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 Godsend Production NotesWhen a miracle becomes a nightmare, evil is born.
“We’ve already lost everything.”
Paul and Jessie Duncan (Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) have lost their beloved eight year-old son Adam (Cameron Bright) in a tragic accident. As they are arranging for his burial, Dr. Richard Wells, (Robert De Niro) approaches with the incredible offer to clone Adam, essentially bringing back their boy and reuniting their broken family.
Despite the many legal, ethical and moral issues raised by the offer, the grieving couple, after much soul searching, accept Wells’ proposal, placing them in a sort of Faustian pact with the doctor. But to the Duncans, the secrecy Wells demands is insignificant compared to the hope that their son will again have the chance to grow up.
The couple moves to the small town of Riverton, home of Wells’ impressive Godsend Fertility Clinic, where the stem cells carrying Adam’s DNA are implanted in Jessie’s womb and where Adam will be born and raised – for the second time.
Adam’s new life follows a comfortable and, to Paul and Jessie, predictable pattern, until he reaches his eighth birthday – and virtually begins living on borrowed time.
The parents have placed their complete trust in Dr. Wells, but now questions are raised and they start to wonder: just how far did he really go? Did he settle for simply playing God? Once they unravel the horrific truth, Paul and Jessie Duncan will have to come to terms with what they have done, and what has been done to their family.
Genesis
While certain elements of Godsend feel as though they’ve been ripped from recent headlines, the genesis of the project was more intimate, emanating from screenwriter Mark Bomback’s personal experience. “I first came up with the idea about the time my wife was pregnant with our son,” he says, “And I was struck by how much technology is involved today in fertility. We needed a little bit of help — not as much as some others do — and we were amazed by how far science has come in the past 20 years.”
Bomback himself comes from a family of doctors. His father is a pediatrician who, as an undergraduate, conducted some research in genetics. One of his brothers is a doctor and another is in medical school. The concept of cell research and cloning was not foreign to him. Says Bomback, “This whole topic has really exploded in the past few years. There is exponentially more research material that’s become available since I first started the script. Over the past few years major studies and articles about cloning and stem cell research have been appearing with increasing regularity.”
At this time, Godsend is speculative about the use of science to clone a human being, but the science itself is grounded in fact. Dolly the sheep, widely acknowledged to be the world’s first cloned mammal is the theoretical template for Godsend’s Adam. Dr. Ian Wimott, the Scottish research scientist who created Dolly, proposed that his process was a feasible way in which any mammal could be cloned. Director Nick Hamm saw that the characters, their fears, and in turn, their terrifying experience, not the issue of cloning technology was at the heart of the movie. “We don’t treat cloning in a pseudo-scientific way, or supply the film with a futuristic setting which is un-relatable to most people. We set it here and now, right into people’s lives. The point is, if you have the ability to do this, what would you do?”
The dark side of that question gives rise to the issues that haunt Godsend: Ethics, morality, and legality are all taken into consideration by the emotionally devastated Duncans as they frantically debate Dr. Wells’ proposition. Producer Michael Paseornek adds the frightening question: “When you get into cloning human beings, what do you do with the ones that don’t work out?”
This question, and the myriad questions like it that have been precipitated by the rapid advances of science in the last few years and, specifically, sparked by the recent national debate over stem cell research, have created a change in the way our society and our government has come to deal with issues of bio-ethics.
Indeed, in August 2001, President Bush created the President’s Council on Bio-ethics, chaired by Dr. Leon Kass. But as Dr. Kass pointed out in his opening remarks to the Council in January 2002, the events of September 11th created “a palpable increase in America’s moral seriousness” and changed the way people thought about issues of life and death.
In his remarks, Dr. Kass continued, “A fresh breeze of sensible moral judgment…has enabled us to see evil for what it is, and…it has been a long time since the climate and mood of the country was this hospitable for serious moral reflection.” Kass goes on to say that “In the case of terrorism…it is easy to identify evil…but in the realm of bio-ethics, the evils we face, if indeed they are evils, are intertwined with the goods we so keenly seek: cures for disease, relief of suffering, preservation of life. Distinguishing good and bad thus intermixed is often extremely difficult.”
It is precisely this difficulty distinguishing good from evil, and right from wrong, that confront the Duncan family in Godsend. Given only 72 hours in the midst of unspeakable grief to decide whether or not to clone their son, the Duncans can’t contemplate all the serpentine ramifications of their actions. They can’t possibly foresee the dangers and the damages their decision will cause. Most powerfully, they can never get past the notion that they are, essentially, saving their son.
A perverse case of fact eclipsing fiction occurred while Godsend was filming in November and December of 2002. News stories broke out – first about an Italian doctor who alleged he was about to clone a human being. This was followed almost immediately by the outrageous announcements of multiple baby cloning's by the bizarre Raelian cult. The media seized on the sensation and lurid headlines about human cloning screamed from the covers of daily papers while television reports, eccentric news conferences and much speculation became a staple of nightly newscasts and magazine shows. Against the backdrop of this media circus, Godsend continued filming.
Casting Godsend
With the screenplay built around four extremely well crafted characters, Godsend afforded Hamm the opportunity to cast the movie from the top of the talent pool.
Oscar® nominee Greg Kinnear was drawn to the very human story within the structure of a thriller, and to the subject matter itself. “Of course it’s the script,” he says of his initial interest in this role. “A very interesting element of the screenplay is that it feels like an adult drama that starts to get more and more frightening – it really sneaks up on you subtly but very powerfully. It is also a very contemporary topic. As far-fetched as it sounds, the technology of cloning is very plausible. Mark Bomback has taken the scary and harrowing premise of the moral ideology of the issue – just how far the science should be allowed to go -- and captured it in an elegant and human story.”
“Greg is just one of the most intelligent and thoughtful actors I’ve ever worked with,” says Nick Hamm. “He is a joy to work with, he is precise, he understands, he has absolute focus, and brings with him a real analyses of the material.”
In Godsend, Kinnear portrays Paul Duncan, a high-school biology teacher who first must make the decision to illicitly clone his dead son and then search out the truth behind this decision. “Greg has the wonderful ability to make himself available to the audience,” explains Hamm. “It takes great skill to convincingly portray an ‘everyman’ character, letting the audience feel they could be in your shoes. It’s very hard for an actor to really hold the middle ground without ever going too soft or too hard.”
While his character may be described as an ‘everyman’, the emotional arc of the character is extraordinary. “I pretty much had to go to the most horrible place in my own humanity scale to imagine what this couple had gone through and how they’ve suffered,” explains Kinnear. “I had to do that to try to understand what inspired them to accept Wells’ offer and to cross that moral and ethical boundary.” Preparing for the role, Kinnear happily immersed himself in scientific material. “Science interests me,” says Kinnear. “I’m intrigued by the technologies of cloning and what those technologies can do. The huge evolutionary curve that has taken place in the last twenty years is absolutely astounding. Just as we’re shooting this movie we’re getting a barrage of reports of human clones. Nobody knows (at this point), if they are true or not. But, in the not-too-distant future it likely will be true and that’s a remarkable thing to consider. To find a way to touch on that while telling a very human story is an exceptionally compelling notion.”
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos caught the eye of Marc Butan with her evocative work in Brian De Palma’s film noire, Femme Fatale. “I saw an early screening around Cannes, and Rebecca just stuck in my head,” recalls Butan. “That performance showed me that she really had acting chops. There’s also accessibility to her. I thought she’d be an exciting and interesting choice for Jessie.”
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Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Greg Kinnear and Cameron Bright in Godsend.