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BACKGROUND

British director Mark Mylod, with just one feature film under his belt, is spending a typical weekend, slogging through a pile of scripts from his agent. "There were 20 of them, and each one was absolute rubbish, just appalling," he says. "Literally at the bottom, in a fairytale kind of way, was this script with no label or title on it. I had no idea who had written it, or where it had come from. I started reading it, and there was something about it right away, it had a really individual voice and as I got deeper into it, I realized the characterisation was just wonderful. I loved the characters. They all seemed so fantastically flawed, and I started getting this feeling that there was some amazing humanity under the surface, and these themes started occurring to me which I just wanted to play with. It had to do with the warmth of it. It was this kind of cross-genre thing that you couldn't put in a box. It wasn't just a comedy; it had that kind of Coen Brothers-type edge, but it was its own entity. There was something really unique and so well-crafted about it."

Screenwriter Collin Freisen, in fact, had written "The Big White" while at film school in his native Winnepeg. "The basic idea was what do you do when you're stuck somewhere, and you're desperately trying to get out, and the means are all around you, but you just can't put the pieces together to make your great escape?" explains Freisen. "The obvious lesson of the movie is you can find your happiness no matter where you are as long as you have people around you that you care about. Any place can be absolutely beautiful or an absolute living hell, depending on who you're stuck with."

After committing to the script, Mylod started to assemble his ideal cast, starting with the role of unlucky travel agent Paul Barnell. "Paul has the opposite of the Midas touch," says Mylod. "He's the worst businessman in the world, he's far too nice, and he's one step away from bankruptcy. He's an absolutely desperate man, but it's incredibly well masked. In his own quiet way, he's very stoic and has this wonderful dignity, hence the irony that this character is forced into this scam which is just so against his nature." Mylod's first choice was Robin Williams, who he admits is "genuinely a hero of mine - he's extraordinary." At their first meeting, Mylod says, "We just chatted very quietly about the cannibalistic habits of chimpanzees, which luckily I know something about." Williams, who was considering several films at the time, said he liked the way they both saw the film and promised to call Mylod with a decision the next day. "He was as good as his word, and he called back and said he'd like to do the project," says the young director, still amazed at his good fortune.

Williams says what drew him to play the role was the quality of the material. "It's a strange piece, with all these very eccentric characters who are all struggling to make ends meet. Even the smallest character has resonance." He describes Paul as "the character who has to hold the centre while all this madness is going down. You meet him at a desperate time, when he's totally broke, and there's something wrong with his wife, a series of symptoms that the HMO won't buy. They've been trying to solve her problem, but he's running a travel agency in Alaska in the middle of winter, and with the economy and everything else, he's in bad shape. And then something happens, one major event, habeas corpus, and he's off and running."

Holly Hunter signed on as Margaret, Paul Barnell's troubled wife who inspires his desperate scheme to get them both someplace warm and…not white. Williams describes her character as "a weird combination of child and ferret. She can be so sweet, and then just snap. It has a lovely relationship of two people really meant for each other, and he has such unconditional love for her, that he's willing to do just about anything to see her happy again." About Hunter, Mylod says, "This is a strange synthesis of her talents, because she absolutely breaks my heart as this character and had me laughing out loud, but the element I didn't bank on is the kind of intellectual discipline she has. She put in a short prep time to research this character, who was lost and was seeking some kind of identity that manifests itself through this psychosomatic Tourrete's Syndrome, which we wanted to be a beautiful portrait of a funny character. What Holly did was to take the research a step further to create a sensory-type character who has this need to explore, to dip into things, like tasting it in a way. She brought the character into focus and gave her so much more depth, and found the truth behind it, which is just really, really smart."

Williams enjoyed his collaboration with Hunter, saying, "She plays it wonderfully. It's almost like a ballet where all of a sudden she flies and then you catch her - that's what it's like. She can be very physical and yet calm at the same time." Of playing brothers with Woody Harrelson, Williams says, "It's wild. He's not afraid of anything. His character is another case of a guy who can be so sweet, and then so scary in a microsecond. I think that's perfect, because if you've ever been around a few psychopaths, they can be that way. I think we're believable as brothers, but he's a scary brother. But working with him, you can bounce things and try anything, and the good news is Mark would let us do it."

Giovanni Ribisi and Allison Lohman play the oddly matched couple Ted, the relentless insurance agent determined to catch Paul Barnell at his scam, and Tiffany, his patient girlfriend who works as a psychic hotline operator out of their apartment as she pursues a more honest relationship with Ted. While his character is outwardly unhappy, Ribisi had an ideal experience shooting "The Big White." He credits director Mylod and his costars with creating a fertile work environment. "When you're doing a scene with Mark, you span the spectrum as far as the possibilities, and he's so smart and acute that you know you can trust him. The greatest thing for me has just been the experience with everybody, with Robin, and Holly and Alison, it's just been such a different way of working.' Ribisi felt some culture shock upon his arrival in Alaska, having just spent five months in Africa on "The Flight of the Phoenix."

Ribisi was thrilled to find Williams as his costar. "His imagination is just infinite, and without sounding ridiculous, it really is play time when you're on the set with him. His quality of improvisation really does keep it alive, and you just have to be present. We've all been really fortunate with this one. As Holly says, we've all been cast within an inch of their lives," says Ribisi.

Mylod got a charge out of how his stars got along on set. "Giovanni and Robin have this spark between them when they work," he says. "It's so exciting that you just let them roll and just hold as many two-shots as possible, and let them go at each other, so the warfare between the characters has this strange affection to it at some mental level; it's fantastic." He admits that since his wildest dreams in casting and shooting the movie had come true, he was too superstitious to enjoy it during filming. "It was just abject fear, that if I ever said to myself, 'hey, this is great, look where I am and who I'm with,' then the gods would laugh and point at me. I was just too scared to enjoy it."