 Sabrina Lloyd gets made up. |
The 20 bystanders—the tech crew of the independent film Racing Daylight—discuss his performance in hushed admiration as Strathairn arises and wanders over to craft service to nibble a pretzel stick. He wears the navy blue woolen uniform of Harry, a Union soldier from the Civil War. Harry is the central character in this tale of love, sacrifice, and redemption that reaches across three centuries. It was written by actor and first-time director Nicole Quinn, who owns the field where Strathairn has been fighting and bleeding since 7am. It is the third day of a three-week shoot.
Strathairn has been working in film for three decades, drawing the plaudits of critics and fans. In the past year, his bravura turn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck made the Dutchess County resident a star. So why choose this barebones $250,000 production and even defer salary?
"The story," Strathairn says. "I love the story; it's a very complicated story, intricate."
Racing Daylight is part romance, part ghost story, part murder mystery, weaving together the lives of three present-day characters: Sadie, Billy, and Henry. The tale opens with the reluctant homecoming of Sadie Stokes (played by actress Melissa Leo, an Ulster County resident), summoned to care for her dying grandmother at the family farm.
Each leading character has an ancestor (whom the actors play in flashbacks) who has suffered a tragedy—accidental murder, lost love—which they seek to redress through their modern counterparts. Sadie's ancestor Annie, for instance, wants to reunite with her lover Harry the soldier, just as Sadie wants to catch the eye of Henry, the eccentric handyman. (Strathairn plays both men.) But when Annie mistakes Henry for Harry, Sadie must compete for love with a ghost.
Nicole Quinn, who has worked for filmmakers John Singleton and Jodie Foster, HBO and Showtime, began writing Racing Daylight in 2002. There was a staged reading that year with Leo and Strathairn at Actors & Writers, the Olivebridge theater ensemble which Quinn belongs to. Known for his integrity in a profession often lacking it, Strathairn has remained with the project through rewrites and funding setbacks, the latter which trimmed back the original $600,000 budget. Quinn was forced to jettison several special effects, including walls of mist and talking grave stones, but feels the enforced frugality was a blessing. "It has become a much tighter, cleaner, simpler project."
The film's themes of death and redemption spring from Quinn's own experience. In the past three years, she has lost her mother, sister, and brother to terminal illness. Before they died, however, Quinn asked them to speak about facing mortality. Their deathbed observations shape the narrative.
"For me, this [film] is all a hope and forgiveness thing," she said. "What I realized was that when people are dying, the thing they\'re looking for is forgiveness. And what ultimately it came to was that the only one who can forgive you is yourself."
The morning filming of the Civil War skirmish is over. A production assistant announces lunchtime and the soldiers trudge over the hill, faces blackened by gunpowder make-up, returning to Quinn's rambling farmhouse, which serves as make-up room, wardrobe room, and everything in between. They sit down to fried chicken and salad on paper plates. There is no star trailer for the lead actor. Instead, Strathairn has perched on the edge of the porch in the shade, grabbing a few winks. An elbow on each knee, his upturned palms provide a cradle for his sleeping head. Behind him, a man in period leather breeches and a peasant shirt plays a lively fiddle.