Marc Lieberman in 2005. Their goal is to make high-quality, meaningful films on reasonable budgets.

“Familiar Strangers,” which was made with a budget of $1 million, is off to a good start. It won Best Ensemble Cast Performance awards at the Methodfest Film Festival and the Del Ray Beach Film Festival.

One of the toughest challenges Sisson faces in creating independent films within a limited budget is casting quality actors. His job is to somehow convince actors and directors to work for a lot less than they usually get paid.

“Agents don’t want to put their actors in these movies, because they get 10 percent of whatever it is,” Sisson said. “And 10 percent of what we pay, frankly, won’t pay their parking fees.

“So agents are sort of against us. And they do everything they can to keep us from talking to their clients, because if their client becomes passionate about the movie, they’re going to do it.”

Without huge amounts of money to entice recognized stars, another lure must be used. What often gets an actor on board is an appealing role that allows them to shine.

“People don’t work for us because we’re paying them so much money they can’t say no,” said Sisson, who is president of Cavalier Films. “They’re working with us because they like the material, and they get a chance to do something they don’t get the chance to do that much.

“Tom Bower, who plays the father in the film, will be a familiar face to nearly everybody, because he has been in something like 130 films. But he’s usually the supporting actor off to the side.”

Fans of “The Walton’s” TV series may recognize him as Mary Ellen’s husband, Dr. Curtis Willard. 

“In ‘Familiar Strangers’ Tom is a central character with the story revolving around him and his oldest son Brian [played by Shawn Hatosy],” Sisson said. “So people like Tom do it for the passion.”

The Sisson-Bower connection, as well as Sisson’s filmmaking career, was initially established at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2003. Sisson had ventured into the film industry by bankrolling the picture “The Station Agent” with producer Robert May.

The picture won the audience award for best drama at the festival and was picked up and distributed by Miramax Films and became a box office hit.

“I met Tom’s wife at Sundance, and through her met Tom,” said Sisson, who was in top management positions in the electronic security industry in the Washington area for 24 years before getting into the film business. “When Tom’s role came up, we immediately thought of him. When I called him, he jumped at it.

“He suggested we talk with his good friend Ann Dowd, who plays his wife in the film. Cameron Richardson, who plays Tom’s daughter, was quite a surprise. She nailed the role in an interview tape and we wanted her immediately.

“Now she is becoming a big star, having played the mother in the movie ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks.’ Nikki Reed was already an established star, and we got her because she is a good friend of D.J. Qualls, who plays Brian’s younger brother.

“She said, ‘I’m not doing anything, I’ll come to Virginia.’ So there she was, and she turned out to be perfect for the role as well.”

Sisson said the movies Cavalier Films wants to make are those that touch on central truths of life. He said Hollywood does a great job of making $200-million movies that create worlds, but it often overlooks the personal, close-in stories that deal with things regular people can identify with.

“When I got to the end of the script for ‘Familiar Strangers’ there was a tear in my eye, and that’s what we look for,” Sisson said of the screenplay written by John Bell. “We look for something that moves us emotionally.

“Bringing a film to life is a long torturous process, so you have to have a passion for it. We want people to see the movie and be entertained, and perhaps see themselves in aspects of it.

“What I want them to do is care, and perhaps get in touch with something they might not have been in touch with for a while, or maybe never. I want them to walk out of the theater thinking that was time well spent.”

Sisson said the opening three days of the film here in Charlottesville, Nov. 14 through 16, are critically important. If it does well at the box office, it will be distributed throughout the country. If it doesn’t do well, it will likely die.

“Every single step about making a film is hard, but that’s part of what makes it so special,” Sisson said. “When it does come together, it’s like a miracle and you revel in it.

“When ‘The Station Agent’ had its great success, I was told that it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. The person telling me this reasoned that it would make me think that this business is easy.

“What I have learned since is that this business is brutal, hard — a tough, tough industry. But I’m still passionate about bringing real stories to life, and that’s what independent films do.”

“Familiar Strangers”

Nov. 14-16

Regal Cinemas 6

http://www.cavalierfilms.com or http://www.familiarstrangersmovie.com.