Castle Rock Entertainment presents A Taylor Hackford Film starring Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh, "DOLORES CLAIBORNE," also starring David Strathairn, John C. Reilly, Eric Bogosian and Christopher Plummer. It was produced by Taylor Hackford and Charles Mulvehill and directed by Mr. Hackford from a screenplay Tony Gilroy has adapted from the best-selling novel by Stephen King. "DOLORES CLAIBORNE" features cinematography by Gabriel Beristain, production design by Bruno Rubeo, film editing by Mark Warner and an original score by Danny Elfman.
Kathy Bates committed to "DOLORES CLAIBORNE" almost immediately after Castle Rock optioned the book from Stephen King, whose novel "Misery" had been the vehicle for her Oscar-winning performance as Best Actress. Tony Gilroy wrote the screenplay with her photograph beside his word processor.
Gilroy transformed the extended monologue of Dolores' confession in Stephen King's novel into a tale of flesh and blood by introducing grown-up Selena into his adaptation. Director Taylor Hackford was compelled by the script, the concept of a preordained collision course of real characters, a mother and daughter, and by the opportunity to work with an actress of Kathy Bates' caliber. He immediately set out to sign the only person he imagined for the part of the daughter -- Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Once Hackford came on board, he and Bates determined to pursue the character of Dolores in a totally uncompromising way. Preparation for the role began months ahead of schedule as the director and his right-hand associate, producer Gina Blumenfeld, rounded up a team of experts with whom Bates could work in developing different aspects of Dolores. Bates drilled with dialogue coach Elizabeth Himmelstein in the dialect of remote Maine and the unique jargon of a woman noted for her eccentrically colorful manner of speech. She also worked with movement coach James Donlon, in trying to delineate the physicality of the 20-plus year age-span of her character, making the older, contemporary version of Dolores a cumulative expression of all she has suffered in the past, both inside and out.
When she signed on as Selena, Jennifer Jason Leigh had just finished playing a noted magazine writer of a different era, Dorothy Parker, the part for which she subsequently has been so critically acclaimed in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle." With encouragement from Hackford, who knew of her passion for research, and introductions supplied by Blumenfeld to fifteen of the top female investigative journalists in the media today, Leigh was able to hang out in the editorial offices of major newspapers and magazines in New York and Washington, D.C. She went to lunches and dinners with the most glittering literati as "one of the gang." "I met journalists whose work I had read and admired for a long time, but it was great to be on the other side of it," Jennifer says. "Everybody was really open because it was all off the record, for background only. I have lots of dirt I'll never be able to share with anybody."
