Production Notes

     Two eccentric sisters who live alone in the remote hills of Northern Michigan are not what they seem. When they invite you for dinner…you're the dinner. When Tom, a motion picture animator, escapes from them he thinks that his worries are over. They're not. They're only just beginning.
     That is the premise of this dark and scary tale, directed by John Hancock and written by his favorite collaborator, his wife Dorothy Tristan. Hancock produced the film together with Robert J. Hiler. Dean Jacobson and Ken Kitch are Co-Producers and Carey Westberg is the Executive Producer.
     Although a work of fiction, Suspended Animation does have elements of truth that are drawn from Tristan's personal experiences.  One scene that didn't make it into the screenplay hit very close to home-literally.  In the first dreaft, a fire burned down Tom and Hilary's Malibu House.  In a case of art imitating life, John Hancock's home in the Malibu hildds did indeed burn down in a devastating fire, precipitating his move to Indiana.
     After relocating back to the Midwest, John built FilmAcres, a fully equipped movie studio and editing facility. Suspended Animation is the second film to be shot at FilmAcres, following A Piece of Eden in 1999. The filming of Suspended Animation began at FilmAcres in LaPorte County, Indiana in early 2001. Shooting continued in LaPorte until March when the snow started melting. The crew moved to Saulte Sainte Marie, Ontario, Canada for a week of shooting for the snowmobile chase scenes. The final week of production found the crew moving across the continent to Malibu and Santa Monica to shoot the Kempton's house and other various exteriors. Ironically, their base camp was set up on the lot where Director Hancock's house used to stand. "It was kind of like a last hoorrah because we're selling the land," said Hancock. "This place is charged with all sorts of memories. It feels right to come and shoot the last part of the movie right here. I lived in Malibu for 20 years and I loved our house."
     With Suspended Animation being a moderate budget film, Hancock was fortunate to have a very accommodating former next door neighbor. "He let us use his house for nothing," said Hancock. His own familiarity with the area also helped Hancock with a crucial junkyard scene. "I knew where it was. If you're trying to make a big picture with a lot of production value on a tight budget, the better you know a given area and what you can find right there without moving the trucks, the better off you are. Production logistics are very intriguing to me. Sometimes all you have to do is look across the street to find another location."
     Director Hancock continues to search out new techniques to use in his productions. Suspended Animation was shot in the new Sony Hi Definition format, which George Lucas used to shoot the latest Star Wars film. HD is cheaper in many ways. It doesn't "burn" film stock, so a director can shoot more takes without budgetary concerns. The image is sharper and the director and cinematographer can see what is shot immediately, which eliminates the cost of dailies. A movie shot on Hi Definition can be projected and viewed without having to be converted to film. "I never shot video in my life, I don't even own a camcorder," said award winning Russian Director of Photography Misha Suslov. "And now here's Hi-Definition Video and I see that this camera has a great ability." 
     For production designer Don Jacobson the challenge with working with the HD camera was trying to make everything look very real, especially Clara's 5-room house, with 50 years of wear and tear.
Misha Suslov has worked with Hancock on four previous films, as well as numerous other projects. After finishing film school and working for one of the biggest studios in Moscow, Suslov left for the United States in 1975 at the age of 35. Arriving in New York, he was one of the first "refusniks".  He shot his first U.S. film two years later and was soon working with Tom Selleck and Robin Williams. 
     The decision on casting Tom was made at the last minute. Alex McArthur was on a plane to Indiana just a few hours after learning he had the role. "Alex was somebody I had worked with before and had liked and always thought would be a big star," said Hancock.
     McArthur recalls, "I met with them at 10:30 in the morning on Monday, and they hired me on the spot. They asked me how soon I could be on a plane. I said 'how about 3:30?' They had a private plane there, we jumped in, went to Indiana, and started working the next day." Alex had previously worked with John Hancock back in 1984 when he directed an episode of Hill Street Blues.
     "I had worked with Rebecca Harrell three or four times," remembers Hancock. "I like to work with the same people. You develop a common vocabulary and trust each other and know what they can do." Rebecca started working regularly after John and Dorothy cast her in Prancer at the age of eight. "My mom was in show business when she was young, and thought it would be great if I got into it," she recalls. "I read the script and was blown away by the concept of Suspended Animation, but didn't think I was going to be in the movie when I got the script. I talked to John about it, they said 'yeah, you're too young but we'll just have you come in and audition anyway.' The audition was obviously successful.
     Laura Esterman was urged to read for one of the roles by a friend-writer Dorothy Tristan. "I worked with Dorothy years and years ago when she came to Baltimore to do Dolls House and I played her friend Christina and it was wonderful," Esterman remembers fondly. Director Hancock added, "I've known Laura a long time. She won an Obie for Marvin's Room Off-Broadway. It was one of the best performances I've ever seen."
     "Fred Meyers came in to audition for us when we came out to California," recalls Tristan. "The first day, he came in character which is very chancy for an actor to do, depending on what the character is. He was wonderful. He looked so degenerate. His hair was greasy, he put pimples on and he wouldn't give us straight answers. Then he read, and he was really, really revolting and scary and disgusting and I said to John, 'He's wonderful but I think he is a great deal of trouble.' We dismissed him. But John got him before he left and said 'come back tomorrow and don't be in character.' He came back and was himself. 
     He was fabulous. This is it. This is Sandor. And he's a wonderful kid. He's really got it."
The main themes running through the movie are good vs. evil and obsession. The sisters are the quintessence of evil, manifested through violence and anger and what they do with that anger.
     The sisters are the quintessence of evil, manifested through violence and what they do with their anger.  tom tries to find out why these women are the way they are by trying to turn his intrigue into a creative extension of his work, but instead he is consumed by a strange obsession.  An obsession with Vanessa, one of his captors, that eventually leads him to her beautiful estranged daughter, Clara.
     After reading the script and learning of the film's dark nature, each cast member knew that becoming their character meant that they were in for a wicked ride. 
Says McArthur, "I can relate to Tom. He gets so obsessed with what happened to him that he ends up putting the rest of his life on the line."
          Maria Cina, who plays Clara, found that the subject matter "was one that is rarely touched upon and it went to such various and dark places that I couldn't really resist it. I could identify with Clara Hansen, a woman struggling and fighting to get by, to follow her dreams on her own, raising a child on her own."
Upon walking into his character Sandor's bedroom, teen star Fred Meyers said 'wow, this guy is really disturbed.' "I usually play dorky roles and this was a nice chance to do some real acting. It's difficult because I had to develop this really awful monster of a character without judging him in my own mind."
     Laura Esterman, one of the two psychotic sisters, simply 'enjoyed the challenge of playing a complex character.' "Vanessa is someone who's been deeply wounded and who's taking revenge for all her suffering. I understand that and it made it very hard to do, very painful to do."
     Each character has a unique personality that costume designer Richard Donnelly wanted to reflect in their outfits. "We wanted everything as dark and toned down as we could. I decided early on that I did not want to use any red.  The only red that should be on the clothing is the blood."
     "As a costume designer, you want the actor to look good in what they're wearing but it's much more important that it be appropriate to the character that they're creating. The two serial killer characters were the most interesting to work with because they had a wide range of emotions and their minds are a little twisted. When they do the actual killing, they each put on ritual costumes." 
     Rebecca Harrell keeps going back to Indiana to film. "They're like family, John and Dorothy and Misha." Cinematographer Misha Suslov has fond memories of watching Rebecca Harrell grow up. "I shot Rebecca in Prancer when she was eight years old.  We also filmed her in A Piece of Eden, when she was about 18 years old. And now she is 21. She's a talented girl." 
     During the course of the production, veteran Director Hancock had to lead his troops through the Indiana wilderness, the ice and snow of Canada and then make the trek across the country to California. All of this had to be done on a modest budget.
     Through his experiences in film, television and live theatre, John was able to gain the trust of his actors and have them "dig deep", fleshing out their characters and delivering chilling performances. 
     One of the toughest scenes called for 17-year-old Fred Meyers (playing a 15-year-old) to try to mutilate his mother's breast. During rehearsals he and Maria Cina (as his mother) agreed that he would sit on her lap, straddling her, instead of simply standing in front of her. It was a hard scene to watch.
     A great deal of physicality was required for the snowmobile sequences, and the cast had two weeks of snowmobile school to prepare. They learned jumps, turning them over, spinning, etc. 
"The snowmobiling was a walk in the woods compared to the other stuff in this movie," said Alex McArthur. "I'm basically put through a lot of torture. I'm duck-taped to a wheel chair and slapped around by these women. I get my finger chopped off. It's like I have to go through one horror after another to play this character. At one point I'm attacked by this teen-aged schizophrenic, he jumps on me, zaps me with a stun-gun, drags me into a shower and turns the water on my face full blast to where I damn near drowned." 
     Director John Hancock hired a few crew members from LA and mixed them with the large resource of film makers from Indiana and nearby Chicago. "You get a lot more for the money here. It doesn't cost people so much to live. Locations are cheaper, lodging, cars, salaries, everything. We're training local people and we have some very fast learners."