Futuristic film shot in Cedar Rapids ready to land where journey began

Director Adam Orton and his stars are ready to get their otherworldly tale out into the world.

'It's been four years since we first started working on it,” said Orton, 32, of Cedar Rapids. 'I'm excited to see how people respond to it and what it leads to next.”

He'll get to see their reactions when 'Amelia 2.0” makes its world premiere at 7 p.m. Friday at Collins Road Theatres in Cedar Rapids, with some cast and crew members on hand for a Q&A. The show will then continue with a first-run at the multiplex theater across from Lindale Mall.

BEGINNINGS

The 90-minute feature film is returning to its origins.

'Amelia 2.0” began life as 'The Summerland Project,” a play written by Rob Merritt of Cedar Rapids, exploring the realm of artificial intelligence when the mind of a comatose, dying woman is transferred into a replica robot. It begs questions as old as Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein.” If you could bring a loved one back from the dead, would you? Should you? If Amelia is conscious, is she really Amelia or a robot? Where does being human begin and end?

The play took its first breaths in November 2011, in a bare-bones production as part of Theatre Cedar Rapids' Underground New Play Festival in the intimate 90-seat Grandon Studio space. The premise was so intriguing and the play so well received that it leapt to the TCR main stage in January 2013, with lots of high-tech theatrical bells and whistles. And after Orton saw the play, he teamed up with Merritt to transfer its soul to film.

But would it still be the same, in this new synthetic form?

No - it couldn't be, said Angela Billman, 31, of Cedar Rapids, who starred in the 2013 stage production and the subsequent film.

At first, she thought any changes to the storyline would be 'weird.”

'It became so apparent to me that film and stage are such different art forms, that to keep the script the same from one to the other, in either direction, wouldn't do the story justice,” she said.

While many major plot points remain the same, the movie has some different scenes and characters, Billman said.

'On camera, you're able to utilize mechanisms like flashbacks, and take an establishing shot of something and set an entire scene. Whereas on stage, it's a stagnant environment. Certainly, you can change the set pieces or project something different on the background, but it's not going to invite the audience into something that's completely different, like a completely different time frame or a completely different spatial setup,” she said.

'So I think that it was necessary and important for the story to change. Was it challenging for me personally to see those changes? No, it wasn't, because I knew what needed to be done in order to represent the story properly in a different venue.”

The name change became necessary, as well, Orton said, after hearing from his sales agent about six months ago that buyers and people in the Los Angeles film scene said 'The Summerland Project” was too ambiguous and didn't tell anything about the artificial intelligence/science fiction genre. It needed something with more of a high-tech pop to package and sell.

The new name 'identifies the protagonist,” Orton said. 'Right away, you know it's about this women, Amelia. The ‘2.0' indicates software revisions, versions of hardware. It brings to mind the technological aspect of it. You have a name 2.0 that manufacturers of hardware and software tend to denote versions with. When also combining it with the name of a woman, you instantly create this connection of this woman not quite being human. She's a second version, she's a piece of hardware, she's a piece of software, and that (name) everyone just loved.”

FILMING

It's the biggest project Orton has tackled, and cost upward of $1.2 million to make. It was shot in Cedar Rapids from late August to early October 2014, followed by about a year of postproduction work.

The cast included nine principals, 10 to 15 others with speaking roles, 15 to 20 featured extras and the crowd fillers needed for the awards scene, many of whom are locals who came to casting calls at Theatre Cedar Rapids. Between 35 and 50 people were on-set any given day.

Hollywood actors brought star power to the production, with Ed Begley Jr. as billionaire industrialist Paul Wesley, whose company is making the robotic Amelia. Begley's lengthy resume includes 'St. Elsewhere,” 'This is Spinal Tap” and 'The Office.”

Also in the lineup are Kate Vernon from 'Battlestar Galactica” as neurologist Dr. Ellen Beckett; Debra Wilson from 'MADtv” and 'Avatar” as talk-show host and journalist Adah Allen; Eddie Jemison from 'Ocean's Eleven” and 'Ocean's Thirteen” as robotics engineer Max Parker, and Chris Ellis from 'The Dark Knight Rises” and 'Armageddon” as Sen. Thaddeus Williams, leader of the project's moral opposition. Local natives Jesse Henecke and John Livingston, now acting in Hollywood, came home to be in the film.

Newcomer Ben Whitehair, featured in the ABC series 'Nashville,” portrays Amelia's husband, Carter Summerland. He had met associate producer Alex Levine of Los Angeles, who encouraged him to audition for the film. So he sent a tape to Orton, and eventually heard a phrase that's music to an actor's ears: 'We'd like to have you onboard.”

He said he loves the 'everyman” feel of Carter Summerland, a cop who's thrust into a completely unknown world with this experimental program that just might give him back his wife, who is comatose after suffering an aneurysm.

'It's a human story about love and relationships, that happens to be set in sci-fi world,” said Whitehair, 31, a Colorado native now living in Los Angeles.

'It was such a treat to be able to live in that world and live as that character for the month that I was (in Cedar Rapids). So often in film and television, you're maybe only spending a few days here or there.

'To be fully immersed in such a compelling story and with these characters, it felt like I was doing theater again. That's both a testament to the story, as well as the rest of the cast and the crew and Adam, that it really was such a familial environment, and very easy to live in that world,” he said.

HOLLYWOOD IN IOWA

Billman loved living in that world, too. She has done some smaller film work, but is known primarily for lead roles in local stage productions, including 'Violet” with Revival Theater Company, 'West Side Story” at Theatre Cedar Rapids and 'Cyrano” for the Classics at Brucemore. In working alongside the Hollywood actors, she found them to be kind, not divas.

'Overall, they were very nice, down-to-earth people,” she said. 'That's not to say that we didn't have interesting challenges on-set, but nothing that we couldn't work through in a matter of minutes.

'The thing that really surprised me, was that really all of them - and they are pretty seasoned actors, people who have been in a lot of movies ... and spent their whole career in film - have said this was one of the best experiences they've ever had, and that this was one of the most cohesive teams they've ever worked with. And overall, they just loved being in Cedar Rapids.

'The way that they were received in the city I think was surprising to them. Of course, it's such a different life than the one they lead in L.A. They're like, ‘Wow, it would be great to live in a place like this,' and I said, ‘Yeah, it really is great to live here.'

'It validated all the beliefs that I'd already had. It wasn't like it was a surprise to me that anyone would enjoy making art in Iowa or Cedar Rapids, but I was appreciative that they were able to feel what I feel, and I was so thankful to know that the experience was as valuable to them as it was to me and the other individuals working on the film.”

REACTIONS

Billman also hopes the movie's hometown audiences will leave with several key impressions:

'I have a couple different hopes,” she said. 'The selfish hope of wanting them to be proud of their city and proud of what can happen here, and of the people who contribute here and have talent and skills and expertise. People came out of the woodwork to act, to make the set. The opportunities for different types of labor on a movie set are endless, and people in Cedar Rapids all came out and joined together to create this film and were just so proud of it.

'I hope when people watch the movie, they're feeling that same pride for all the people and the actual place. The city looks beautiful in the film. I just hope we can all take a moment and say, ‘Hey, we live in a great place that really supports the arts. The movie is smart, Cedar Rapids is smart. We can make anything happen here that we want to make happen, and people will be supportive of it. That's my selfish hope.

'My broader hope is that the film will inspire questions in people that perhaps they haven't thought about. It's the same hope that we had for the play. I want people to question what they would do in this situation. I want them to question what it means to be human, and I want them to question how technology fits into that definition,” she said, 'because we are very quickly headed toward this as a reality, and having some sort of inkling about how you feel before it happens is so crucial to humankind.

'It's a really vital question as to how we fit in with artificial intelligence.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com

IF YOU GO

l What: 'Amelia 2.0” world premiere

l Where: Collins Road Theatres, 1462 Twixt Town Rd., Cedar Rapids

l When: 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4, followed by Q&A

l Tickets: $10; $8 until 5 p.m. Friday at Collinsroadtheatres.com/movie.asp?ID=763

l Stars: Angela Billman of Cedar Rapids ('Up on the Wooftop”), Ben Whitehair ('Better Call Saul”), Kate Vernon ('Battlestar Galactica”), Kamar De Los Reyes ('One Life to Live”), Eddie Jemison ('Ocean's Eleven”), Debra Wilson ('Avatar”), Chris Ellis ('Apollo 13”) and Ed Begley Jr. ('St. Elsewhere,” 'Pineapple Express”)

l Rated: PG-13

l Run time: 90 minutes

l More: Film continues as a regular feature, at usual Collins Road prices

l Details: Collinsroadtheatres.com