Hollywood Tonight presents the film Smart People and it's synopsis, stills, notes, actors information and the film makers information from Miramax!

LAND OF THE SMART:
SHOOTING AT CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

   To capture the very particular ambiance of a top shelf university, the production of SMART PEOPLE took place largely in and around the campus of Carnegie Mellon, which was recently named by Newsweek as one of the “New Ivies” and has long been one of America’s most selective leading colleges. The setting of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburrgh, Pennsylvania was especially attractive to Michael London and Bruna Papandrea, who had developed a great affection for the Northeastern city when they shot a screen adaptation of Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh there earlier that year. London talked to Mark Poirier about incorporating the location into the screenplay, not just idly but weaving the school and the town into the very fabric of the story.

   “I tend to gravitate towards movies that have a sense of place, that aren’t set in some generic ‘movieland,’” says London. “So it’s not just that we shot SMART PEOPLE in Pittsburgh; we reset the movie in Pittsburgh. We took Carnegie Mellon and we made Dennis’ character a teacher at Carnegie Mellon. Dennis really feels like a Pittsburgh character to me and that all becomes part of the experience.” The filmmakers were also excited by the visual uniqueness of Pittsburgh, a city that Lawrence Wetherhold jokes is “the Paris of Western Pennsylvania.” “A great thing about shooting in Pittsburgh is that it’s a painting you haven’t seen before,” says Bruna Papandrea. “Up till now, not a lot of films have been shot here.”

   Noam Murro was taken with the visual possibilities inherent to Carnegie Mellon’s campus, which sits on 140 acres about three miles outside of downtown Pittsburgh. “It’s not he traditional Ivy League campus, with red brick with ivy growing on the walls. It gave us a much fresher, more interesting look for the film,” he says. “Additionally, Carnegie has a strong English Department and is also renowned for their Drama and Engineering Departments, so that suited the storyline of SMART PEOPLE. Most of all, it felt like the University that Lawrence would teach at.” The campus not only provided authentic locations, from offices to lecture halls, but a bevy of enthusiastic students who served as extras, production assistants and interns during the shoot.

   Production designer Patti Podesta, whose work has ranged from the backwards universe of Memento to recreating the Ambassador Hotel of 1968 in Bobby, worked closely with Murro to take full advantage of the rich academic atmosphere. Moving off campus, she especially enjoyed delving into the details of the Wetherholds’ on-hold lives to create their well-worn home. After scouring the city, Podesta chose a house in the area known as Friendship, drawn to its genteel neighborhood feel. Over a period of two weeks, the house was completely remodeled and refurnished in a manner befitting a family that has been stuck in a mire of grief and missed connections over the last decade. When cast and crew arrived in Pittsburgh, they hit the ground running, shooting the film in just 29 tightly scheduled days. Murro set an electrifying pace and kept things moving at a rapid-fire speed.

   “Noam brought to the project an abundance of energy and was able to make very quick decisions on scenes and move through the schedule,” says Papandrea. “I worked with Sydney Pollack for years and what always amazed me was that, even though he had been making movies for 40 or 50 years, he still did it with the energy of a 30 year old. Noam has that same energy – no amount of work is too much. He has an amazing mind and it was incredible to watch him on set.”

SOUNDING SMART:
ABOUT THE MUSIC

   The final touches were added to SMART PEOPLE by composer Nuno Bettencourt, a highly regarded guitarist who makes his debut as a composer on the film. Bruna Papandrea, a friend of Bettencourt’s, had given him a copy of the film and without even being asked, Bettencourt had found himself inspired to write some music. Later, the filmmakers listened to his cues and felt instantly that this was the right musical direction for the film. “Music is your emotional bed and I always felt that at the end of the day, the score needed to echo the interior humbleness of these characters and situations,” says Noam Murro. “Nuno got that straight off the bat.”

  Bettencourt found his initial inspiration in the subtle details of the opening moments of the film. “There are all these sort of slouchy moments, with the way Lawrence walks, the way he parks his car and the way he can’t remember people’s names. It reminded me of ‘The Odd Couple’ in a way and I could already hear the music,” he says. “Of course, a dysfunctional family is something I always connect with and I definitely connected with this one.”

   Rather than creating big, orchestral compositions, Bettencourt’s approach was more restrained and chamber-like, reflecting the characters. “I wanted to match the subtleties in the story telling with the music,” he explains. “There are only six main characters and most of the time there are only two or three of them in a scene. It hit me right away to follow a rule that there shouldn’t be more instruments than characters in any scene.”

   He also determined that he would always work against the grain, contrasting the film’s moods with the music. “If the scene was heavy then I kept the music light or if there was a moment of romance I changed the tone and rocked it out a little,” he notes. “Just when things start to get a bit miserable, the key was to play it a bit funny, musically. Everybody knows that’s part of any family – that misery is often funny when you look back on it, and that’s there always love in there somewhere.”

   Bettencourt also wrote several original songs for the film with his wife Suze Demarchi, a songwriter and former lead singer of an Australian band. “We experimented and strategically placed Suze’s and my original songs whenever we needed to lift some of the characters. I think the songs work really beautifully and play well lyrically and we had a great time doing it. It brought us closer.”

   Naturally, Bettencourt had some nerves about making his feature composing debut, but he remembers the day they were allayed. “Noam came by to hear the score and he had this horrible look on his face and he looked like he was crying at one point and I thought, my God, is it that bad? And then he got up and he kissed me,” recalls the musician. “And it turned out that he really loved it.” Whether it was in the music, the design or the performances, Noam Murro was ultimately most focused on nailing the delicate but reverberating shifts that lie at the heart of SMART PEOPLE.

   He sums up: “It’s a story that constantly shimmers between drama and comedy, and hopefully, you wind up with a sense of having really seen both the laughter and sadness in these people, this one fragile family. In the end, that’s all you can really ask for.”