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"While You Were Sleeping" Production Notes

There's something missing from Lucy's (SANDRA BULLOCK) life. Although she has an apartment, a cat, and a few friends from her job at the Chicago Transit Authority token booth, she doesn't have a family of her own and always spends holidays working. The good news is Lucy has fallen in love with the drop dead gorgeous man she sees every day at work. The bad news is, they've never met. That is, until he's mugged and falls into the path of an oncoming train and she saves his life. But when she goes to see him at the hospital, Lucy is mistaken as his fiance', and with the dream man in a coma, who's going to deny it? 

When the mystery man's family appears and identifies him as Peter Callaghan (PETER GALLAGHER), the close-knit Callaghans, including father Ox (PETER BOYLE), mother-in-law Elsie (GLYNIS JOHNS) and mother Midge (MICOLE MERCURIO), welcome the opportunity to once again become a part of their estranged lawyer-son's life. They instantly include Lucy in their Christmas celebration and she brings new life to their household. Despite Lucy's misgivings about taking advantage of the misunderstanding, she so much enjoys the warmth of the family she never had, there is no turning back.   But, Peter's brother, Jack (BILL PULLMAN) is suspicious. And as Lucy learns more about her seemingly perfect alleged bridegroom-to-be, she starts to wonder if her Mr. Perfect really is Mr. Right. As she attempts to stay one step ahead of Jack's probing questions, Lucy is surprised by her attraction to him. And if it all seemed complicated to her when Peter was sleeping ... what will happen when he wakes up?

In Hollywood Pictures' and Caravan Pictures' romantic comedy "While You Were Sleeping," Sandra Bullock stars as Lucy, the lonely transit worker who is welcomed into the grateful family of her comatose Dream Man when she is mistaken for his fiance'. Hollywood Pictures presents, in association with Caravan Pictures, "While You Were Sleeping." Directed by Jon Turteltaub, from a screenplay written by Daniel G. Sullivan ; Fredric Lebow, the producers are Joe Roth and Roger Birnbaum. Co-producers are Charles J.D. Schlissel and Susan Stremple. Executive producers are Arthur Sarkissian and Steve Barron. Buena Vista Pictures distributes.

"The story is about making yourself whole, and one of the things that makes us whole is family," says director Jon Turteltaub, who has also directed Walt Disney Pictures' "Cool Runnings," the comedy which became The Walt Disney Studio's top-grossing live-action film of 1993. "Lucy has no parents, no siblings, no support group to keep her buoyed in life," continues Turteltaub. "She has wit and charm and intelligence, but she has a sense that something is missing. She sets out on this journey to figure out what it is that will make her whole." Producer Roger Birnbaum, the head of Caravan Pictures, says of his attraction to the project, "The script really succeeded for me because I found it had a unique premise that was funny as well as emotional. You have the notion of a girl who falls in love with a stranger and then, by mistake, is taken as his fiance' ... So, she is engaged to a guy in a coma whom she's never met. With a romantic comedy, you want to laugh and be moved by the romance and you want to feel uplifted. This script really succeeded for me in those ways."

The original screenplay for "While You Were Sleeping" was written by the screenwriting team of Daniel G. Sullivan, Fredric Lebow, and is their first produced script. They met and became friends during a writing class at NYU. After graduation Lebow moved to Los Angeles and although they pitched some concepts together, they still wrote separately. When Sullivan moved to Los Angeles as well, they decided to collaborate. Lebow introduced Sullivan to executive producer Arthur Sarkissian who took an active and encouraging role in their careers. "Both Fred and Dan are very good souls," says Sarkissian, "They're very straight forward and very family oriented. They write from the heart and I think that the purity of the characters, that unpretentious quality, comes through in their writing." While Sarkissian was working on the development of their first script, "Snowflakes," the duo approached him with the idea for another story which would eventually become "While You Were Sleeping." The original premise for their first draft came to them while they were joking around about the tribulations of dating. "We started out with the main character, a fish salesman in New York City, who sees a gorgeous Scandinavian woman passing by," relates Lebow. "He thinks he's in love and starts following her through the streets. But before he gets up his nerve to speak to her, she is hit by a newspaper truck and falls into a coma." "While we were pitching the idea," continues Dan Sullivan, "we were told that the opening seemed too predatory, having a man stalk a woman. We flipped the sexes, making our main character a woman, but we kept the same basic question, exploring how we might fall in love on sight, and how we can project qualities onto another person just because we desperately want to be in love with them." Comments producer Birnbaum about the making of the film, "Ask any of the stars about the filming of `While You Were Sleeping' and they unanimously will tell you three things: they loved working with Sandra Bullock, they loved working with Jon Turteltaub, and they had a lot of fun making the film. They laughed. They laughed a lot."

Speaking about Jon Turteltaub as his choice for director, Birnbaum says, "When I first met with him, he reminded me of the young Rob Reiner, whom I had worked with on 'The Sure Thing,' the first movie that I produced. I found Jon to be a very intelligent, very funny and very sensitive guy. It might not look like an obvious step to go from 'Cool Runnings' to this project, but the movie business is all about finding talented people and exploring their depth and understanding the range of their ability." "Jon Turteltaub has a lot of clown in him, in the best spirit of the word," says Sandra Bullock. "He managed to pull together a group of people who are funny and he is so funny himself, that if he gives you a direction of how to make something funnier, even if you're convinced that your way is best, he's probably right." "What I liked most about this script was the people that populate the story," comments Turteltaub. "Every character is interesting and fun, and real. And in front of it all there is the character of Lucy. She's a very beautiful, hilarious, sweet girl who is single, can't find a man and works in the subway, which is not a very typical urban profile. "The role of Lucy is a tough part to play," continues Turteltaub. "In essence, the character of Lucy is the typical male romantic comedy role. She's the funny one who finds a good looking guy. What I had to do a lot in thinking of the structure and the characters was to transpose the situation ... flip it and ask, `To what lengths would I go for the perfect girl?'" Turteltaub remembers, "While we were making 'Cool Runnings' together, Dawn Steel said to me that one of the things she loves to see in films is ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I really connected with that idea as well. In this story, you have Lucy who is theoretically an ordinary person going through an extraordinary time, pushing herself to new limits and becoming overwhelmed. Instead of doing it just for the sake of falling in love with a man, she does it for the sake of finding out what is missing in that empty spot. And she finds that what makes her whole is not necessarily just a guy, but in connecting with her need to be a part of a family."

"We needed to cast the role of Lucy first," says Roger Birnbaum, "Sandra Bullock was a really obvious choice. When I was President of Fox, she did a small film for us called `Love Potion #9,' and now, of course, she has blossomed. We knew that she was ready for a lead role in a romantic comedy." "Sandra is phenomenal," adds Turteltaub. "Aside from being a lot of fun and sharp and witty as a person, as an actress she hits every beat. She's always trying new stuff and she gives a hundred percent every time. She is sexy, smart, independent, beautiful and tough, and she doesn't take herself too seriously, which I think describes both Sandra and Lucy." "The story is told through Lucy's perspective but I still see it as more of an ensemble piece," says Sandra Bullock. "All of the cast are so funny and so much fun, and so incredibly talented. I never had to worry about whether the joke was going to be set up right. Many of the scenes I played by myself or with one other person, but when I got with the family it became so hysterical. It was a continual struggle to keep a straight face during off-camera lines." Sandra gives a lot of reflection to the character she plays: "At the beginning of the story Lucy is alone, but she isn't feeling sorry for herself. Her family is deceased and she doesn't go out much because she is working. But she doesn't realize how alone she is until she gets caught up in this situation and finds not only this beautiful family but also these two brothers."

"Jack Callaghan is a working class guy," says Jon Turteltaub. "He's got a great sense of humor and, like Lucy, he also doesn't take himself that seriously. He has dreams like Lucy has dreams, but he has a strong grounding in his family. We were confident that Bill Pullman was the perfect choice for the role." "When Jack enters the scene, he's kind of suspicious about what's going on with Lucy," begins Bill Pullman, describing his character and his attraction to the role. "That approach allowed me initially to keep a distance, to be quizzical and ironical about what Lucy's all about, and that's a comfortable mode for me to start from." "I think Jack is a little bit out of time," says Pullman. "He has a different sensibility, and different interests than someone from a more purely pop-culture upbringing. Jack's nature has also put him in the role as parent to the adults in the family. He has developed an ironic sense of humor to help him navigate the kind of lunacy around him, but it has kept him at a distance from life ... from 'Gettin' off the porch and gettin' out into the street.'"

Bill Pullman and Peter Gallagher have starred together previously in "Malice" and both agree that their past experience helped them to more quickly develop their connection as brothers in "While You Were Sleeping." "Peter Callaghan comes from a working class Irish family," says Peter Gallagher. "He's broken away from the family and become a really successful businessman who enjoys being a bachelor. When he has a near-death experience on the tracks, he realizes that maybe he hasn't been looking at life in the richest way, and I think he also realizes just how much he has distanced himself from his family." Peter Gallagher explains, "When Lucy admires Peter on the train platform, she's falling in love with an image from afar. It's like star worship. The star looks great, and then you get to know that person and you realize that there are certain human dimensions that don't conform to the fantasy that you had created." "Peter Gallagher as Peter Callaghan was actually one of the first actors we thought of in the casting process," Roger Birnbaum says. "He's a great actor with a wonderful sense of humor and there is a delicate balance to be struck within the role he portrays. On the one hand you could say that this is a movie about a man in a coma and that sounds very serious. But obviously, we're making a comedy. So when he comes out of the coma, Peter has to be real but funny. He is also a very handsome guy, and Peter Callaghan needed to be a handsome guy so that Lucy could look at him and fall in love at first sight. "I thought the script was charming," says Gallagher, speaking about his attraction to the project. "I was drawn to the story and also to working with Jon Turteltaub as a director. And I thought I'd be able to lie down for most of it," he adds jokingly.

Veteran stage and screen actors Peter Boyle, Glynis Johns and Jack Warden were cast in the roles of Ox Callaghan, mother-in-law Elsie and family friend Saul Tuttle, respectively. Commenting on the choices, Roger Birnbaum states, "Ox Callaghan needed to be a very strong patriarch who had a fire in his belly. Peter Boyle was a really good idea for the role. The character of the mother-in-law Elsie is a really quirky gal. When our casting directors Amanda Mackey and Cathy Sandrich suggested Glynis, we thought it was a delightful idea because we knew she would be perfect. And who wouldn't want to make a film with Jack Warden?" adds Birnbaum. Peter Boyle, who stars as Ox Callaghan says, "Ox has this big sprawling family that he loves very much, even though he doesn't always understand them. He's kind of a befuddled patriarch, and a Jack of all trades, master of none in his business. He's got more heart than head, but it's a good heart and it's what gets him through." "Ox is a very human character, very warm," Boyle continues. "I like playing the father role, with warm family relationships, it's very appealing. And such a great script about people falling in love. It explores the differences between idealized fantasies of the perfect mate and realities of the heart." Glynis Johns, who portrays Elsie, was similarly drawn to the project because of the script. "I felt that the script had the right combination of comedy and romance," says Johns. "Elsie is really the opposite of my character in 'The Ref,' whom I had chosen to play because she had absolutely no redeeming quality whatsoever. She was very unpleasant. But in this film, Elsie is very lovable, and she is a funny and warm person, as indeed are the rest of the family." "I liked the script and what it conveyed," says Jack Warden. "It's about family. And I identified with the part." Discussing his character, Warden says, "I think Saul was very devoted to his wife. When she died, he became lost. I believe Ox realized what was happening to Saul, that he was going down and was very lonesome, and so he made Saul a part of the family. They always included him, which was very sensitive on their part, and consequently he became very devoted to them. I've known a lot of people like that," continues Warden. "I grew up during The Depression and it was a necessity in those days."

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION:  Once casting was complete, the filmmakers chose Chicago as their shooting location. "Chicago was just right for the setting of the story, and it's certainly not a city that's a stranger to me," remarks Roger Birnbaum, who, during his career either as a producer or as an executive, has made many movies there. "Chicago is a city that is friendly to filmmakers, a great urban city, very visually alive and diverse. And it has an exterior, elevated subway system, which is an integral element in the story."

Principal photography of "While You Were Sleeping" began on Saturday, October 8 on location in Chicago's downtown core. The first scene was shot along the banks of the Chicago River near Michigan Avenue at a hot dog vendor's stand where Lucy's boss, Jerry (Jason Bernard), asks her to work the fateful Christmas Day shift during which she will rescue her dream man from the oncoming train. Unprecedented access was permitted to the production by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) who, for the first time, shut down service at one of their stations during daylight hours for filming.

Shooting at the Randolph and Wabash station took four weekend dates. The dangerous high-voltage rail running along the tracks made it impossible for the crew to step off of the platform, and so a fifth day of filming was accomplished farther north at the Sedgewick station. That station has one section of rail where there is no live current, allowing the production safe maneuvering space to film Lucy's dramatic rescue of Peter Callaghan. The challenge for production was then to get the subway train up to speed as it approached the station so that it would continue to roll over the section of tracks without current, while getting the actors safely off the track in time. Preparing the visual aspects of the production, including the cinematography, the production design and the costume design, are integral to creating and enhancing the setting and tone for the actors' performances.

The scenes in the Callaghans' house were shot in a turn-of-the-century house on-location in the Chicago suburb of La Grange. Additional locations included Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church where the mass and wedding scenes were shot, and the Cook County Forest Preserve where some of the flashbacks of little Lucy with her father were shot. Apart from the one day of exterior shooting accomplished at The Northwestern Memorial Hospital and one interior day at Sheridan Hospital which doubled for the Blood Donor clinic, the filmmakers chose to build the entire hospital set in a studio. "Almost a third of the story takes place in the hospital," notes Stover. "It's very difficult to film in a real hospital for three solid weeks, because you might be disturbing real patients, and you don't have the freedom to remove walls or ceiling panels for varying camera angles." It is ironic that Stover, who had studied biochemistry and was planning to be a doctor before changing career paths, would end up designing the set for a hospital. "I knew from research and from working as a paramedic that there were certain elements of the ICU ward's design that must be correct and reality-based. For example, the nurse's desk has to be situated in such a way that the nurses can see all of the patients."

"Costume design for this film is not as it would be for a period piece, where you would design and manufacture every piece," explains costume designer Betsy Cox. "Here the design is more involved in bringing the characters to life in clothes that would be realistic for each of them. You have to do a kind of psychological evaluation of the character and then design their wardrobe so that each piece by itself and collectively helps to exemplify that individual's characteristics." "We began from the script with Lucy, who is described as having very little money and a bare minimum of things," says Cox. "She remembers walking with Daddy through the railway yards, through fields of leaves. And when we first see her in the flashbacks, she is 6 or 7 and her father is wearing a coat, the same one that she has and wears years later. After her father dies, that coat is an emotional link with him. Her other clothes are modern but not expensive. The colors for her are all earth tones, grays, browns, rusts and greens." Creating a look that reflects the character can be done with subtle touches. Explains Cox, "The overcoat that Peter Callaghan wears on his way to work was a very important part of the wardrobe for the successful young businessman who Lucy sees and admires in the beginning of the story. "We were shooting in winter time, in an El Train station which is usually dark gray and brown," says Betsy Cox. "I needed the color of his coat to be light enough that the camera could zero in on him immediately, enabling him to stand out in the crowd on the platform. The dark butterscotch color we chose was different enough to be seen, yet still had the elegance needed for his character."

Principal photography was completed during a night shoot on December 14 with a scene in which Lucy and Jack discuss their own hopes and dreams. Speaking about the dynamics of the story, Jon Turteltaub concludes, "One of the frustrating things in life is that even though you're a good person, sometimes things don't necessarily work out that well for you. And what is nice about this movie, is that it's populated with good people who get good stuff."

ABOUT THE CAST:

SANDRA BULLOCK (Lucy Moderatz) recently starred in the smash-hit action-thriller "Speed" with Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper. She also starred with Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes in "Demolition Man" and with Robert Duvall and Richard Harris in "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway." She starred in "Love Potion #9" as Lenina Huxley, the lonely scientist who finds a magic elixir that makes her irresistible, in "The Vanishing" as Keifer Sutherland's lost lover, and in "When the Party's Over." In Peter Bogdanovich's "The Thing Called Love," Bullock not only portrayed an aspiring country singer, but also wrote and performed her own song "Heaven Knocked On My Door." Born in Virginia to a German opera singer and an operatic vocal coach, Bullock spent much of her youth in Germany and on the road, developing a deep appreciation for the arts. While her mother sang in productions across Europe, Sandra and her sister would often sing in the children's chorus. The family moved to Washington, D.C. when Bullock was a teenager. She enrolled in East Carolina University in North Carolina and, in her sophomore year, switched into the drama program to study acting. When she moved to New York to pursue her professional career, Bullock was soon starring in such off-Broadway productions as "No Time Flat," directed by Peter Mahoney at the WPA Theatre. Her stage performances led to productions for television and quickly into feature films. Bullock most recently completed filming the upcoming feature "The Net," which she is following with the comedy "Two If By Sea" with Dennis Leary. She is also set to star in and co-produce the feature "Kate and Leopold."

BILL PULLMAN (Jack Callaghan) stars in the upcoming "Casper," the Steven Spielberg production, based on the Harvey Comics character Casper the Friendly Ghost, and co-starring Christina Ricci and Cathy Moriarty. Pullman most recently starred in four diverse dramas: the contemporary noir "The Last Seduction"; Lawrence Kasdan's sweeping Western "Wyatt Earp" (having previously teamed with the director as William Hurt's publisher in "The Accidental Tourist"); the suspense thriller "Malice"; and the romantic drama "Sommersby." Since making his feature film debut in the 1986 black comedy "Ruthless People," Pullman has appeared in many contrasting roles. He was the Winnebago spaceship captain in "Spaceballs," a Harvard anthropologist experimenting with voodoo in "The Serpent and the Rainbow," an unlucky vertical-blinds salesman in "Sibling Rivalry," a Montana rancher in "Cold Feet," a sympathetic reporter in "Newsies," Geena Davis' soldier husband in "A League of their Own," and Bridget Fonda's sensitive doctor in "Singles." Two recent performances in comedies were in "Sleepless in Seattle" and "The Favor." Born and raised in the town of Hornell in upstate New York, Pullman initially sought a career in building construction. While attending a New York technical school, he became interested in drama, switched colleges and graduated with a bachelor's degree in theater arts. He continued his theater education with an MFA in directing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Pullman then accepted a teaching post in theater at the University of Montana, and despite becoming head of the department at age 27, he left two years later to move to New York and begin his acting career. He spent four years in regional theater and on the New York stage, including Lincoln Center and also appeared at the Kennedy Center and the Folger Theater in Washington, D.C. Pullman won critical acclaim for his performance opposite Kathy Bates in the off-Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's "The Curse of the Starving Class" before moving to the West Coast in 1985 to star in "Nanawatai," the initial production at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. His focus on intense, physical dramas continued with L.A.T.C. productions of "Barabbas" and "All My Sons," but interestingly his film debut that followed was in the comedy "Ruthless People." His most recent television credits include the TNT romance "Crazy in Love," in which he starred with Holly Hunter, and in the Hallmark Hall of Fame drama, "Home Fires Burning." Pullman recently appeared on stage in Los Angeles co-starring with Hunter and Carol Kane in "Control Freaks," which was written and directed by Beth Henley. 

Bill Pullman puts a lot of stock in shoes. The right footwear can help him locate a character. He has some 30 pairs in his collection, from $9 plastic tap shoes to ancient suede cowboy boots.

To audition for his latest movie, the Disney romantic comedy "While You Were Sleeping", which opens on Friday, Mr. Pullman chose a pair of brown leather lace-ups that belonged to his father, a doctor who died two years ago.

"They had so much integrity," he explains. "I remember seeing those shoes on his feet when he would make the rounds of the hospital."

Until recently, the 41-year-old actor had found himself in the sort of nice-guy loser roles that most leading men turn down. In the 1992 movie "Singles", he played the nice plastic surgeon who talked the Bridget Fonda character our of getting breast implants. He got left behind by Geena Davis in "A League of Their Own" (1992), dumped by Jodie Foster in "Sommersby" (1993), abandoned at the altar by Meg Ryan in "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993), cuckolded by Alec Baldwin in "Malice" (1993), and gunned down in "Wyatt Earp" (1994). Not only that, but many people confuse him with another actor, Jeff Daniels.

"While You Were Sleeping" had the potential to be a watershed in his career because he would finally get to romance the girl, who would be played by Sandra Bullock, an actress who had just come off the surprise hit of last summer, "Speed". In the new film, Ms. Bullock plays Lucy, a Chicago el token taker who falls in love with a lawyer, Peter Callahan [sic] (played by Peter Gallagher), who passes her booth every day. She gets involved with Peter's family after he falls onto the tracks, she rescues him, and he is in a coma.

Mr. Pullman wanted to play the part of Jack, Peter's younger brother. (Since Peter is in a coma for much of the film, Jack is the bigger part.) The film is directed by Jon Turteltaub, who had made a hit of "Cool Runnings."

Ever since Mr. Pullman poked his head from under the covers wielding a Dustbuster as a sexual device as the blond extortionist in the 1986 comedy "Ruthless People", he had had the nagging feeling that he was somehow betraying himself. He envisioned himself in the bashful Jimmy Stewart hero mold but accepted the doofy Ralph Bellamy parts.

As fate would have it, Mr. Pullman found himself in the audition room with Ms. Bullock before he had time to slip his shoes on. "We had a lot of great actors audition," Ms. Bullock recalls. "As soon as he walked into the room, everyone felt the chemistry."

Mr. Pullman, who ended up using the shoes as a prop in the scene they improvised, adds: "I really am a believer in the right pair of shoes to get you oriented. Whether or not they're on your feet, it's still a good idea to bring them along."

Mr. Pullman wore a very different pair of shoes--tasseled slip-ons--in his mold-breaking role last year as the greedy, pharamceutical-grade-cocaine-pilfering medical student of John Dahl's noir thriller "The Last Seduction."

Mr. Dahl says: "I knew Bill could bring across an edginess, a grittiness, and be hilarious. I knew he had the ability to ooze smarminess and the audience would laugh with him."

Mr. Dahl's ability to see qualities in the actor that other directors have overlooked stems in part to when Mr. Dahl was a student of Mr. Pullman's at the University of Montana. "Because I know him, I've kept track of his career and have seen almost every film he's done," says Mr. Dahl.  "He can do anything."  The director was particularly interested in some of Mr. Pullman's lesser known movie roles: his part in "Malice," in which he evolved from an academic milquetoast to a murderous blackmailer, and his aggressive developer in Mike Figgis's sultry film "Liebestraum."

The sixth of seven children born to a doctor and a nurse, Mr. Pullman grew up on Main Street in Hornell, a hamlet in upstate New York near Corning that he says closely resembles the small town Linda Fiorentino retreats to in "The Last Seduction." While most of his siblings chose careers in medicine, Mr. Pullman was drawn to the stage. Educated at the State University of New York at Oneonta and armed with a master's degree in theater education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he accepted the $13,000-a-year Montana teaching job in 1979. "It seemed like a fortune," he says. "I'd been living on $4,000 as a graduate student."

Shortly before turning 30, he quit his post to pursue an acting career in New York and won acclaim starring with Kathy Bates in an Off Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's "Curse of the Starving Class." In 1985 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career.

Mr. Pullman initially auditioned for the part of a serial killer in the Zucker brothers comedy "Ruthless People" but was cast as the dimwitted lover of Danny DeVito's mistress, who was played by Anita Morris. "To my theater friends, I had gone really Hollywood," Mr. Pullman says. "I had sold old and was in a comedy. No matter how good it was, they couldn't see it as anything but a betrayal to who I was in Montana. I was always telling people to choose plays to replenish your soul, that it was all about finding a voice within. Then I show up in a movie with a Dustbuster."

Dustbusters notwithstanding, Mr. Dahl says Mr. Pullman is one of those rare actors who combines a knack for physical comedy with "a real intellectual interest in the craft of acting."

"I think that comes from having taught theater," the director says. "He's very modest and humble about what he does."

Arriving for breakfast at a West Hollywood restaurant in a Dodge pickup truck, Mr. Pullman was dressed in a black denim shirt (tail hanging out) and blue jeans. He announced that he would spend the afternoon at a park in Malibu with his wife, Tamara, an ex-dancer, and their three children, ages 2 through 7. The Pullmans often spend time between films at a working ranchette in Montana ("28 cows") that he owns with his brother, John.

Over the years, Mr. Pullman has developed a reputation as an uncomplaining journeyman whose enthusiasm and dedication are contagious. In "The Last Seduction," it was Mr. Pullman who came up with the idea of hopping across the room to nudge a wedding photo (of him and the wife who was trying to kill him) off the counter. "I said, 'Bill how are you going to do that? Your wrists and ankles are handcuffed?'" Mr. Dahl recalls. "We probably did it eight times. His wrists were practically bleeding."

A favorite of the director Lawrence Kasden, Mr. Pullman played William Hurt's publisher in "The Accidental Tourist" and the doomed Ed Masterson (another nice guy) in last year's "Wyatt Earp," a part Mr. Kasden wrote for him and then had to talk him into playing. "There's a real playfulness about him and an energetic embrace of the whole process," Mr. Kasden says. "Whether it's a 100-seat theater or a $40 million movie, it's the same thing with him."

His willingness to subvert his leading man instincts, however, took a psychic toll. At times, Mr. Pullman suffered nearly as much as his characters. During the filming of "Sommersby," in which he loses Jodie Foster to Richard Gere, he could barely sleep. "I wanted to be more of an emotional obstacle for her," he says. "How little attention they were paying to me was spilling over."

Mr. Pullman finally decided to stop being the sacrificial lamb after "Sleepless in Seattle." The actor had battled to make his hyper-allergic fiancé less of a wimp but ultimately gave in to his co-star Meg Ryan and the film's director, Nora Ephron. "I'm so objective. When it comes to a scene like being in bed with Meg Ryan, I can say,'OK, I'm going to do a funny thing with Kleenex. I'm a good soldier. I can take the bullet.'"

When he finally saw the movie, however, his "whole body went cold."

"Suddenly you're watching, and it's not what Jimmy Stewart would have done in 'Philadelphia Story', I felt like I had betrayed something."

The next time he was asked to take a fall, Mr. Pullman balked. The movie was called "Stranger Things" (it is now called "For Better or For Worse"). In an industry that sues for breach of contract faster than you can say "Boxing Helena," it is a testament to Mr. Pullman's niceness that he walked away from the project, not only with his integrity intact but with a deal to develop projects at the studio making the film, Castle Rock Entertainment.

"He's had a lot of thankless parts," Mr. Kasden says. "But he's graduating out of there. He's tall, good-looking. He is a leading man, and it's time he took those parts." (damn right.--ed.)

Mr. Pullman is slated to play another romantic lead opposite Ellen DeGeneres in the Disney comedy "Mr. Wrong," which should offer him a chance to spoof his earlier movie persona. And he recently completed Steven Spielberg's "Caspar" [sic], a comedy that opens Memorial Day weekend. Mr. Pullman says he plays "a New Age ghost therapist" and single father to Christina Ricci. Was it difficult finding the right shoes?

"The shoes were the least inspired," he says. "But they found a great sweater for me. A $300 cardigan from Barney's. It's kind of old fashioned, just the sort of thing Jimmy Stewart would have worn."

Bill Pullman is a Bit Uncomfortable in the Spotlight

New York Times News Service, Living Section, page 6C for 24 January 1996

by Cindy Perlman

On screen, he has played everything from Sandra Bullock's dream date in "While You Were Sleeping" to Ellen DeGeneres' date from hell in the forthcoming "Mr. Wrong."

He can't quite decide if he wants to be a big star or just another face in the Hollywood crowd.  Female filmgoers seem to be split on his fate.  Some adore him; others don't like his act at all.

And then there's 7-year-old Maesa Pullman, a self-proclaimed fan-for-life who is giving him the thumb's down at the moment.

It seems that Maesa, Pullman's daughter, was initially not allowed to see her dad's $70 million breakthrough hit "While You Were Sleeping."

"It's a love story.  It didn't seem like the stuff a kid would like," Pullman explains during an interview in his Los Angeles hotel suite.  "But then the kids in her first grade class were saying, 'I loved your father and that Sandra Bullock girl.'"

The kid was curious.  So Pullman relented and let Maesa see the film.

Her reaction?  She told her dad that she had some "problems" with the movie.  Specifically: Why was her dad smooching with this Sandra woman?

That put Pullman in a touchy situation.  How could he explain to his daughter how important this role was--love scenes and all?   After all, it jump-started his career and got many people to see him as a movie hunk.

Pullman went for the simple approach.   "Daddy only like kissing Mommy," he told his daughter.  "That was movie kissing."

(The rest of this article will appear on the "Mr. Wrong" film page.--ed.)

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