Although BAG OF BONES, the two-part A&E telemovie based on Stephen King’s novel (premiering this Sunday, December 11 at 9 p.m./8 Central) takes place in the author’s frequent setting of Maine, it was lensed in Canada. “We shot in Nova Scotia, in and around Halifax,” says director Mick Garris (go here for the first part of this interview).

“At first, I fought really hard to shoot it in the U.S.,” Garris relates. “We tried in Maine—we actually met with the governor about creating an incentive program, like some of the other states would do, but then the state Senate would not go along with it. The electoral situation changed—the governorship of Maine switched over from Democratic to Republican, and they did not like the idea of having an incentive program for Hollywood productions there.

“Finances were definitely a consideration,” he continues, “so we went to all of the states that would be geographically appropriate to shoot this, where we could do a lake house. We made our international and ownership deals with Sony. They’re the ones who partnered with A&E on this and did the gap financing; they had been doing some production in Nova Scotia, and suggested we go there and scout it out. Geography was not my best class, so I had no idea that Nova Scotia is right next to Maine, and the topography and so much of what we were looking for was there that it turned out to be a really, really good place for us to shoot.”

Actor Matt Frewer, forever immortalized as Max Headroom and a veteran of several Garris projects, starting with THE STAND (in which he played Trashcan Man), was raised in Canada and still does a great deal of work there. One would therefore suppose he would turn up in a Canadian-made Garris miniseries. “Of course!” the director acknowledges with a laugh. “He plays Mike Noonan’s brother Sid. And they were great together. It was very funny—we also have a cameo by Jason Priestley in there. We were shooting this scene in a cemetery, and here’s Pierce Brosnan, Matt Frewer and Jason Priestley ganging up and going, ‘We’re the kings of ’80s television!’ Remington Steele and Max Headroom and 90210, all together. [A Stephen King connection exists as well: Brosnan starred in the loosely King-based THE LAWNMOWER MAN, Frewer in its sequel.] They are three really great guys, with great senses of humor, and that really goes a long way when you’re shooting a movie on location and you’re away for four or five months. A sense of humor is pretty important to have.”

Brosnan’s Mike Noonan is an author who has recently and suddenly lost his wife, and retreats to a lakeside house to try to get over her death and his resulting writer’s block. There he becomes involved with a young mother, Maddie Devore, who’s involved in a nasty custody battle for her daughter, and discovers that the house has a haunted history involving a long-dead singer named Sarah Tidwell. Maddie is played by Melissa George, a familiar face to genre fans from the AMITYVILLE HORROR remake, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, TRIANGLE and this year’s A LONELY PLACE TO DIE, among others. “She was the lead in [an unaired] pilot I shot in Australia called LOST IN OZ,” Garris says. “Annabeth Gish, whom I’d worked with before in DESPERATION, is Jo.

“Most amazing is Anika Noni Rose, who plays Sarah Tidwell,” he continues. “I was not familiar with her work, and originally the network was encouraging us to cast a pop star like Rihanna. There were a couple of names that were being bandied about, but this worked out great. She’s a great actress, has lots of film [including DREAMGIRLS] and stage credits and she’s a Grammy-winning Broadway performer. She’s most known for her work on Broadway musicals, as well as drama. She’s a very experienced singer and terrific actress and just as beautiful as can be.

“Everybody in this cast was just perfect for it,” Garris adds; the lineup also includes Caitlin Carmichael as Mattie’s daughter Kyra and veteran actor William Schallert (THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, THE MAN FROM PLANET X) as the girl’s conniving grandfather. “They might not necessarily be who you see in the book when you’re reading it, but they became those characters, and you can’t think of them in any other way. But [Sarah’s role] was so complicated, because she’s a singer in addition to the depth of emotional range she goes through. Anika’s a great singer, though, so we actually had her do several songs that she performed for real.”

The tunes, Garris adds, are seen in flashbacks to Sarah’s era. “We go back to the Dark Score Fair, where a bunch of this mystery begins in 1939,” he says. Present and past have different looks in BAG OF BONES, but Garris says this wasn’t accomplished in the usual way. “[The flashbacks are] not black-and-white or sepia. For these sequences, we actually exaggerated the color a little bit, because I feel like dreams and memories are more colorful than reality. So I really embraced a natural palette. A lot of films will have a blue tint or an amber tint to them or something similar. For this story, other than when we go into dreamworlds and things like that, I preferred to embrace all of the wide range of colors; the trees are green and the lake is blue and the house is brown. It’s more hypersaturated when we go back to the past.”

As for the more horrific visual side, Garris assures, “There is plenty of that element. Adrien Morot in Montreal did our makeup effects. The poor guy—it was last-minute stuff. Everything on the film was done very, very quickly in preproduction and postproduction. But it shows what can be done in hurried circumstances. Normally, I work with the KNB guys, but because it was Canada and due to our budgetary position, bringing guys up from LA and shipping [material] from there would have been prohibitive for us. I had known Adrien’s work before, but I’d never worked with him or even met him until this, and he did spectacular work; really, really good stuff there. There are characters who you meet in life and then later in death, and the makeups were pretty extensive on them. There are a couple of murder sequences that are pretty elaborate. There’s plenty of Stephen King/FANGORIA appeal there.”

In addition to Morot, nearly all of the other crewpeople were new to Garris. “I had never worked with anybody on this shoot before, other than the cast—there were a lot of them I’d collaborated with before, including a couple of the Canadian actors out of Toronto. But it was a new DP for me, new effects men. Actually, the physical effects guy, John McGillivray, who did the physical effects on the new version of THE THING—he had done a couple of stunts and rigs on THE JUDGE and an episode of HAPPY TOWN I did in Toronto, though we’d never really worked together, other than in passing. He was the only one I’d ever even met before. But the experience turned out really well. I’m really happy with the photography, the richness of the look [created by] our production designer, a guy named Guy Lalande out of Montreal.”

Some of the most challenging aspects of making BAG OF BONES, Garris notes, involved turning Mike Noonan’s thoughts into dramatic visual sequences. “It’s a very internal book, and when you have one actor, one character, in a big percentage of the movie, that’s a major challenge. But when it’s an actor like Pierce—I am a huge Pierce Brosnan fan. I didn’t know the depth of his work before—other than the famous stuff and MATADOR, which is one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite performances ever—but he really got this character. There are scenes of emotion that are almost operatic. There’s some very deep, emotional stuff in here, and he’s just captivating. And the locations we found to set him in and the dreamlike scenes he’s involved in—that was the challenge, making the internal external, [and also] doing a ghost story that doesn’t feel familiar. But it feels very, very different.”

Additionally, “The challenge of doing 1939 in a couple of days for the Dark Score Fair was a big one. It was probably the most fun of all doing those period sequences, but it was very hard. The weather was atrocious. When we were prepping in June and July, there were 35 days straight of rain. Welcome to summer in Nova Scotia!” Garris laughs. “Fortunately, we were lucky during shooting. It was definitely an issue on some days, but we made the most of it.”

In conclusion, Garris says of BAG OF BONES, “There are great secondary characters, but it really hangs on Pierce Brosnan’s shoulders, and there’s a reason he’s a movie star. He’s really special in this. He does things I’ve never seen him do before, and it’s truly exciting to make a movie with a movie star. [BAG OF BONES is] different for Stephen King in that it is such a raw, emotional story that’s about grownups. The passion of it is different. I always try to make the people the most important things about these stories, more than the effects, but I think this one really does it. It’s probably the most emotional thing I’ve done—certainly from Steve’s work, and that’s saying a lot. THE STAND is passionate and emotional, THE SHINING and RIDING THE BULLET, but this is very special.”

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