Clarenceville, Québec
A homeowner's bucolic world collides with Hollywood silliness
Furthermore, we were in the midst of a long and arduous renovation of our old farmhouse. It was an act of love on the part of husband Robert to see this old home revived to its Victorian splendor and we were far from finished. The rough state of the interior precluded allowing film crews to enter, so we compromised by allowing the filmmakers to use the exterior for a day, subject to approval after a site inspection by the Producer, Director and Art Director.
We nervously waited for the day of our inspection. The film was a UK production: its actor/director was a noted British actor and the head of cinematography, an Academy Award winner. On a sunny Saturday morning, a non-descript van pulled to the side of the road and out popped the inspection team of the Producer, Director and Art Director, who dispensed with the inconvenience of introduction and immediately set about inspecting the property. The Producer scowled when he saw the white paint peeling from the side of our white clapboard house.
"Well," he mused carelessly, eyes fixated on the peeling paint, "it certainly looks better in the video." His callous observations fell like a blow to the solar plexus: many years of work and a small fortune had been spent to bring this grand old dame to a healthy state; however, she had yet to receive a final exterior coat of paint. A victim of at least a half-a-century of neglect and under-maintenance, she would take at least another decade of work to bring her back to her former glory. The Director, who had risen from Britain's working class and still spoke with a signature cockney accent, sympathetically defended her shabby nobility.
"I love your house," he said enthusiastically bouncing around the property, viewing the house from all angles, "Don't change anything on it...it's gorgeous." Still, I had been handed the verbal equivalent of a plastic-wrapped ham sandwich on white. Within a few minutes, however, the crisis had passed and it was agreed that our house would be a suitable site.
The original schedule called for urban and studio scenes to be shot in Montreal during the summer. The estimated time of arrival in Clarenceville was the first week in September; however, as time progressed, the filming schedule slipped behind. Our house had been chosen for a minor scene requiring a reasonable facsimile of an Iowa landscape, complete with rolling cornfields and a farmhouse. In front of the gingerbread-laced clapboard house stood a line of majestic sugar maples. The plot called for a young girl climbing in a tree to observe a group of kids who have been magically transported across a rainbow. Their flight takes them from their eastern U.S. home to the far end of the rainbow into the middle of a mid-western cornfield. The bewildered kids emerge from the field and head for the nearest farmhouse, all witnessed by the girl in the tree.
We wondered if audiences would notice that the young girl was perched in the boughs of a northern sugar maple, hardly a common tree in the Iowa landscape. To make matters worse, because of schedule delays, our sugar maples were now streaked with red and yellow and might conceivably be on the ground before the crew arrived.
"What can I say?" shrugged the location spotter, who undoubtedly had seen his share of snafus, "The production company comes from Britain: what do they know about Québec seasons?" About as much as Québecois know about Iowa, I surmised.
At last, as the end of September drew near, the day of filming was imminent. The day before film crews were to arrive, a house painter with a bucket of paint in hand knocked on our door.
"I'm here to touch up your porch," he announced. Our white clapboard screened porch had red muntins, which had apparently annoyed somebody in the art department. The change seemed so trivial to us, but knowing that the porch was to be repainted soon, we grudgingly allowed him to proceed, silently wondering what other surprises lay in store for us.
The following day, a caravan of trucks and vans arrived at the base of North Beech Road to film the cornfield scenes. Throughout the day, the caravan inched its way up the road while crews filmed brief sequences in the cornfields. A few hours ahead, an advance team arrived to set the stage, parking a 1940s vintage tractor rented from a neighbor near our well and an ancient Rambler station wagon in the driveway. Beside the Rambler they stacked a few bales of hay and crates containing live chickens, a scene that would have had my farming neighbors in their air-conditioned tractors scratching their heads in disbelief.
At last, in the early afternoon, the filming crew arrived like a swarm of killer bees. Accompanying the production staff and technicians was a small army of caterers, parents and tutors of the Canadian child actors - one wondered how many of this entourage were directly engaged in this relatively uncomplicated scene.
Robert and I were invited to hang around and to take pictures if we pleased. To pass time, I chatted with idle members of the set-up crew or to the parents of the Montreal child actors. They were restless, ill at ease in a place where sirens are not howling, traffic noises non-existent and a corner store not within a two-minute walk. We looked at these strangers (and they at us) like aliens from another world, each pitying the other for his choice of worlds.
The day passed uneventfully. As evening approached, filming wrapped and the crew packed up its equipment, disappearing as quickly as it had come. Robert grumbled as he raked up cigarette butts scattered throughout the lawn, consoled slightly by the cheque in his back pocket. Yet for the most part, our property had emerged from the experience relatively unscathed.
For months afterward I anxiously awaited the completed film's theatre release, slated for the spring. Spring came and went with no release, then fall, then Christmas. I could only assume that our film had found no distributor or had been pulled quickly from distribution because of slow ticket sales. Eventually, it would make its way to video store shelves. Only this year did I finally catch a few glimpses of "Rainbow" (dubbed in French) on television. For a few brief seconds, I saw the profile of our farmhouse and majestic maples in at the peak of glory, before they were mangled by the Ice Storm of `98. Still awaiting a new coat of paint, our home does, indeed, look better on video than she does close up, at least for the time being.
About a month ago, Robert recently received another call from a location spotter, referred to us by the first, inquiring about the availability of our house for another shoot. Robert and I concurred: the blush is off the rose. Maybe next time.
© 1999 Caroline Kehne
A Contribution to Sunnymead Village Magazine: SunnyZine
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