Hollywood Tonight presents Warner Brothers Pictures Rails & Ties official synopsis and stills.

Rails & Ties
In Theatres October 26 (Limited)

   Tom and Megan Stark always thought there would be time--time to have children, time to take that trip to San Francisco, time to fix the problems in their marriage. But Megan's illness and Tom's inability to face the possibility of losing her are stealing all the time they have left. All Tom can do is bury himself in his job as a train engineer, where at least he feels in control and everything runs on a predetermined track. Until now.

   Tom's train has hit a car on the tracks in a tragic turn of events that, while not his fault, may still cost him his job. Worse, a young woman is dead and her son, Davey, has been left to cope with the loss of his mother, the guilt that he could not save her not only from the train but from herself...and the anger at the man he holds responsible: Tom Stark.

   The accident puts the Starks and Davey on their own collision course. But instead of leading to tragedy, this crossing could mean new hope for a woman who has only one chance left to fulfill her dreams, for a man who must learn to open his heart before it's too late, and for a young boy who has never known the true meaning of family.

   This film has been rated "PG-13" by the MPAA for "mature thematic elements, an accident scene, brief nudity and momentary strong language."

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
TRAIN OF THOUGHT

   “I do believe that everything happens for a reason, even if that reason isn’t always apparent. Of course, it is much easier to accept and understand that concept when everything is going well; it’s much more challenging when things aren’t. I thought the idea that tragedy can lead to healing, love and redemption was intriguing to explore in a different way,” notes Alison Eastwood, who makes her feature film directorial debut with the drama “Rails & Ties.”

   Producer Rob Lorenz offers, “‘Rails & Ties’ is a love story, albeit an unconventional one, in which two people who are struggling to salvage their neglected relationship find a way back to each other through a very unexpected encounter. It struck me as an emotionally driven story, and thus something the right cast could really sink their teeth into.”

   “Personal tragedies can either bond people together or pull them apart,” says Kevin Bacon, who stars as Tom Stark in the film. “In this story, an imminent tragedy is pulling a couple apart, but then a very different tragedy unexpectedly brings hope. The presence of a child makes them appreciate what they have in their marriage, and I found that very compelling.”

   Marcia Gay Harden, who stars opposite Bacon as Tom’s terminally ill wife, Megan, adds, “It raises the questions of the quality of our existence with and without the people in our lives. What are the elements of human contact? What does a child do for an adult? What does a husband do for a wife? What does a son do for a father? How do we measure the relationships in our life? Those are things that resonated with me.”

   The initial idea for “Rails & Ties” came out of a train trip that screenwriter Micky Levy took from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, New Mexico. She relates, “Spending all those hours on the train, I had a lot of time to watch the passengers and observe the people who worked there. We live in a time when we more often hear about air travel and car trips. The only time you ever really hear about trains is when there is tragedy. That whole world began to intrigue me.”

   Realizing she knew very little about that world, Levy began researching books and also met with people who make their living on trains. Levy remembers, “I met with this engineer and as he was explaining the train’s instrumentation, he started talking about train accidents, specifically cars on the tracks. He explained that they can’t suddenly stop the train to avoid a collision because they would risk the lives of their passengers. The more he tried to pass it off as ‘part of the job,’ the more I could tell it was not so easy for him to dismiss it.”

   That conversation became the inspiration for Levy’s drama about a train engineer who makes a fateful decision that costs a life and could cost him his job. “I wanted to build a story around him and the ramifications of the choice he makes that terrible day,” she says. “At the same time, he is faced with the choice his wife has made, which is also a matter of life and death.”

   A chance connection led Levy to producer Barrett Stuart, and she eventually sent him her script for “Rails & Ties.” Stuart recalls, “Something about it just spoke to me. It was about how the ties that bind people aren’t always obvious and, even in this disconnected world, people aren’t as far apart as we sometimes imagine them to be. It was a very intimate portrayal of a couple on the brink and what might pull them back from the brink. All of the characters felt so true in terms of what they were going through and how they were dealing with everything emotionally.” Stuart had earlier been introduced to Alison Eastwood and the two had been looking for a project on which they could team up. Upon reading “Rails & Ties,” he notes, “I thought it was something that would really appeal to her as much as it had to me. And she loved the script.”

   Eastwood initially planned only to produce the film, but as the development process progressed, she says she began to feel deeply connected to the material. “It was really the story that inspired me to want to direct the movie. After working on it for so long, it just became imbedded in my psyche. I could actually see the story play out. And the more time I spent with it, the more I really felt that it was my story to tell.”

   Producer Peer Oppenheimer had previously collaborated with Eastwood when he produced the film “Don’t Tell,” which she starred in and also associate produced. He remarks, “Before ‘Rails & Ties,’ I felt Alison would make an excellent director. During production of ‘Don’t Tell,’ she would make great suggestions—not necessarily about her character but in support of the film as a whole. She understands characters, she understands story development, and she certainly understands actors. In most instances, I think actors make good directors, and that was certainly the case with Alison.”

   Rob Lorenz, who has collaborated multiple times with Alison Eastwood’s father, Clint, states, “Alison directed with much more confidence than might be expected of a first-time director. She is very comfortable on a set and, as a result, not easily distracted from her vision. She was surrounded by some very experienced actors, not to mention almost all of Clint’s regular filmmaking team who joined the effort to make Alison’s debut film. Yet she managed to establish her own distinct directorial style with all of us.”

   Veteran actors Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden, both of whom had also worked with Clint Eastwood, had equal praise for their first-time director. “She did a fantastic job,” Bacon states. “She works very quickly and efficiently, but she also has a great heart and was able to tap into the personal journey of each character and draw that out in the performance. That’s really vital for a piece of material like this, and I think it says a lot about who she is as a person and as a director.”

   “I love working with new directors who have their own vision,” Harden comments. “Alison and I had some very lengthy discussions about my character. She has an ease on the set and was quite expert at working with all the actors to find the subtle emotional nuances, as well as the more obviously powerful beats.”

GETTING ON BOARD

   Eastwood offers that, while casting is always a key component in any production, “it was particularly vital on this film because it is a very intimate, emotional story and we needed actors who were willing to give themselves fully to that experience. It was also important to me to find people who were as affected by the material as I had been, so I was thrilled when both Kevin and Marcia responded so strongly to the script. They were passionate about it from the start and brought more to their roles and to the film than I ever even imagined.”

   “I found the script to be very moving,” Bacon affirms. “At first, you might think

  it’s a dark story, but it’s really a love story between two people who are at the end, but are handling it in very different ways. Tom and Megan have a relationship born of love and have been together a long time, but when we meet them, they are falling apart.

   Megan is very sick and Tom is having a hard time confronting the reality of her illness and the inevitability of life without her. He can’t even say the words. He is becoming less and less communicative, while she feels the time they have left slipping through her fingers.”

   The actor relates that Tom’s apparent stoicism demanded that he find less obvious ways to convey the character’s emotions. “It’s always a challenge to play a person who is less demonstrative and who holds things inside, because you have to tell his story without a lot of words and gestures and without wearing your heart on your sleeve. Tom internalizes everything he’s feeling, so I had to take whatever hurt and fear he had and keep it just below the surface.”

   Tom’s detachment is hardest on his wife, Megan, who has been dealt a devastating blow and needs her husband’s love and support, perhaps now more than ever before. In contrast to Tom, Harden says that Megan wears her heart on her sleeve. “She is emotional and passionate, but she is also angry and frustrated, both with Tom and with the fact that they put off the plans they had, and now it’s too late.”

   Harden continues, “For me, connecting with Megan’s emotional state was about facing the reality that life is unpredictable. And the moment you are faced with your death, the dreams, the hopes, the myriad of things that you wanted to do in this brief life you are given, are no more. Megan is trying to focus her last few weeks of life in some meaningful way, and she wants her husband to be a part of the acknowledgement of death and join with her on one last journey, yet he cannot. As she is about to embark alone, a serendipitous event occurs which changes everything.”

   The event actually comes in the form of a young boy named Davey Danner, who arrives on the Starks’ doorstep with a mission. He is not looking for a family; he is looking for answers. Davey’s mother had put her car on the tracks, directly in the path of an oncoming train—Tom’s train. Although he saw the car, Tom had to make an agonizing choice: continue on and take the life of the person in the car or stop the train and endanger all of his passengers. As an engineer, standard procedure makes his choice clear…but no less difficult.

   Davey’s mother is killed and, although her son narrowly escapes, he witnesses the tragedy. Grief-stricken, he comes looking for Tom, wanting, needing, to know why Tom did not stop the train and spare his mother’s life. With the accident still under investigation, Tom knows that contact with the woman’s son could spell even bigger trouble for him. But Megan feels an instant bond with the boy, seeing in him a chance to make the one human connection she thought was forever lost to her.

   The character of Davey is played by actor Miles Heizer, who, at the age of 12, made his feature film debut in the role of the young boy who unexpectedly finds new hope for his own life in his connection with the Starks. Heizer observes that because Davey has had to endure so much hardship and tragedy in his young life, “he acts older than his age. Davey was a hard character to play. I really had to think about what it would be like to deal with his life because, luckily, none of that kind of misfortune has ever happened to me.”

   During the extensive casting process for the pivotal role of Davey, Eastwood says there was something special that made Heizer stand out from the dozens of other young hopefuls. “As soon as I saw him, I knew that was it. There was something about him that I really responded to. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a kid I want to spend the next six or seven weeks of my life with. He was someone I could really communicate with.”

   Barrett Stuart agrees. “When we read the script, we knew how much of a role the child was going to play and, therefore, how important it was to cast the right actor. Our casting director, Matt Huffman, brought Miles in, and Alison immediately had an instinct that this was the kid. And he turned out to be a revelation. This was his first film, but he was a consummate professional and could more than hold his own with Marcia and Kevin. He was wonderful; we felt lucky to have found him.”

   To keep the emotions among the three central characters as close to the surface and raw as possible, Eastwood opted to do a minimal amount of rehearsal before the cameras rolled. The director explains, “I find that there is something irreplaceable about the freshness and the honesty of the emotions when you do a scene for the first time. I don’t like to over rehearse because I’d rather allow what might happen in the moment to actually happen. That’s what happens in life and ‘Rails & Ties’ is a slice of life to me. I regarded the characters as real people dealing with real conflicts and emotions, and I wanted it to feel as ordinary and true as these people are.”

ON TRACK

   The catalyst for the drama in “Rails & Ties” is trains. In a scene shown in flashback, the subject of trains is how Tom and Megan met, but now Tom’s job as a train engineer is what is keeping them apart. A train is what kills Davey’s mother and causes him to hold Tom responsible for her death, but a shared passion for trains is also what ultimately connects Tom and Davey.

   Heizer notes, “Davey has loved trains all his life, and Tom works on a train. They have a lot in common, but they don’t want to admit it at first because Tom doesn’t want to get involved with this kid, and Davey thinks Tom is to blame for killing his mom.”

  Bacon, a Philadelphia native who grew up riding the Pennsylvania Railroad, offers, “There is still a certain kind of romance to train travel.” In his research, the actor also talked to several engineers and began to understand their attraction to riding the rails. “I found there was a great feeling of serenity when you’re in the front of a train. Even though you’re at the controls of this massive, powerful engine, there is a kind of peace and isolation. You almost feel like you’re heading down the tracks by yourself.”

   The scenes involving trains were primarily shot in Fillmore, California, which is known for its trains. The California Locomotive Preserve calls Fillmore home and the town is also the departure point for a variety of themed railway tours. Barrett Stuart recalls, “I was talking about the movie to a line producer I know, and he mentioned Fillmore as the place to do private rail filming in California. And, as it turned out, Peer Oppenheimer’s wife’s family calls Fillmore home, so Peer knew Fillmore very well. We also wanted to stay in California, so Fillmore made sense from every angle.”

   “Rails & Ties” put the train-friendly Fillmore to good use. Prior to production, the filmmakers spent time there working out how and where to mount cameras on a moving train. The actual location shooting there happened over two weeks, using a private locomotive and tracks surrounded by an expanse of orchards and rolling hills. On cue, the locomotive rumbled back and forth on the tracks, with cameras positioned between cars, below wheels—anywhere that might give a visceral sense of the powerful machine. For the crucial crash scene, cinematographer Tom Stern angled three cameras in various positions to capture the harrowing collision.

   Additionally, the design team, led by production designer James Murakami, crafted a façade of the front of the train, which was slightly over-scale. The façade was placed on a flatbed and was utilized for close-up shots.

   The nose of the train was painted a bright blue, which was more than just a nod to its name, the Coastal Starlight. Shades of blue can be seen throughout the film, from Tom’s blue work shirt to Megan’s pale blue blanket to the freshly painted walls of Davey’s room in the Starks’ home. “There are certain colors that carry subtle meanings for me,” Eastwood remarks. “I’ve always loved blue. There is something about that color to me: it can be very comforting and soft, but, depending on the shade, it can also be somewhat somber. It began to echo what these characters are going through and how they are feeling. I didn’t necessarily mean to do it in the beginning, but it kept coming up and I just decided to go with it.”

   Outside of Fillmore, “Rails & Ties” was filmed in and around the Los Angeles area, from Union Station in downtown to the San Fernando Valley. Some filming was also accomplished in Long Beach. The Starks’ modest suburban house was located in the valley suburb of Northridge. As a practical location, the house met the production’s specific requirements, including an exterior garden and a room big enough to house Tom’s impressive model train set.

  The idea for the train set came about during screenwriter Micky Levy’s research for the film. She contacted a man named John Armstrong, who wrote the book The Train: What It Is, What It Does, which Tom is also seen reading in the film. He invited her to meet with him at his home in Maryland. Levy recounts, “Shortly after I arrived, he said, ‘I have a railroad,’ which turned out to be one of the largest model train sets in the U.S. It was huge; it spanned the entire room. Around the tracks, there were people and fields and houses and high-rise buildings… That’s when I decided my engineer had to have a railroad in his garage, which also gives Tom and Davey common ground on which to open the lines of communication.”

   Despite the film’s intimate story, Eastwood chose to shoot it in a widescreen anamorphic format. “The widescreen format is how I prefer to see films,” she states. “It was especially important for the train sequence because I wanted the train to seem looming and inevitable and I thought widescreen would best capture that.”

   Eastwood reflects, “Obviously, the train has significance, not only in physical terms but symbolically. Metaphorically speaking, Tom and Megan are like trains going in opposite directions, and it takes a stranger to help them see what’s right across from them. In fact, everyone’s life starts out completely off track. Each of them has to find a way to get back on track, both in their individual lives and with one another.”