Hard Promises - Production Notes

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Joey Coalter's wife is getting married, and he's been invited to the wedding. Joey didn't even know he'd been divorced.

He and Chris have had a here/there kind of marriage: Chris has waited here at home for Joey to get over his wanderlust, only to discover the charming rogue is never there when she needs him. Has the much-forwarded invitation been sent as a veiled plea for him to stop her impending wedding?

The romantic comedy "Hard Promises" stars Academy Award Winner Sissy Spacek as Chris and William Petersen as Joey. Brian Kerwin plays Walt Humphrey, Joey's boyhood friend whose impending marriage to Chris draws Joey back to his hometown. Mare Winningham appears as Chris' best friend, Dawn; Jeff Perry is Pinky, Dawn's husband and Joey's best friend in high school; and Olivia Burnette plays Joey and Chris' daughter, Beth.

"Hard promises are the ones you make even though you know deep in your soul they are impossible to keep," says director Martin Davidson.

Executive produced by Rick Bieber and Peter McAlevey for Stone Group Pictures, "Hard Promises" is the first film to be developed and produced by High Horse Films, which is headed by William Petersen and partner Cindy Chvatal. Petersen and Chvatal serve as producers on the film, which is written by Jule Selbo and is being released by Columbia Pictures. "Hard Promises" began with a conversation between McAlevey and Chvatal about his trip home to an old girlfriend's wedding.

"The story is based on a 'what if' situation," says Petersen. "What if a guy was divorced in absentia and he finds out his wife is engaged to marry an old friend and he comes back on the eve of the wedding? We wanted a comedy about all these relationships that was crammed into a 24-hour time span that was further crammed into an hour and 45 minutes of film time."

"We wanted to make a film where every character counted," adds Chvatal. "You know how in Frank Capra's films or Preston Sturges' films every character counted? The town in 'Hard Promises' is like that: The characters' lives are all interwoven."

McAlevey and Chvatal chose Jule Selbo to write the screenplay after reading one of her unproduced works and concluding that Selbo had the sensitivity to flesh out their story idea.

"It's a pretty universal situation," says Selbo. "We've all either been the person left behind or the one who has to keep going until he finds what he's looking for."

Though the subject matter was serious, the producers wanted to make a romantic comedy.

"In life there are two sides to every story, there is absurdity in every situation," says Chvatal. "I believe you have to find something in each situation to laugh about."

In discussing the filmmakers'' approach to "Hard Promises" as a romantic comedy, director Davidson says: "Romance or love and comedy are not something that need to be checkerboarded. You don't need a block of comedy to break the tension of the block of romance. To me, a romantic comedy is like a hash: It's all together, the love and the comedy -- you taste one within a breath of the other."

Davidson, who had previously directed Petersen in the HBO baseball comedy "Long Gone," is a "great romantic," Petersen says. "He believes in heroes. He believes in the good choice, in the goodness of man. He wants his movies to be about good. He knows that what is important for the story is that we care about the characters."

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION ......

Shooting on "Hard Promises" began near Austin, Texas, in the little town of Lockhart. Previously used as the location for such films as "Raggedy Man," "Resurrection," "The Great Waldo Pepper" and "A Small Town in Texas," the city boasts a town square that has been largely preserved in its turn-of-the-century Victorian state. The challenge for the production designer Dan Leigh was to reverse the effects of some modernization as well as to provide the storefronts called for in the script.

"The point I had to keep in mind is that the town in the story has been here a long time and it's going to keep on going," says Leigh. "We wanted to convey the feeling that there are roots and good things to be had here. This is not about a small town going under. It's not about hicks. For some people a small town is wonderful, and that's what this movie is about."

Working with his art department, Leigh transformed a city block to give Lockhart's San Antonio Street the feel of a small, proud town. They added canopies, false fronts and signs, all aged to blend with adjacent buildings, which had not been altered through the years by modernization attempts.

Interiors and exteriors were also shot in and around Austin. The historic Hyde Park area of the city was used for the location of Chris' and her best friend Dawn's homes. For the Humphrey farm, where both the wedding and rehearsal scenes take place, the production moved to a historic farm in nearby Pfluggerville. The white, Queen Anne-style home behind the tented wedding was previously used as the site for the Chicken Ranch, Dolly Parton's house of ill repute, in the move version of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

Spacek, who stars as Chris Coalter, the woman who tires of being a tangential part of her husband's life and chooses a new mate with whom to share her life, says: "One of the things I loved about Chris was that she is a woman taking control of her life."

Spacek responded to the script partly because the humor comes out of real life situations, "like Chris throwing up at the wedding rehearsal because she's nervous and has had too much wine. I could have done that. It's about people and relationships. I've always liked movies where it's not so much what the story is about but how the story is told. This is such a movie: lighthearted, but with a lot of depth."

Any life story can be plotted by the choices the protagonist makes. In "Hard Promises," the choices Joey Coalter makes are contrasted with those made by his best friend, Pinky Kulowski, played by Jeff Perry. While Joey chooses to scratch his every itch for adventure and travel, lighting at home for only brief spells, Pinky has chosen to stay in his small hometown, work a mundane job and be an active part of his family. Their choices affect their wives, their lives and their relationship with each other.

The similarity between actor Petersen and his film character is not limited to a few shared live events.

"I feel akin to Joey because I've lived all over," he says. "I've never been in a place more than three months. I've had every job in the world, but after three months I'm sick of it. I've liked the road since I was 15. I like the idea of doing something, getting it done and getting it over with. That's why I've been very fortunate to have found a place in the entertainment world where things are constantly changing. I enjoy the 'gypsy-ness' of this.

"I think Joey is a gypsy, and like all gypsies he needs to have a home camp. They need to know there's a place where on a dark night, when they're drinking in a bar, they can say, 'Yeah, I have a family.' But unless you take care of it you won't have it."

The challenge for Petersen, notes writer Selbo, is to make Joey likable. "However irresponsible one might find Joey, most of us can identify with his desire to have it all."

"Chris doesn't blame Joey," Spacek says. "He's got wanderlust, and for people who have that, it's like a curse. It comes across as bravado, but it's more a search and a hunger to find themselves. They keep looking for something that's going to fill the void."

Kerwin, commenting on his role as Walt Humphrey, the appliance store owner who promises to be there for Chris, says: "Walt is a very naive, trusting fellow. You know he's going to be home for supper. With Joey, you don't even know what hemisphere he's going to be in. That's Chris' dilemma;  She can't decide whether to remain with the guy who gets her hot under the collar or marry the one she thinks with make a wonderful husband."

"Life is about sharing the little bitty things," says Spacek. "This movie is about the people who are more like Walt, because everybody is not like the charming, magnetic Joey. Sometimes the decent steady man with a good sense of humor wins."

Dawn Kulowski, played by Mare Winningham, is married to Pinky. She is Chris' best friend and the voice that keeps telling her "just because he kisses good doesn't make him a good husband." Dawn knows it is the little shared moments that add up to a marriage.

Winningham plays Dawn with experience born as much for her real-life marriage as her many acting roles.

"When we started this film I was excited about what this film says about men and women and how they relate," says Winningham. "I love that this movie focuses on more than the Hollywood notion of just falling in love. It shows the bigger issue, the complexities of real love and real commitment."

Davidson says: "Chris and Joey try desperately to accommodate each other, even though it will break their hearts to fulfill these promises. It becomes a classic love story where people love each other enough to allow one another to fulfill their own destinies, even at the exclusion of their own needs and desires."

WILLIAM PETERSEN stars as Joey, the adventurous free spirit who can't quite bring himself to settle down ... until his ex-wife's pending marriage draws him back to his hometown. Petersen also produces the film with partner Cindy Chvatal through their High Horse Films.

Petersen made his feature debut in "To Live and Die in L.A.," a role he won after director William Friedkin spotted him starring as Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. He went on to star in the stylish thriller "Manhunter," then played a concerned father in "Amazing Grace and Chuck," a womanizing baseball manager in HBO's comedic fable "Long Gone," a philandering car salesman in "Cousins" and the outlaw-turned-lawman Pat Garrett in "Young Guns II." He made his television debut as Joseph P. Kennedy in the acclaimed miniseries "The Kennedys of Massachusetts."

In the late '70s, Petersen, Chvatal and several other friends founded the Remains Theatre Ensemble, an experimental theater group based in Chicago. A "gypsy company" for 10 years, they recently found a permanent home on Clybourn Avenue. Between films, Petersen divides his time between Los Angeles and Chicago, where he resides, and participates in Remains Theatre productions. High Horse Films, the film counterpart of the theater, is based in Los Angeles and has several projects in development.

For his work on the stage, Petersen won the Joseph Jefferson Award for best actor for his portrayal of Jack Abbott in "In the Belly of the Beast." This acclaimed production was also presented in Glasgow, London and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He had previously received a Joseph Jefferson nomination for his role in "The Tooth of the Crime" with the Remains Theatre and was a member of the casts awarded best ensemble performance for "Moby Dick" with the Remains Theater (1984) and for "Balm in Gilead" at the Steppenwolf Theatre (1982).

Other stage credits include "Speed-the-Plow," "The Time of Your Life" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Glengarry Glen Ross" at the Goodman theatre.