Dream works

The making of Code of Ethics

by Bill Rodriguez

Listen to the makers of Code of Ethics and you could come to opposite conclusions about producing an independent film on the cheap. If you pay more attention to their list of unending obstacles and crises, you'd be crazy to get into such a grab-bag of problems. But hear how the problems got solved as fast as they came along, described by voices giddy with relief, and it sounds like it might be a lot of fun.

The suspense mystery has a serial killer knocking off Medicaid frauds. A clever state worker, played by Melissa Leo of TV's Homicide: Life on the Street, starts investigating what's going on, drawn further in by a CD-ROM game sent by the killer. Code of Ethics was filmed in Rhode Island and opens this Friday, May 16 at Showcase Cinemas in Warwick and Seekonk.

The difficulties started well before the filming, of course, since most independent film projects die as film scripts without seeing the light of a 10K. And this wasn't to be a static little relationship drama with three or four talking heads. It ended up with 27 speaking parts and 75 costume changes, and being shot at 25 locations, from Providence City Hall to Newport's Bowen's Wharf, from a former casino in Jamestown to a present-day country club in the East Bay. The screenplay's writer and eventual director, Warwick native Dawn Radican, dangled the script and accompanying prospectus before some 300 potential investors.

"It wasn't easy at all. We heard `no, no, no, no' before we heard even one yes," Radican said. "I also did the typical filmmaker's thing, putting my savings in, getting a second mortgage on my house, because I felt I couldn't ask other people for money unless I had put in every penny I possibly could."

The animated woman with the cascading curls and bright brown eyes was sitting at a conference table in the Providence offices of Fox Point Films, her new production company.

How plausible could an offering be from a novice director with only a few filmmaking workshops under her belt?

Adam McCarthy, an associate producer on the project from early on, answers that.

"Well, we had a producer from Boston named Joe Foley and our director of photography was Brian Heller," he said. "You put all those things together and it makes a pretty nice package, where things start to sound a little more feasible."

They backed up to explain that Heller is a known quantity whose aerial photography can be seen in the opening of The Late Show with David Letterman. Heller liked the script, which Radican co-wrote with Frederick J. Sneesby, the husband of a friend.

"He thought it was marvelous," Radican declared. "So we were dancing around the office going, `He thinks it's marvelous!' "

Next they sought to recruit Foley as producer. He was production manager for Kenneth Branagh's upcoming Shakespeare's Sister as well as for Other People's Money and Little Women.

When they told Heller, McCarthy recalled, "He laughed and said, `Well don't you think Joe Foley is a little too high-powered for this project?' What did we know?"

Heller coming aboard impressed Foley, who also liked the script and signed on. They also convinced Providence native Thomas A. Ohanian to be film editor. He is one of the inventors of the Avid digital editing system, for which he shared an Academy Award.

According to McCarthy, the budget for the union crew film was "under $3 million," which is promotion-speak for very much under $3 million. (Independent film makers want potential distributors to expect high production values on the screen, which aren't necessarily expensive. The declared budget for Pawtucket-shot American Buffalo was "under $10 million." Once praise starts coming in, filmmakers can start claiming to have brought it in for peanuts.)

When it came to the six-week shoot, the normal delays and complications cropped up, plus some not so normal. Rain forced them to film below deck on a boat when they'd rather have used the Narragansett Bay for a backdrop. Amtrak doesn't allow killers to run on their tracks, so they had to settle for his running on the platform. Melissa Leo broke a toe fleeing down the State House steps. But that was nothing compared to what else happened to their lead.

"The worst disaster was when the police showed up to arrest Melissa," Radican said. "We didn't know if she was coming back!"

"That was a little bit worse than rain," McCarthy added.

Leo was in the midst of a custody fight with her ex-husband, actor John Heard.

"We ended up in the Providence police station. Melissa, her son Jack and John Heard showed up, and he was trying to get the little boy's attention," Radican said. "It was just heart-wrenching to be stuck in the middle of."

To shoot all the scenes that Leo was not in on the two days that she was gone, they quickly had to bring in actors from New York on last minute notice as well as arrange for locations where they weren't yet expected.

As potentially catastrophic as that was, so many problems converged in shooting a sex scene that it won the award for most foul-ups, hands down. The male lead had a cold sore, so actual kissing was out. Radican had envisioned only a PG-rated lead-up to fade-out, so that could be finessed. But when Leo revealed that she had the constellation Virgo tattooed from shoulders to toes, pulling off her shirt with her back to the camera was also nixed. Add to that the rain confining them inside the boat, and their lights attracting squid, which attracted noisy fishing boats, and the foghorn interrupting dialogue during their romantic conversation and, Radican laughingly laments, "If you gave this to film school students they'd say no way all that could happen in one day."

So they ended up with Leo tugging up her shirt just a little, after her love interest leans forward for a kiss, then dissolving to the exterior of the boat. And no, it's not rocking.

Radican, 34, got into filmmaking pretty late in life. She started out as an English major at Duke University until she observed that too many of those grads ended up waiting on tables. She switched to computer science and continued working in that field for 10 years, six heading her own search firm for computer professionals. Itching for the creative life she'd first envisioned, in 1994 she took three film making courses at the International Film and Television Workshops in Maine, and the next summer practiced directing actors at the Sundance Institute in Utah.

The filmmakers are waiting for the box office response to find out if Code of Ethics will soon fill screens beyond Warwick and Seekonk. But Radican, not slowing down, has been working on two more screenplays. One is a drama about the baymen of Eastern Long Island, co-written with Melissa Leo's father. The other is the first draft of another mystery/thriller, about a crooked mutual fund company that is threatening the entire stock market.

Does this mean she plans to be filming back here in Rhode Island? You bet.

"The state is gorgeous," Radican said. "It really looks pretty on a big screen."