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 Evergreen Production NotesThe heart is a lonely hunter.
A Love Song for Bobby Long is the poignant story of a wayward girl and two men, each scarred by their pasts, who struggle to mend their broken lives and create a home together in a forgotten section of New Orleans.
Starring John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson, Gabriel Macht and Deborah Kara Unger, A Love Song for Bobby Long is the feature film directorial debut of Shainee Gabel (ANTHEM), who wrote the screenplay based on Ronald Everett Capps’ soon-to-be-published novel, Off Magazine Street.
Upon hearing of her mother’s death, jaded teenage loner Purslane Hominy Will (Scarlett Johansson) returns to New Orleans for the first time in years, ready to reclaim her childhood home.
Expecting to find her late mother’s house abandoned, Pursy is shocked to discover that it is inhabited by two of her mother’s friends: Bobby Long (John Travolta), a former literature professor, and his young protégé, Lawson Pines (Gabriel Macht).
These broken men, whose lives took a wrong turn years before, have been firmly rooted in the dilapidated house for years, encouraged only by Lawson’s faltering ambitions to write a novel about Bobby Long’s life.
Having no intention of leaving, Pursy, Bobby Long and Lawson are all forced to live together. Yet as time passes, their tenuous, makeshift arrangement unearths a series of buried personal secrets that challenges their bonds, and reveals just how inextricably their lives are intertwined...
A story about love and human frailty, A Love Song for Bobby Long is at once a lyrical ode to the rich, decaying romanticism of New Orleans and a powerful drama about lives haunted by the past.
About the Production
“Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.” Robert Frost
A rich, emotionally stirring three-character drama, A Love Song for Bobby Long proved to be a considerable labor of love for writer/director Shainee Gabel. A documentary filmmaker who co-directed the acclaimed cross-country odyssey ANTHEM, Gabel spent five years developing and financing A Love Song for Bobby Long, taking the necessary time to assemble the ideal creative team for her debut feature. When the cameras finally started rolling, she had assembled production elements that most first-time directors could only dream of – the support of stars John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson, a dedicated professional crew, and the streets of New Orleans as her atmospheric backdrop.
Although A Love Song for Bobby Long is her feature directing debut, Gabel found her experience making ANTHEM prepared her well for the challenge. “When you spend eight months watching the same sixty interviews you learn a lot about human behavior,” says the director. “You get to know the specifics of how someone speaks, what their mannerisms are. It just helps you understand what’s real.”
“Shainee is to this material as Quentin Tarantino was to PULP FICTION,” says John Travolta, who plays the titular character, Bobby Long. “They have the vision. They know how things should sound. They know why they wrote what they wrote, the meaning of things.”
Scarlett Johansson, who plays the willful teenager Pursy, appreciates Gabel’s respect for her character’s quieter moments. “Shainee doesn't fill the voids with words,” says the actress. “The silent moments that our characters have and the words that our characters use are filled with so much. She’s a brilliant writer. The script is so beautiful. As an actor, you’re never fishing for something that isn’t there.”
While the script for A Love Song for Bobby Long is loosely based on preexisting material, Gabel credits the city of New Orleans as the source of her inspiration. Years earlier, while shooting ANTHEM, Gabel passed through the city and found herself immediately “visually inspired. There were locations that I knew I wanted to shoot,” recalls Gabel. “There are communities built around these corner bars – there were a few that became my favorites – and I would spend a lot of time just sitting. You would find the same people there at ten in the morning as you would find at ten at night.”
Despite her success with ANTHEM, Gabel always intended to become a narrative filmmaker. Searching for material to adapt for the screen, Gabel confided in her friend musician Grayson Capps that she wanted to make a movie in New Orleans. He soon offered an unpublished manuscript written by his father, Ronald Everett Capps, many years before (Off Magazine Street, soon to be available).The story took place in New Orleans and presented the seeds of what would later become the screenplay.
“There are entire neighborhoods in the city that can be ghettoized and forgotten,” says Gabel. “I wanted to set the story among people one wouldn’t necessarily see, those on the fringe.” In the characters of Bobby Long, an alcoholic professor who’s given up on his former life, and Pursy, a teenager with no parents or education, Gabel saw the opportunity to explore flawed, complex people who are too often passed over.
“Even the most enlightened of us judge others,” states Gabel. “When we first meet Pursy, she’s living in a trailer park and eating junk food. When we first meet Bobby Long, he seems predatory and disgusting, a self-destructive alcoholic. But everybody has a story. No one is what they seem. I wanted to create characters who might be easy to discount, and then develop a story which disproves that.”
Producer Paul Miller met Gabel soon after she had completed her first draft. He was so impressed by her early draft that he immediately signed on to the project. He and Gabel developed the script together over the course of several years, which included Gabel’s attendance at the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab.
“The script is beautifully written,” says Miller. “It describes a world that most people aren’t aware of – a magical world. It’s a story about literature and love – not sexual love, necessarily, but love between human beings on a deeper level.”
Producer David Lancaster was brought on to the project during pre-production. “I’ve always been attracted to great female writers – particularly Southern,” explains Lancaster. “And although Shainee is not Southern herself, this story is uniquely Southern in its feel. Its characters are exquisite. She has an incredible ear for dialogue and for making her characters real.”
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Gabriel Macht, Scarlett Johansson and John Travolta in A Love Song for Bobby Long.