 Love
Field is a independent film directed
by Jonathan Kaplan and written by Don Roos,
a small road movie about an interracial love
affair, set in the South at the time of the
assassination of President John
F. Kennedy.
It was as struggle from day one-even though
it was, by all accounts, a killer package.
Yet, when offered practically every studio
passed. Then, according to Michelle
Pfeiffer, the first company to OK the
project pulled the plug a week before Christmas
1989, when a batch of so-called serious movies
bombed at the box office. Too risky, thought
Hollywood's other power-brokers, too controversial.
Still others said, "We'll
make it if you make the relationship platonic."
Finally Orion Pictures,
where Pfeiffer had just set up a production
company, Via Rosa Productions join her partner, adviser, and best friend Kate Guinzburg,
decided produce the movie.
Michelle Pfeiffer chose Love Field over another road picture, Thelma
& Louise. "Michelle
loved the character in Love Field,"
says Guinzburg, "I
mean, you look at [Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon
on] the cover of TIME and go, 'Huh? Hub? How
could she have made this choice?' But commercial
considerations are the last thing on her mind
when Michelle's deciding on a project."
 Originally, Denzel Washington was signed up for the role of the boyfriend
of Michelle Pfeiffer's
character.
"The movie was
a difficult one from the get go,"
Michelle admits. Orion badly wanted Washington
to costar, at a point when he and Pfeiffer
were being nominated by every award outfit
in sight, he for Glory,
she for The
Fabulous Baker Boys. But Washington
was worried that the male lead was too passive.
Shortly after production began, Denzel
Washington dropped out for "creative
differences," casting doubt on
the film's future.
This time, Pfeiffer was devastated. "I
remember crying after Denzel left,"
she said. "It was
right after a reading and then he walked out,
and I felt like I had been broken up with.
I felt like I had been completely rejected."
Then, Dennis Haysbert,
a virtual unknown, was called in to replace
him. Due to financial pressures from the afflicted
studio, the shooting schedule was unrealistically
short.
Although Pfeiffer said she had no intention
of leaving the film, for Kaplan it was a moment
in which the actress showed her true mettle.
"It was clear then
that if Michelle felt uncomfortable working
with an unknown, it was time to give up on
the project," he says. "And
I would have understood her decision. But
Michelle didn't bat an eye."
 Pfeiffer
could have walked; and that may well be what
her advisers recommended. It was, after all,
a big-risk picture plagued by bad luck. But
like Lurene, her character in Love
Field, Pfeiffer runs on determination.
Pfeiffer knew it was special. And no legion
of bozo executives was going to stand in her
way. If anything, the resistance to Love
Field inspired the actress to fight
harder till she got what she wanted. Which
is pretty much the story of her career.
The movie was finished in November 1991,
but then the bankruptcy of Orion put it in cold storage.
Epilog
 Finally,
on December 11, 1992 (and national on February
12), the reorganized studio released the film
as spearhead of its return to the business
and in order to qualify it for Academy
Award consideration.
But it was a fragile spearhead, Orion
Pictures in the United States, grossed
over $825,731 and the total amount of $1,949,148.
Such hard work and effort by Michelle
Pfeiffer were rewarded with her third
nomination to Academy
Awards as Best Actress in a Leading
Role. Besides, in February of 1993, the actress
won the Silver Bear as Best Actress at the
prestigious Berlin International
Film Festival.
By Fran - PfeifferTheFace.
Sources: Wikipedia, Entertainment
Weekly, American
Film
Pictures: Gorgeous
Pfeiffer |
April 6, 1993
January, 1993
Set
in 1963, in Dallas, Texas, Lurene Hallett
(
