Source: Aura Entertainment and Artisan Entertainment
The Big Empty |
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Last Update: 23 Feb 2005 (You need a browser capable of viewing tables to see this page properly) |
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John Person (Jon Favreau) is a 30-something struggling actor living alone and facing eviction from his one room apartment in Hollywood. Behind on his rent and heavily in debt, he goes against his better judgment - and that of his pretty neighbor Grace (Joey Lauren Adams) - and accepts an unsolicited offer from his strange neighbor Neely (Bud Cort) to courier a blue suitcase up to the desert truck stop of Baker, California. |
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Source: Aura Entertainment and Artisan Entertainment |
| There, in the middle of nowhere, at a seedy motel in the shadow of The World's Largest Thermometer, he'll simply deliver the locked suitcase to a trucker called Cowboy (Sean Bean) and be paid twenty-seven thousand dollars in cold, hard cash. Seems like easy money. But then John is given a loaded gun and told he must defend the blue suitcase with his life. |
| On arrival in Baker, John discovers he's already missed the mysterious Cowboy. Soon he's reluctantly mixed up with young local vixen Ruthie (Rachael Leigh Cook), her mother Stella (Daryl Hannah), Ruthie's hotheaded, jealous boyfriend Randy (Adam Beach) and paranoid, alien-obsessed locals. |
| When Special Agent Banks (Kelsey Grammer) arrives at the local watering hole to question him about the murder and decapitation of Neely and hundreds of people recently gone missing, John realizes that he might be mixed up in something much more dangerous and bizarre than he ever imagined. Nothing is ever easy. Later that dark night, Cowboy makes a violent return to Baker and John finds himself caught somewhere between the surreal, the supernatural and the just plain weird. As the final showdown begins, John is faced with a choice that could change his life forever. Has this whole town gone mad? Or are the loony locals, who John dismissed as crazy, the only sane things about this strange parallel universe called The Big Empty? |
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| Writer-director Steve Anderson's feature THE BIG EMPTY is a dark comedy set in Los Angeles and in Baker, California. Situated on the edge of Death Valley, halfway between the glitz of Las Vegas and the sleaze of L.A., Baker is the infamous home of the World's Largest Thermometer. It's in Baker, amid the towering cacti and the crowded truck stops, that THE BIG EMPTY pays homage to the pulpy, fatalistic film noirs of the 1940s and 50s. In those films, flawed heroes get swept up in dangerous situations they don't fully comprehend and find that their sure-fire schemes backfire in ways they never anticipated. |
| Anderson is a veteran cameraman who's shot seven national documentaries for PBS and thousands of hours of broadcast television. He has won both a Cable Ace Award (for CNN coverage of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake) and a Peabody Award (for his PBS Documentary Safe Haven). Working for numerous clients, including CNN, Anderson has traveled the world capturing hard news and entertainment stories for network broadcast. In addition to THE BIG EMPTY, Anderson has several feature length screenplays under option, and has written and directed several stage plays in New York. THE BIG EMPTY is Anderson's feature film directing debut. |
| Rainstorm Entertainment developed The Big Empty and produced it with Echo Lake Productions. The project was co-financed by Aura Entertainment, and production services were provided by NXNW. |
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LOS ANGELES Laemmle Sunset 5 8000 Sunset Blvd (Sunset at Crescent Heights) LA, CA 90046 323-848-3500 |
LAS VEGAS Century Orleans 18 4500 West Tropicana Las Vegas, NV 89103 |
SPOKANE AMC River Park Square 20 808 West Main Spokane, WA 99201 |
| The Big Empty will be shown at the sixth annual Sarasota Film Festival, on Friday, January 30, 2004, at 10.15pm. More info at the Sarasota Film Festival site. |
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The Big Empty will also be making the festival rounds at Victoria (January 30 - February 8, 2004), Brussels (March 12 - 27, 2004) and Bangkok (January 22 - February 2, 2004). |
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Capitol 6/#6 Feb 1 at 6.45 pm (with producer Q&A) Feb 2 at 9.45 pm |
TBA |
EGV GRAND Jan 24 at 5.00 pm LIDO Jan 28 at 2.00 pm |
| The Big Empty was filmed on location in Baker, California in January and February 2002. |
| Sean, who plays Cowboy, filmed his scenes between 25 January and mid-February 2002. |
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The Big Empty had its world premiere at the AFI (American Film Institute) Fest in Los Angeles on Sunday, November 9, 2003. Artisan Films released The Big Empty in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Spokane on November 21, 2003. Read first-hand reports of Sean's attendance at the AFI Premiere here (with pix). |
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| According to producer Gregg Daniel, The Big Empty has found a distributor for Australia, but release dates (as of December 7, 2003) are still unknown. |
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Rachael Leigh Cook: "The movie's about a guy who agrees to bring a mysterious bag to the small desert town of Baker from L.A. and what happens to him on the way. I play a restless 19-year-old who tries to convince Jon Favreau's character that aliens exist and I know how to join them." (From Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith, 21 January 2002) |
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Sean Bean: "I look at scripts and choose the ones that most appeal. I've just finished a low-budget film, The Big Empty, with Jon Favreau, which was a real change for me. I play this cowboy... it was a good experience, which I really enjoyed, and very different to the kind of big-budget productions I have been working on." (From She magazine, June 2002) |
| PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS: |
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Joey Lauren Adams |
Grace Randy Cowboy Dan Ruthie Neely Bob John Person Agent Banks Elron Stella Lt. Gates Candy |
| PRODUCTION CREDITS: |
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Produced by |
Rainstorm Entertainment, in association with Echo Lake Productions and Aura Entertainment |
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Executive Producers |
Steven Bickel, Jeffrey Kramer, Steven G. Kaplan, Peter Wetherell |
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Distributor |
Artisan Entertainment |
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Producers |
Doug Mankoff, Gregg L. Daniel, Andew
Spaulding, Keith Resnick Star 1 Theatre, Cannes AFI (Los Angeles International Film Festival) Nov 9 & 10, 2003 - ArcLight Theatre |
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DVD/Video Release |
April 23, 2004 (Artisan) May 2, 2005 |
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