"DEAD CALM" - Production Information - Veteran sailor John Ingram (SAM NEILL) joins his beautiful young wife Rae (NICOLE KIDMAN) on the deck of their sailing vacht Saracen, and finds the ocean mirror-flat, the air dead calm. A career Royal Australian Navy officer, Ingram has seen the world's oceans. But this particular voyage represents a far more personal odyssey -- it gives John and Rae the opportunity to soothe the memory of that single rainy night many months before when a devastating auto crash took the life of the couple's young son--and almost killed Rae as well. Suddenly, John and Rae's private, healing cruise is interrupted when they spot a dinghy being furiously rowed away from a large schooner lying some half-mile to starboard. The other ship--named the Orpheus--shows no other signs of life. The sole occupant of the dinghy is Hughie Warriner (BILLY ZANE), a frightened young American who pours out his ordeal to the rescuers -- his shipmates have all died, the apparent victims of food poisoning. But Ingram, skeptical of the stranger's tale, rows out to the schooner and discovers that something much more ominous and horrifying may have occurred on the Orpheus. Heart pounding, John races back up onto the crippled schooner's deck and stares in anguish toward his own boat. On deck, Rae is screaming and Hughie is at the helm of the Saracen, steering her under full power--in the opposite direction! Thus begins the strange tale of "Dead Calm," a drama of terror, suspense and courage from director Phillip Noyce and co-producer George Miller, co-creator of the famed "Mad Max" film series and director of "The Witches of Eastwick." About the Production... The history of "Dead Calm," which is based on Charles Williams' 1963 Viking Press novel of the same name, is perhaps as intriguing as the novelist's mystery- suspense story itself. It was Hollywood's flamboyant genius and master dramatist Orson Welles who first spotted Williams' tale as first-rate subject matter for a motion picture. Welles snapped up the film rights, wrote a screenplay that remained highly faithful to Williams' book (but changed the title to "The Deep"), and began production in 1968 off Yugoslavia's Dalmatian coast. His cast included Jeanne Moreau; Laurence Harvey; Welles' longtime companion--gifted sculptor and actress Oja Kodar (who performed under the name Olga Palinkas); and Welles himself, both acting and, quite literally, "at the helm" directing. If the numerous production, technical and financial problems encountered during the two-year-long, off- again, on-again production of "The Deep" weren't solely responsible for it remaining unreleased, the 1973 death of leading man Laurence Harvey certainly represented the drowning wave, and Welles abandoned the project. (Years later, in an extended interview, Jeanne Moreau claimed that Welles had actually finished the film but felt, as he had about his several other ill-fated ventures, that the picture should not be presented publiclv.) Complete or incomplete, Welles' unreleased version of the film today remains in the vaults of his estate. In 1986, Australian director PHILLIP NOYCE--associated on other film projects with Kennedy Miller Productions' principals GEORGE MILLER, TERRY HAYES and DOUG MITCHELL -- became highly intrigued with the property. "Phil said he'd read this terrific book, Dead Calm, which he knew was in the Welles estate and which was presumably hard to obtain the rights to," states producer George Miller. "But Phil felt, and we all agreed, that the novel possessed an exceptional suspense plot and a setting which we thought we could handle in Australia in the calm waters inside the Great Barrier Reef. "We met with Oja Kodar in Los Angeles; to our great pleasure she was receptive; and we acquired the rights," Miller continues. "But we were extremely careful not to follow in the footsteps of the master and look at any part of what remained of his film. We never even read the screenplay Welles shot." Screenwriter Hayes and director Noyce did, however, pore over Williams' novel to capture the mood, suspense and basic story but, according to Hayes, "we made a number of essential updates. "The book derived its sensibilities from the '50s and '60s. For example, Hughie is explained in the novel as warped because he was beaten by his father and indulged by his mother -- that's a fairly pat answer as to why Hughie is what he is; we felt that just wouldn't 'wash' with today's psychologically sophisticated audiences." The book also involved several other characters who were discovered aboard the sinking schooner. "We dropped them for the film," Hayes continues, "because they would have made 'Dead Calm' too talky. So, we 'killed off' the several other characters that were in the book. But," Hayes grins, "we added -- what hopefully audiences will find -- a most useful dog." "Dramatically," adds director Noyce, "we found ourselves dealing with three primary themes: One, the betrayal by a seemingly desperate and dying hitch- hiker; two, the unspoken but understandable passion between John and Rae after the shattering loss of their child; and finally Rae's own personal journey. We felt the audience could identify more with a young woman, because, in a kind of rite-of-passage, she goes from weakness to power, from girlhood to womanhood, from loss to re-growth." For the key focal role of Rae Ingram, the filmmakers selected 22-year-old Australian actress Nicole Kidman. "The Kennedy Miller film organization first became aware of Kidman from several Australian TV productions and what we call 'domestic movies,' films hardly seen outside Australia," says Noyce. "We first felt Nicole would be absolutely right for a key role in the major miniseries we were developing titled 'Vietnam.' Little did we realize that in just three nights, she would become a household name across the entire country." Voted Best Actress of the year by the Australian public (along with several other awards), Kidman not only came to public and critical attention, but to that of Australia's filmmakers as well. States producer Miller, "Nicole is not just someone who is acting for the short term, she's an absolutely serious actor. Some ten years ago, I first met Mel Gibson, fresh out of drama school. I had this gut feeling about him. He had this presence on film one couldn't stop watching. I feel the same quality in Nicole." For the role of John Ingram, the filmmakers were delighted to find Sam Neill available. "We'd long hoped to get Sam to work on a Kennedy Miller production," Hayes affirms, "but he spends so much time working in Europe that we had really never had the opportunity until this picture. Fortunately, Sam and Phil (Noyce) knew each other and I think it grew from that friendship that Sam, who has been enjoying much larger roles, including those with Meryl Streep, came to work with us on 'Dead Calm.'" States Neill of the experience, "I'd never done any ocean sailing before this film. As much as I'd ever experienced was in my youth racing 14-footers on weekends around harbors in New Zealand. This was altogether different, and very tough. From the start, I, and a lot of the crew, got seasick every day. But after a few weeks, we started to fare better and worked together smoothly. Although it was very nice to work with the Kennedy Miller group, I truly can't say I'd jump at doing another role cramped up in boats at sea. About the role of the young ocean hitchhiker, Hughie Warriner, director Noyce states, "We had our choice of any number of young, fairly well-known up-and-coming male actors -- from America as well as other countries. But we made a conscious decision to go with an unknown. This way, he comes into the audiences' lives as a real stranger. Noyce looked through throngs of still pictures, then videotaped roughly 40 final candidates in screen tests arranged in New York and Los Angeles by veteran casting director Wally Nicita. Among these, the one who ultimately stood out was young, Chicago-born, 23- year-old Billy Zane. States Noyce, "It was purely one of those cases where an actor completely tested himself into the movie. He gave us something that was totally fascinating, without being neurotic or strange. Billy's acting is always 'on the edge,' always surprising in his choices of how to play a scene. He's entirely spontaneous, totally fresh." In addition to the actors, the filmmakers also had to cast some intriguing, non-human participants in the film: the boats. John Ingram's ketch Saracen is, in real life, the remarkable, 80-foot blue-water racer Storm Vogel, constructed entirely of plywood in 1961. The custom ketch has won virtually every major ocean race in the world through the mid'60s. After many years and several owners, Storm Vogel had wound up in Sydney, Australia. "We'd gone down to the harbor with the idea of renting another boat," states Miller. "But to get to that boat, we had to cross the deck of Storm Vogel. And, as we crossed her, Phil, Doug (producer Doug Mitchell) and I all stopped dead in our tracks. In a single voice, we said, 'No, no not that one, this one' And we made a deal with its owner." For the schooner Orpheus, the filmmakers used a ship called the Golden Plover. Moored at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, the Golden Plover is a coal-carrying cargo vessel which now serves as an aging tourist attraction. "It had a terrible feeling," states Miller. "Tiny little cabins, claustrophobic -- just awful." Adds Jerry Hayes, "We also built a replica that we could sink in the film. But a lot of the crew who'd paid good money as tourists to go aboard the Golden Plover thought we should have sunk the real one! The schooner's late owner was an extremely eccentric man who thought he was Captain Bligh. He'd take his friends on what was supposed to be a recreational cruise, then press them into working like shanghaied sailors!" Filming over a 14-week schedule took place in the placid Whitsunday Passage area, northeast of Sydney, between the Great Barrier Reef and the mainland of Australia not far from Hamilton Island. "Because of the reef," director Noyce added, "the waters remained relatively flat day after day, exactly what we needed." On the spectacular resort island of Hamilton, the filmmakers also built a sound stage housing a huge tank that would double the action at sea. Interiors of both boats were constructed on flotation devices which the crew could rock in order to duplicate the rocking motion of ships at sea. At sea, however, Kennedy Miller hired a virtual armada of vessels to support the filming operations. "These," says Noyce, "were basically luxury boats we'd rented. The crew lived on them for days at a time rather than coming back to shore." Director Noyce has great praise for one member of the cast. He did everything right on the first take --time after time. That was our dog Benji. He never missed once. It was just amazing." The complexity of shooting a motion picture on even a calm sea, both inside and outside of the boats, was the responsibility of one of Australia's foremost cinematographers, Dean Semier. A longtime associate of Miller ("The Road Warrior," "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome"), Semier conceived a system involving the use of Storm Vogel's masthead-attached cables, called halyards, to swing his camera operator far out over the water for a couple of spectacular shots. The boat's bos'n chain, attached to the halyard, also provided the camera operator with an added safety measure without which the potential danger of falling overboard would have precluded several remarkable filmed sequences. Concerning the music score for "Dead Calm," Miller says, "I had a firm belief, a fear really, that because of the very sensitive nature of this particular film--with its sparse elements--that it was almost impossible to write music for it without overpowering the picture. We needed something timeless, almost liturgical--a sense of expanse and timelessness--like the sea itself." Miller, who had had the admitted good fortune of working with such master film composers as John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and Maurice Jarre, ironically found his composer in 33-year-old rock- musician GRAEME REVELL. Revell, who had worked mainly in London as the principal member of the group S.P.K. and had once composed an entire album duplicating sounds made by insects through his use of a synthesizer. The young composer came up with precisely the timeless, almost liturgical musical score Noyce and Miller sought and the picture demanded. Revell utilized a soprano, singing Latin lyrics, as a symbol of the growing strength and rite-of-passage that Rae achieves in the latter part of the picture.