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 The Butterfly Effect Production NotesTagline: Change one thing. Change everything.
Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) has lost track of time. From an early age, crucial moments of his life have disappeared into a black hole of forgetting, his boyhood marred by a series of terrifying events he can't remember. What remains is the ghost of memory and the broken lives around him ' the lives of his childhood friends, Kayleigh (Amy Smart), Lenny (Elden Henson) and Tommy (William Lee Scott).
Throughout his childhood, Evan was under the care of a psychologist who encouraged him to keep a journal, detailing the events of his day-to-day life. Now in college, Evan reads from one of his journals and finds himself thrust suddenly, inexplicably back in time. He comes to realize that the notebooks he keeps under his bed are a vehicle by which he can return to the past and reclaim his memories. But these recollections only leave Evan feeling responsible for the damaged lives of his friends, most crucially that of Kayleigh, his childhood sweetheart who he continued to love into adulthood.
Determined to do something now that he was incapable of doing then, Evan purposely travels back in time, his present-day mind occupying his childhood body, in an attempt to re-write history and spare his friends and loved ones these traumatic experiences. By altering the events of the past, Evan hopes to transform the present.
But every time Evan changes something in the past, he returns to the present to find that his actions have unexpected and disastrous consequences. Try as he might, he can't seem to create a reality that allows he and Kayleigh to live "happily ever after."
About the Production
Ashton Kutcher, who made the leap from the highly rated comedy series "That '70s Show" to films like Dude Where's My Car and Just Married, stars as Evan Treborn, who is haunted by suppressed memories of a deeply troubled past. "Evan is a guy who doesn't know who he is," Kutcher explains. "He has blacked out all the traumatic moments in his life, and through the course of the movie, he discovers that he doesn't necessarily like who he is."
One saving grace throughout his life has been Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart), a childhood sweetheart who now as an adult finds herself equally lost. "Kayleigh has always been in love with Evan, since she was young," says Smart, who has starred in such films as Varsity Blues and Road Trip and will next be seen in Starsky & Hutch. "She grows up to be a lonely girl who works in a diner and hasn't gone on with her life. She has stayed in the town she grew up in to be closer to Evan."
Driven by his own personal demons, Evan discovers old journals that he kept during one of the darkest periods of his childhood ' a period woven with blackouts in which Evan doesn't remember anything. But by reading these journals, something remarkable happens ' he finds that he has the ability to go back and inhabit his childhood body. "If you woke up tomorrow and you could live your life again in a completely different way, would you do it'" asks Kutcher. The trigger, says Kutcher, is when he realizes that his childhood sweetheart, Kayleigh, still loves him. "He decides to go back to his childhood and from there, create a world where everyone he cares about, most importantly Kayleigh, is happy."
Once back in his childhood body, Evan must come face to face with the demons of his past. "We're dealing with some pretty dark deeds - some of the horrible things that human beings do to one another," comments co-writer/director Eric Bress. Co-writer/director J. Mackye Gruber feels that the story plugs in to a universal desire among human beings. "Everybody, whether they admit it or not, has a day in their life that they would love to live over," says Gruber. "This movie poses some interesting questions about the effects of our actions ' in both the past and the present."
Each time Evan goes into the past, he comes back to some drastic changes in the present. "At the beginning of the film, Evan thinks that he's going crazy," says Kutcher. "He's not crazy, but the anticipation is pushing him in that direction. Evan is constantly waking up and wondering 'where the hell am I and who are these people''"
Similarly, each time Evan goes into the past, the difference in Kayleigh's life is wildly divergent, transforming her from a waitress to a sorority girl to a drug addict. Despite these changes, Amy Smart worked to keep the through-line of Kayleigh true to the character. "This is a dream role," says Smart. "I play a character at four different stages, but all within the context of the same girl."
While the mutual but unspoken love between Evan and Kayleigh continues throughout each incarnation, Kutcher points out the two actors kept it balanced on a fine line. "The consistent thread through all of the alternate realities is our undying love for each other," the actor comments. "In fact, the first thing that triggers Evan to go back and try to change things is that he finds out Kayleigh still cares for him. But in some scenes we despise each other. We think that one has left the other for dead and doesn't care ' and yet we both care. It's a bizarre mix of not wanting to show the person that you've been hurt or that you still love her, no matter what happens."
Though Kutcher has previously been known mostly as a comic actor, he relished the opportunity to take on more serious material. "I've always been interested in playing real people and doing dramatic roles. I just haven't had the opportunity until now," he comments. To prepare for his role, Kutcher studied psychology, particularly cases of people with disassociation disorder, which causes them to black out traumatic memories. "I was interested in trying to learn what causes people to go into these remissive states where they try to hide their feelings in order to avoid having to confront them, which is similar to what Evan does," says the actor.
Co-star Amy Smart feels the cast has been on a "great journey, because we're constantly on this roller coaster ride of different emotions and different places, trying to keep up with the intertwining of past and present. We're working off each other and really trusting each other to go to whatever extreme levels we want to and feeling open about it."
Rounding out Evan's childhood circle are Lenny (Elden Henson) and Kayleigh's brother, Tommy (William Lee Scott). "Lenny is Evan's best friend," describes Henson. "He's the guy who was pushed around and bullied all his life and takes a crazy journey through various mental illnesses."
Henson shot all of his scenes in reverse order and had to lose 20 lbs. to play Lenny as he appears at the end of the film. "I spent three and a half hours a day working out at the gym and eating like a rabbit," says Henson. He then had three weeks to gain those 20 lbs. back. "That was a pleasure ' lots of chocolate chip pancakes, donuts and beer," Henson chuckles. "Maybe not the healthiest diet, but the results will look really cool."
Tommy, conversely, takes out his rage over his troubled home life on Lenny and Evan. "We live pretty traumatized lives," notes William Lee Scott. "And then I play the adult version of the traumatized child and all the different versions as we all experience the "Butterfly Effect' of Evan's journeys."
"The Butterfly Effect," explains Amy Smart, is "the theory that when a butterfly flaps its wings, say, in New York, it's eventually felt in Japan as a hurricane. In the film, this theory is demonstrated by how Evan goes back into his past and changes something small, but it affects everything in the present moment. Each time he goes back, he's changing a little more of this troubled childhood that he grew up in, often for the better, but just as often for the worse."
Co-writers/directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber were constantly attuned to the performance of each actor as he or she played the same character at different stages. "It's been a lot more challenging than I think any of us could have anticipated," says producer Chris Bender. "We have twelve actors playing four roles in three different time periods." "The odds were against us, but somehow the casting gods were smiling on us," comments J. Mackye Gruber. "All of the actors are so talented."
Rounding out the cast are Melora Walters as Evan's mother, Andrea Treborn, and Eric Stoltz as Mr. Miller, Kayleigh's abusive father. "In casting Mr. Miller, we wanted the 'guy next door,'" says Eric Bress. Stoltz, a veteran actor of such films as The Rules of Attraction, Pulp Fiction and Mask, was drawn not only to the multi-layered script, but the passion of Bress and Gruber to tell this story. "I love working with people who are passionate and possessed ' who really care," he comments. "That's what these guys are. They also have a wonderfully economic way of dividing and conquering, but handling all the problems that flare up. It's unusual but it's fun."
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Amy Smart stars as Kayleigh in The Butterfly Effect.