While American director Tom DiCillo was editing his first feature Johnny Suede for Miramax back in 1991, he had some music which was labelled Moonlight Serenade. One afternoon he asked his editor to get the 'moonlight music' and she turned to her assistant and said 'get the box of moonlight'. Finding the phrase interesting, DiCillo went home and wrote down the title. 'I actually wrote this script to fill in the title,' he confesses.
The story line for Box of Moonlight evolved into a reflection of freedom and self-discovery. 'I think that the whole idea of freedom in America has been completely bastardised,' the director says, 'so that the word 'freedom' is terrifying to most people in this country. Genuine freedom is now terrifying to the very country that was founded on freedom. This idea that human beings cannot be as free as they wish to be is something that I'm trying to address in this film.'
Box of Moonlight is described as a modern fable without a moral; a winsome comedy about travelling the road of life and learning to handle its detours. DiCillo's third feature details a week in the life of Al Fountain (John Turturro), an electrical engineer who is supervising a construction job in Drip Rock, a fictitious small town many miles from Al's home and family. Al is steadfast, disciplined and responsible, as he believes all good bosses should be, but this does not make him very endearing to his construction crew or his family.
Al has the job right on schedule for a 5 July completion date, which means he and the crew will miss spending the Independence Day holiday with their families, when word come through from his head office that the entire project has been shelved. Everyone goes home except Al, who calls his wife and tells her the job is still on schedule. He stays on in Drip Rock, severing, for the first time in his life, the rigid bonds of order and rationality that have ruled his life to date. With no responsibilities, no deadline and no obligations, he hits the road.
Starting with Al's weekend-long vacation from responsibility and commitment, DiCillo shows how going off course can open doors, doors which allow Al to discover life's miracles big and small which existed all along, but went unnoticed. 'I wanted to make a film that played around with my own sense of adventure, my sense of excitement and sense of movement. I see this film as an existential action film, and that's why I wrote it,' says DiCillo.
Prior to directing Box Of Moonlight, DiCillo worked briefly as a cinematographer, shooting eight feature films, including Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise. In 1992 he was invited to the Sundance Institute as a Directing Fellow based on his screenplay Johnny Suede. His first feature was completed that same year with Brad Pitt in the lead role and won the Grand Prize at the 1992 Locarno Film Festival. Johnny Suede was followed by Living in Oblivion, with Catherine Keener, which won the best screenplay award in Sundance in 1995 followed by prizes in Deauville, Stockholm and Valladolid.
Box of Moonlight should have come before Living in Oblivion but it stalled in 1994. Only Oblivion's success at Sundance got it back on course with Lakeshore Entertainment backing the director. John Turturro then came on board to play the central role of Al Fountain.
'Part of the movie is about learning to appreciate things for what they are and not what they could be,' says Turturro, himself a prize-winning director.
In order to knock Al out of his orbit, DiCillo searched for what would disorient him most. 'I took a very ordered, very regimented guy and put him with a guy who has literally no order whatsoever,' DiCillo explains. 'And I'm not saying that one is better or worse.'
The director had cast Sam Rockwell in the role of Al's foil, the Kid, in the early stages of the project. 'Tom cast me four years ago,' Rockwell says. 'He trusted after two auditions to have me play this colossal role. A lot of names were mentioned, a lot of big names of really good, young actors and he took me, this unknown, and he took a chance.'
Other prominent members in the cast include Catherine Keener, who starred for DiCillo in Oblivion, as a phone sex operator, and her real-life husband, Dermot Mulroney, who plays Wick, a man disfigured by burns he suffered in an accident.
Box of Moonlight makes no judgement on the conflict of control versus freedom but merely observes what happens when these two opposing forces come together. Inevitably however, some of Kid's free spirits affects Al, and vice-versa some of Al's order affects Kid. DiCillo hopes Box of Moonlight will affect the Venice jury.
Christopher Pickard
Prod co: Lemon Sky
Prod: Marcus Viscidi & Thomas Bliss
Dir: Tom DiCillo Scr: Tom DiCillo
Ph: Paul Ryan
Art dir: Steve Brennan
Prod des: Therese DePrez
Cost: Ellen Lutter
Mus: Jim Farmer
Ed: Camilla Toniolo
Cast: John Turturro, Sam Rockwell, Catherine Keener, Lisa Blount
Running time: 107 mins
Int'l sales: Largo Entertainment
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