"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee."

[CHRIS B]

Just another article on the film.

PIPPA LEE ADDS TO GREAT RECRUITING CLASS
By Phil Owen Published 02/6/2008 News
Rebecca Miller (aka the woman who gets to have sex with Daniel Day-Lewis on a regular basis) must have really knocked one out of the park with her adaptation of her own unreleased novel, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. She already had the likes of Robin Wright Penn and Julianne Moore, along with Winona Ryder, but joining up with the film today are Keanu Reeves, Alan Arkin, Monica Bellucci and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Or, maybe, it wasn’t the quality of the script that drew in this collection of actors. Pippa Lee, which Miller will direct, will be co-produced by Plan B Entertainment, meaning Miller will likely have a decent budget with which to work this time around. And everybody likes money; that’s why they call it money (I know that’s not how the line goes; I modified it for my own purpose).

In short sentences, here’s a quick rundown of the film’s plot and the characters each actor will play: Arkin and Wright Penn (playing a 50-year old) are married. Arkin dumps Wright Penn for Ryder. Wright Penn starts banging Keanu. Bellucci is Arkin’s previous wife. Gyllenhaal is “Wright Penn's diet pill-addicted mother in flashback sequences.” Moore writes books and is a lesbian.

As an aside, the Hollywood Reporter describes Keanu as Wright Penn's "younger lover," which I can't help but find amusing.

Here's hoping Pippa Lee can rise above Miller's previous work and inspire some emotion in me other than "meh." This one will begin shooting in April.

[CHRIS B]

Sacrifice is the first task of the perfect wife

Her father was the lauded American playwright Arthur Miller and her husband Daniel Day-Lewis is hotly tipped to win the Oscar for best actor next Sunday. But Rebecca Miller will soon be taking her own turn in the spotlight with a moving first novel. Here, she talks about marriage, motherhood and the role of the artist’s wifeIndia Knight meets Rebecca Miller
It’s the night after the Baftas and Rebecca Miller has the tired but jaunty air of a woman whose husband has just won a really big award. In a sort of dynastic double whammy, Miller, the daughter of Arthur Miller, the late American playwright and Pulitzer laureate, is married to Daniel Day-Lewis, the Oscar-winning actor and son of Cecil Day-Lewis who was, among other things, our own poet laureate. It’s Laureate City, with a bit of Old Hollywood thrown in (Miller père was married, inter alia, to Marilyn Monroe).

Prior to meeting her I have formed the impression that she is going to be earnest and slightly uptight and that talking about anything may be a bit like pulling teeth. But then I read her forthcoming novel, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and it is so good that I get sidetracked from the Arthur-Marilyn-Daniel Day-Lewis malarkey and she ends up being very good value – and heartily relieved that we’ve talked about things other than her family (“Oh God, if you didn’t mention that stuff it would just be so cool – it would be the coolest thing in the world. It’s never happened yet”).

Also, since her book is about the struggle that wives have trying to retain their own identity and not be subsumed into their husband’s, it’s all pretty relevant.

Rebecca is Miller’s daughter with his third wife Inge Morath, a successful Magnum photographer who met Miller when she went to take Monroe’s picture – Monroe being Miller’s wife at the time. The couple were married in 1962 and remained together until Morath’s death in 2002. Morath and Miller also had a son, Daniel, who has Down’s syndrome and who Miller insisted be sent to a “home” from infancy, reportedly because he did not want Rebecca to grow up with “a mongoloid”. Daniel’s mother visited him regularly, his father did not.

According to reports, it was Day-Lewis, by now married to Rebecca, who agitated for a rapprochement between father and son in the late 1990s. Rebecca has said that Daniel, now 41, is “very much a part of our family” and “leads a very active, happy life surrounded by people who love him”.

Rebecca’s childhood had elements of normalcy – Miller and Morath were not especially glitzy – as well as elements of haute bohemia: from birth to the age of six, she lived with her parents in suite 614 of the legendary Chel-sea hotel in New York, which Norman Mailer, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan also called home.

After that the family moved to a farm in Con-necticut, where they remained and where Miller breathed his last in 2005, aged 89, surrounded by family.

Miller, it turns out, discusses the inner lives of women with an insight and acuity that belie her glamorous bohemian roots. Also, she is not earnest at all: she’s clever and smiley and wryly funny. “No, I’m not earnest,” she laughs. “I’m the opposite of earnest. But people always expect me to be. Maybe it’s my face – when I was a kid, I learnt that moody girls got all the attention. It wasn’t cool to be cheerful. I had to learn how to be in a bad mood.”

Face aside, this may also relate to the fact that she is clearly not entirely comfortable with the dynastic aspects of her life, or with smiling on the red carpet on the arm of Day-Lewis. At the Baftas she posed dutifully enough but with a resigned sort of expression and smiled a slightly tight smile when her husband, in his acceptance speech for his best actor award for There Will Be Blood, thanked “Sergeant-Major Miller” and the TV cameras panned to her. You would think she would be used to the glare of the flashlight – having a photographer for a mother – but to say she doesn’t seem mad keen on it would be something of an understatement.

Anyway, here she is, curled up on the sofa, long-limbed and fresh-faced – she looks like she lives in rural Ireland (which she does, in Co Wicklow) via Notting Hill. She is friendly and open and quick to laugh, but there is an element of vulnerability about her, or perhaps it’s wariness. But she is obviously pleased when I tell her how much I like her novel.

This is her first, although she has previously written a well received book of short stories. She is also a film maker and is turning her novel into a film that will star Julianne Moore, Winona Ryder and Robin Wright Penn.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is about an American power couple – Mr Lee is a grand publisher and his wife is, well, “just” his wife, fragrant and devoted. She is also unravelling. The book is set in an old people’s gated housing community called Marigold Village, which the couple have just moved to. Pippa is 50 and her husband a feisty but fading 80.

Pippa is a perfect artist’s wife (and after all that is something Rebecca should know about), “placing, giving, intelligent, beautiful, great cook”. But, being a woman, she is constantly reinventing herself, from sexy young gadabout to wife, to mother, to carer, to, eventually, nurse.

Miller excels at describing the Russian doll-like existence of women and at showing that what you see is never the whole picture but rather one of many facets. She is particularly good on exposing what marriage and motherhood do to a woman’s sense of self. “The artist’s wife is not a professional,” Miller says. “Except that her work is her life. She says almost proudly that she has no ambition of any kind. Growing up, I knew quite a few women like that.

“My mother wouldn’t really have been one because she’d had so much of her own career, but she still did that thing of making a lovely home, being the one in charge of all social activities and cooking and generally making life so nice. It’s almost like making the artist’s life possible.

“These women create an entire universe around a man who, without them, would be rattling around in a freezing cold studio . . . It’s very underappreciated. Women now look at something like that and think, ‘Well, she’s not really doing anything’. But they are, those women – they’re making a whole world. They’re a dying breed.”

The book, she says, “quickened in my head” when she met an old friend she had not seen for years: “She’d completely changed. She’d gone from being a wild and quite reckless person to being a placid mother, two children and the wife of a man who she adored. But she was so different. I couldn’t help wondering: how do you get from A to B? Did she consciously decide to reinvent herself? If we can change that easily, who are we really?

“Marriage and motherhood mean you go from being the chief protagonist to being on the sidelines and I’m fascinated by that. Then time passes and you get back to how you were, but things aren’t quite the same.”

Miller says that American women in particular are expected to be always up, always peppy, “aggressively cheerful” and “trying to keep that energy up and be as efficient and perfect as she needs to be. It’s a manic cheerfulness that we all engage in, even though half of us might be considering driving off the edge of the world”.

In her book, the mother and daughter are both striving to present an idealised version of smiling, capable femininity to their husbands and families. “It’s a way of deflecting people,” Miller says. “You know, ‘I’m no trouble’.”

Speaking of crises of identity associated with motherhood, what about Miller herself? She is 45 and has two boys, Cashel, nearly six, and Ronan, nearly 10. “I think how you deal with that depends on the amount of repression that’s involved. For most women, the moment when they have children – especially if they are women who have an occupation – is the moment they either have to put it on hold or shrink from it, start shrinking.

“And for a lot of women that’s almost too much – life is too much and they don’t know who they are any more. I’ve seen that a lot. In my case, there was never any question that I would stop anything – but then I had a job that was very conducive to having children: writing, or even making films – my shoots are quite short and don’t go on and on, so it’s easy for me to continue because I never had to interrupt people’s lives too much.

“It becomes really difficult for the women who have desire to do both – work and family. I guess what women are allowed to achieve and allowed to hope for hasn’t changed that much. Men are still expected to do a full day’s work and so something’s got to give – and the women are usually the ones who have to take on the burden of everything, because parenting isn’t considered a call that both parents have to answer in the same way. Every time you read an article or a book about this, the solution is ‘women have to quit work’, that’s always the solution: quit, quit, quit. I think that’s terrible.”

Her novel describes movingly what old age does to powerful men: “Instead of letting go of the material world in preparation for the spiritual, all of these things like money and vanity become more pressing.” It may be relevant that Arthur Miller was 46 when Rebecca was born: she has said that he seemed very old to her (“I think a lot of kids have this feeling – you could call it a kind of premourning; asking themselves the question: what am I going to be when they [the parents] die?”).

While we are talking about marriage, I mention a phrase in the book where she says “marriage is an act of will”. Is that her view? “No, no! I was at a dinner party and I was in the first flush of my marriage and I was pregnant and this woman – married a long time, very happily – said, ‘Marriage is an act of will’. She said, ‘I could be married to anybody here – it’s a question of making a conscious decision to make it work’. I am fascinated by the notion. You create it and you make it work.”

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller is published by Canongate Books on April 1 at £9.99

http://entertainment.time.../books/article3380988.ece

[CHRIS B]

Robin back with old flame

In what should get an Oscar for being one of Hollywood's most peaceful divorces, it appears that Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn have each found happiness in a record two months after they announced the end of their 11-year marriage.

Word is that Sean is splitting his time between a number of different ladies on both coasts (no word on how happy the gals in question might be) while Robin has fallen into the arms of actor Jason Patric -- yes, the same guy she was dating before she hooked up with Sean.

And it's not as if Robin, who currently has custody of the two Penn children, needs any more drama in her life. In one of her biggest professional breaks, Robin has just been signed to play the title role in writer-director Rebecca Miller's movie, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a satire about a dutiful middle-aged wife whose husband (Alan Arkin) falls for a younger woman (Winona Ryder) "freeing her to explore her buried sensuality and leading to a very quiet nervous breakdown".

The all-star line-up for what promises to be a delicious big-screen romp also includes Monica Bellucci (as errant husband's first wife), Keanu Reeves (as Pippa's young lover), Maggie Gyllenhaal (who will, in a series of flashbacks, play Pippa's diet pill-addled mother) and Julianne Moore as a lesbian novelist.
Guess there is life, after all, for a 41-year-old Hollywood divorcee.

[CHRIS B]

Productions Filming in Connecticut

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
To contact the production office of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, please email: pippaleefilm@gmail.com

Scheduled to begin filming April 14, 2008

Adapted from Rebecca Miller's novel, the film takes an adventurous trip through Pippa Lee's past and present, as a drug-addicted mother whose husband leaves her for a younger woman. Pippa indulges in an array of adventures while
heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown. 

Starring Robin Wright Penn and Keanu Reeves, Directed by Rebecca Miller

http://www.cultureandtour...w.asp?a=2126&q=333758

[CHRIS B]

Reviews of the novel from two well known authors:

Review

“The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is about the bewildering ways we become who are, the daily steps we take that end up being called “a life.” It unfolds like a dream, like finding a door in your bedroom that you never noticed before, and slowly opening it, and coming upon a whole world on the other side, a world that you never knew existed. Rebecca Miller knows what all artists know—that it is impossible to reveal a life in its fullness—but in this wise and irreverent novel, the glimpses she allows us are stunning.” —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bull@#$% Night in Suck City


“THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE is a beautifully layered and subtle novel of identity, with a wonderfully vivid sense of place and character. And it's hesitatingly wise in all sorts of ways, as well as being a deftly constructed page-turner.” —Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea

[CHRIS B]

Daniel Day-Lewis has already chosen his next project. This spring, he will return to a movie studio - only this time, instead of acting, he will join the carpentry crew, building the sets on The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee, which is to be directed by his wife Rebecca Miller, author of the book on which the film is based.
So obsessed is Day-Lewis with practising his new skills as a carpenter that he admitted, in a rare interview this week, that his nine-year-old son Ronan (the couple also have another boy, five-year-old Cashel) thought, until recently, that his father was not an actor but worked on a building site.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee will star Robin Wright Penn, Keanu Reeves, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Winona Ryder, Alan Arkin, Monica Belluci, and Julianne Moore. It starts filming April 15th in Stamford, Conneticut.

I know it's probably highly unlikely but I hope Daniel Day-Lewis makes a cameo in "Pippa." Wouldn't you guys love to see him and Winona together again?

[CHRIS B]

No big news or anything, just that I was talking to a person who has read the novel. I ask her the name of the younger women Winona is going to play in the film and she told me her name is 'Moira.'

I asked her how large a role Moira plays in the book, trying to figure out how much screen time Winona will have. This is what she told me.

Moira has an okay-sized role in the book, she appears a few times for extended periods, but it's really all about Pippa.

[CHRIS B]

No big news or anything, just that I was talking to a person who has read the novel. I ask her the name of the younger women Winona is going to play in the film and she told me her name is 'Moira.'

I asked her how large a role Moira plays in the book, trying to figure out how much screen time Winona will have. This is what she told me.

Moira has an okay-sized role in the book, she appears a few times for extended periods, but it's really all about Pippa.

On IMDB it says Winona's name is Sandra... 

[CHRIS B]

http://www.newstimes.com/ci_8582974

Film crew scouting locations in Danbury
By Eugene Driscoll Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 03/15/2008 04:13:41 AM EDT

DANBURY -- Keanu and Winona were not doing laps at the Boughton Street YMCA on Friday, but there were some movie folks in the city scouting out potential locations for "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee," an independent flick with an all-star cast that will use the city as home base.

"Can you tell there's an interest in this?" Wayne Shepperd, Danbury's economic development director, asked.

Shepperd was on the phone making his umpteenth call of the morning to Ellen Athena Catsikeas, a member of the film crew who was in Danbury looking for locations.

Shepperd's office was bombarded with inquiries from people who wanted to help with "Pippa Lee."

Some were unionized camera operators who wanted a job on the independent production. Others were local production companies hoping to lend a hand.

Still others offered luxury apartments to the cast and crew (for your information, accommodations have been secured).

The interest may have something to do with "Pippa Lee" having the most star-studded cast this side of "The Towering Inferno." (Young people, McQueen and Newman were in that one.)

"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robin Wright Penn, Monica Belluci, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julianne Moore and Alan Arkin.

OK, so "The Towering Inferno" comparison isn't 100 percent solid. How 'bout the most star-studded female cast this side of "Steel Magnolias?"

Or the most star-studded independent movie cast this side of "Dazed and Confused?" Imagine

if "Pippa" had indie movie goddess Parker Posey!
Movie geek factoids aside, Mayor Mark Boughton told The News-Times earlier this week the city is allowing the production (about 70 people) to use the former Immanuel Lutheran School on Foster Street for office and storage space.

The city has a deal on the table to charge $2,000 a month for using the city-owned building. The production is scheduled to use the building for 90 days.

Shooting will probably start in April, after the full crew arrives March 24.

The location scouts have been looking for a church, a rolling field, and other places in and around Danbury, said Shepperd, who has put the crew in touch with various Danbury area Realtors and religious leaders.

It means Danbury will have a major motion picture in the area during the Connecticut Film Festival, which is holding its main screenings in Danbury in May.

"The synergy there -- you couldn't ask for anything more," Shepperd said.

Then the Nutmeg Games will be in town from July 26 through Aug. 3.

Finally, Richter Park is scheduled to host the championship tournament for the American Junior Golf Association later in the summer.

The events are a contrast to the recent bleak economic news and bad press downtown Danbury has received as of late, city officials hope.

"To have the attention on us at that time is going to enhance our visibility in a positive way," Shepperd said.

[CHRIS B]

http://www.newstimes.com/ci_8561924

Update: Movie with all-star cast to set up shop in Danbury
Independent film stars Reeves, Ryder
By Eugene Driscoll | STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 03/14/2008 07:51:17 AM EDT

ANBURY -- The production company for an independent movie with an all-star cast is expected to use Danbury as its home base for the next 90 days.

"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robin Wright Penn, Monica Belluci, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julianne Moore and Alan Arkin, according to its listing on the Internet Movie Database.

Whether you'll have the chance to wax nostalgic with Reeves about "Point Break" remains to be seen, as the movie is scheduled to be lensed in and around greater Danbury while using the former Immanuel Lutheran School on Foster Street as its production headquarters.

The property is owned by the city.

Mayor Mark Boughton said that starting today, the production company will use the Foster Street building for offices and storage. Filming is scheduled to start in April, according to The Hollywood Reporter and the Connecticut Film Division's Web site.

"This is their business operations. I don't think you'll see Winona Ryder walking around, but the filming will take place in Danbury and greater Danbury. They'll be all over Danbury for the next 90 days," Boughton said.

"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is written and directed by Rebecca Miller, a Roxbury resident and the daughter of the late playwright Arthur Miller.

She is married to Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis and wrote the novel on which the movie is based.

Miller also directed the critically acclaimed "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," which starred her husband.
"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is a "dramedy" that "centers on a dutiful 50-year-old wife whose husband falls for a younger woman, freeing her to explore her buried sensuality and leading to a very quiet nervous breakdown," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Wright Penn, best known for her starring role in "The Princess Bride," is set to play Pippa Lee.

The movie is the third major motion picture to film recently in Danbury.

Scenes for Disney's "Confessions of a Shopaholic" were filmed in the city last month. Scenes for "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" were filmed at Western Connecticut State University in July.

CityCenter Danbury and the city's economic development office are trying to woo productions companies to the city. The number of productions in the state has increased dramatically since the passage of a tax break to the industry in 2006. Production companies have spent some $400 million in the state since then.

At the least, playing host to production companies is good public relations for the city, Boughton said. The city isn't far from New York City, where many of the production companies are based.

"One of the advantages that Danbury has is that you can film just about anything here," the mayor said. "If you need a rural location, we have farms. If you need a city atmosphere, we can shut down a street. If it's not here you can find a location in the region."


"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" has an all-star cast. Here's a look at some of the actors and their best-known projects.

Robin Wright Penn: The princess, "The Princess Bride"

Keanu Reeves: (tie) Neo, "The Matrix" trilogy and FBI Special Agent Johnny Utah, "Point Break"

Julianne Moore: (tie) Amber Waves, "Boogie Nights," Maude Lebowski, "The Big Lebowski"

Winona Ryder: Lydia, "Beetlejuice"

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Sherry, "SherryBaby"

Monica Bellucci: Donna, "Shoot 'Em Up"

Alan Arkin: Sheldon S. Kornpett, D.D.S., "The In-Laws"

[CHRIS B]

Rebecca Miller reads from her debut novel, The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/eun1y8yiAc8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/eun1y8yiAc8</a>

[CHRIS B]

The production company's webpage for "Pippa Lee" has been updated with all the character names.

http://www.lumina-films.c...a%20Lee/pippa%20lee_.html

[CHRIS B]

Just more on the film's production.

“THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE” SOON TO BE FILMED IN DANBURY"
The production company for “Pippa Lee” is expected to use Danbury as its home base for the next 90 days. "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" stars Robin Wright Penn, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Monica Belluci, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julianne Moore and Alan Arkin.
The movie is scheduled to be lensed in and around Danbury while using the former Immanuel Lutheran School on Foster Street as its production headquarters. The property is owned by the city.
Mayor Mark Boughton said that starting today, the production company will use the Foster Street building for offices and storage. Filming is scheduled to start in April, according to The Hollywood Reporter and the Connecticut Film Division's Web site.
"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is written and directed by Rebecca Miller, a Roxbury resident and the daughter of the late playwright Arthur Miller. She is married to Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis and wrote the novel on which the movie is based. Miller also directed the critically acclaimed "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," which starred her husband.
"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" is a "dramedy" that "centers on a dutiful 50-year-old wife whose husband falls for a younger woman, freeing her to explore her buried sensuality and leading to a very quiet nervous breakdown
Robin Wright is set to play the leading role: Pippa Lee. Alan Arkin plays the husband who leaves Robin Wright for Winona Ryder. Monica Bellucci will play his first wife.Keanu Reeves will play Wright Penn’s younger lover, while Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Wright Penn’s diet-pill-addicted mother in flashback sequences. Julianne Moore portrays a supporting role as a lesbian novelist.

http://robinwright-rw.blo...pippa-lee-soon-to-be.html

[NoniousTheNonian]

Hmm, my sister lives near Danbury.  Maybe I should pay her a visit and go "sight seeing'

[CHRIS B]

Rebecca Miller talking about her upcoming film based on her upcoming novel: "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee."
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/L5OlakqG9Ic" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/L5OlakqG9Ic</a>

I hope that since Winona seems to be billed third then that means she will play a significant role in this film!