The Holes Story
August 5, 2003By TODD COLEMAN
Hollywood Reporter
When director Andrew Davis called children's author Louis Sachar at his Texas home four years ago, Sachar's wife gave the usual polite brushoff. Plenty of alleged Hollywood producers had expressed interest in Sachar's 18th book, "Holes," which soon would sell more than a million copies and win a Newbery Medal, a National Book Award and the inaugural Readers' Choice Award for Teen Books.
But this time, Sachar recognized the name. A cinematographer-turned-director, Davis was known not for quirky kids' movies but for gritty action pictures such as 2002's "Collateral Damage" and 1992's "Under Siege," as well as one of Sachar's favorite films, 1993's "The Fugitive."
"I wanted someone who would approach the story with toughness, not treat it as a children's story," says the Austin-based author, whose popularity among preteens owes largely to his lack of condescension to younger audiences and a generous dose of earthy humor.
Like "Fugitive," "Holes" centers on a man accused unjustly—in this case, a teenager sent to a camp for delinquent boys and forced to dig a 5- by 5-foot hole each day to "build his character," unaware that he actually is helping the warden search for buried treasure.
Davis proved the perfect choice for the independently financed picture. Released by Buena Vista in April, "Holes" grossed an impressive $16.3 million during its opening weekend; to date, the critically hailed film has amassed more than $65 million domestically—not bad for a movie produced for well under $30 million and with a cast of unknown young actors.
Of course, as is typical with feature projects, "Holes" did not come together overnight. Davis and his Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Chicago Pacific Entertainment spent most of 1999 negotiating book rights and searching for a company to pay for those rights and for script development, as well as a writer skilled enough to adapt the book for the big screen.
It turns out that Sachar was the right man for the job. After meeting with the author, Davis asked him to write the first draft, thus protecting the tone and content of the book while guaranteeing that Sachar's well-known name (brand) would appear in the credits.
During that time, the director sent the book to former studio boss Mike Medavoy at Phoenix Pictures, for whom Davis had directed two features at Orion. Medavoy and Phoenix partner Arnold Messer immediately agreed to cover development costs despite the book's unorthodox structure, which interweaves story lines that span the Wild West, present-day Texas and 18th century Latvia.
"A good story with good characters will eventually get made," says Medavoy, whose career as an agent, studio head and producer includes some of the most important films of the past three decades—and 330 movies in all. "Good scripts are tough to find; our strategy is always to get a good script first."
During the next 18 months, Chicago Pacific producers Lowell Blank and Teresa Tucker-Davies (who brought the book to Davis) worked with Davis, Medavoy and Phoenix Pictures executive Anne Rodman to develop screenplay drafts with Sachar. But even with a good script, an A-class director and a best-selling book, Phoenix was unable to find a company willing to finance the film.
"We went to the usual suspects, and everybody passed," says Blank, then also president of Chicago Pacific. "A complex story with multiple narratives and time periods is scary stuff to a studio—but we had to be loyal to the book."
Buena Vista Motion Picture Group president Nina Jacobson expressed interest in distribution rights, Blank says, but she did not want to finance the picture 100%.
Meanwhile, former Miramax executive and Dimension president Cary Granat was facing his own uphill battle: He and education entrepreneur Micheal Flaherty had spent a year seeking financing for an ambitious new mini-studio, Walden Media, with a mandate to produce high-quality film, television and live-theater projects with a strong emphasis on education, targeting 7- to 15-year-olds and their parents. Investors generally greeted the Walden concept with skepticism, but Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz embraced the vision and bankrolled the company in spring 2001.
The fledgling enterprise swung into action quickly, and Walden executives met with—of all people—teachers and educators to find fiction and nonfiction properties to develop. They learned that "Holes," which boasts a strong pro-literacy theme, was the fastest-growing and most popular book among both educators and tweens—so Walden tracked the rights to Davis and company.
A mere three months after Walden's official debut, the company announced that it would fully finance and co-produce Phoenix Pictures' "Holes," with Davis directing—even without a distribution deal in place. "We were confident of finding a distributor later," Walden chief operating officer John Logigian says.
The deal took six months to finalize, with Phoenix recouping its development costs and receiving an A-level producing fee.
Three years into the project (and with Davis busy filming "Damage"), Chicago Pacific's producers worked with Walden production executive Alex Schwartz and Phoenix senior vp production Lou Phillips to begin casting, location scouting, budgeting and scheduling.
But the big question was where to shoot the film. Australia, Canada and Mexico were scouted and budgeted, but the cost of moving and housing the largely teenage cast and their families was deemed excessive for the $28.5 million budget the companies had hammered out. After much deliberation, the producers decided that various California locations not only were convenient and cost-effective but also ideal for the story, much of which is set on a dry lake bed. (The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sealed the deal because then, no one wanted to travel.)
Excited to have a deep-pocketed new player in town (Walden), CAA and the William Morris Agency—among others—played an active role in casting "Holes." Jon Voight, who previously had worked with Medavoy, was the first star to sign on, followed in early 2002 by Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Arquette and Tim Blake Nelson.
"The kids inspired the adults, and the adults inspired the kids," says Davis, citing the ensemble teen cast that includes Shia LaBeouf (the Disney Channel's "Even Stevens") and Khleo Thomas. "The whole production was blessed with a sense of doing something special because of the material."
The 52-day shoot took place from April-June 2002 and included four weeks of 110-degree heat, fierce winds and dust-devil tornadoes on the Cuddeback Dry Lake west of Death Valley. A preproduction boot camp helped prepare the teen actors for digging holes in the extreme heat, and postproduction CGI increased the number of desert holes exponentially. Agents from the federal Bureau of Land Management watched over the proceedings, their salaries later reimbursed to the production under the California Film Commission's California First program (a $30,000 savings).
Through partner Summit Entertainment, Walden Media began preselling foreign territories (including South Korea and Benelux) to offset its risk. But when Walt Disney Studios—led by Jacobson and chairman Dick Cook—reviewed the dailies, they inked a distribution deal for all remaining worldwide rights, with a minimum guarantee that covered half of Walden's costs. (Later last year, the studio extended the Walden relationship with a two-year, nonexclusive overall North American film distribution deal.)
To help ensure a strong opening weekend for "Holes," Davis and Sachar embarked on a nationwide promotional tour, screening the film for 20,000 teachers in 65 cities. Walden also created educational materials involving the book and movie, including the Web site www.holes.com, whose domain name had to be acquired from a Canadian pornographer.
The film also received a lot of mileage from its soundtrack, which has sold more than 100,000 copies and continues to move to the tune of about 10,000 units a week. "It's definitely the little soundtrack that could," says Walden vp motion picture music Lindsay Fellows, who notes that some of the artists—including Moby, Shaggy and the Eels—were not intuitive choices for a young demographic.
The lead song, "Dig It," was a collaborative effort from the film's producers, music supervisor Karyn Rachtman and music producers including Doug E. Fresh, who teamed to write the music. Blending rap with an authentic roots groove, the song is performed by the teen cast, who penned their own lyrics. Blank and Tucker-Davies fought hard to keep the "Dig It" session (recorded midproduction) in the budget, and the gamble paid off: The song became the most-requested song on Radio Disney, and its video has received extensive airplay on the Disney Channel.
Meanwhile, Sachar, whose book sales skyrocketed thanks to the film, has entered the rare pantheon of authors who actually are pleased with a movie version of their book.
