Kit Kittredge has everything an American girl could ask for. She has her friends, great parents, and brains. She is even trying to be a fantastic reporter and get into the best newspaper, The Cincinnati Report, just like her big brother. But when a string of hobo burglaries happen and her father gets fired she must use all of her power to catch the thief before she gets robbed.
Aspiring reporter Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) can’t resist bringing home strays, whether it’s Grace, an abandoned basset hound, or Will (Max Thieriot) and Countee (Willow Smith), a pair of young hobos willing to trade work for meals. Bright, inquisitive and generous, Kit is a natural born leader. But her happy childhood is abruptly interrupted when her father (Chris O’Donnell) loses his car dealership and must leave Cincinnati to look for work.
Kit and her mother Margaret (Julia Ormond) are left to manage on their own, growing vegetables, selling eggs and even taking in an assortment of boarders including an itinerant magician (Stanley Tucci), a vivacious dance instructor on the prowl for a husband (Jane Krakowski) and a zany mobile librarian (Joan Cusack).
When a crime spree sweeps Cincinnati, all signs point to the local “hobo jungle,” where Will and Countee live with a group of their impoverished companions. Kit, who always has her antennae out for a good news story, convinces her new friends to take her to see the hobo camp for herself and writes an article that creates a sympathetic portrait of the camp’s residents.
But when Kit’s mother and their boarders become the latest victims in a string of robberies, Kit’s loyalties are tested. Will is accused of the crimes and, with all of their savings gone, the Kittredges face losing their house to foreclosure. Determined to recover the stolen money and believing Will is innocent, Kit recruits her friends Ruthie and Stirling to help her track down the real culprit. Together they uncover a plot that goes far beyond Cincinnati!
Mention American Girl to any female aged three to 12 and the reaction may range from a sweet, ear-to-ear grin to a jumping-up-and-down ‘omigod omigod omigod’ frenzy. One of the top 15 children’s publishers in the nation, American Girl blends historical fact and inspirational fiction in stories that encourage girls to embrace their dreams. The company has sold more than 123 million American Girl books and 14 million American Girl dolls since 1986, and its award-winning American Girl magazine has a circulation of more than 620,000, making it the largest publication dedicated exclusively to girls ages eight and up.
But it was more than just that phenomenal success that inspired producers Elaine Goldsmith- Thomas, Lisa Gillan and Julia Roberts to approach American Girl more than six years ago with the idea of bringing the series to the screen. Roberts and Gillan, who are sisters, had learned about the unique appeal of American Girl from an expert: “Our mom—AKA ‘Grandma Betty’— was a regular supplier of American Girl dolls to our niece Emma, who really loved them,” say Roberts and Gillan. “Emma would introduce them to us as the real girls they are, sharing their background stories.” “They really are girls, not just dolls,” adds Gillan. “They each have a history, a family, and a point of view. I think girls can relate and learn from each one’s story.”
For Goldsmith-Thomas, it was the combination of contemporary life lessons and history—and the unique way both are presented—that made the American Girl series such an appealing film project. “They never sugarcoat the girls’ stories,” she says. “Seeing the Depression or slavery or the loss of a parent through the eyes of a nine-year-old makes these stories unique. Comparing and contrasting life in different points of American history helps girls today understand that they are a part of history, too. The stories don’t make people from the past seem old-fashioned. They help create a connection between the past and the present. American Girl uses some great tools to teach kids to find the relevancy between their doll’s life and their own. As a filmmaker, that concept makes for compelling and interesting ways to approach bringing these stories to the audience.”
“We take girls seriously,” says Ellen L. Brothers, president of American Girl and producer of Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. “All of our stories are told through the eyes of our heroine—a nine-year-old girl who turns ten in the story. In this film, you’re seeing the Great Depression through the eyes of a very confident nine-year-old girl. And that’s what makes this story so special.”
Brothers says the idea of a movie had been percolating at American Girl for several years. “From the very beginning, we thought it was completely natural to make a feature film, but it was all brand new to us. We felt we had to get our feet wet first. When Elaine, Julia and Lisa came to us, we talked about made-for-television movies as a great first step in exploring whether our audience would like seeing their favorite American Girls in a live action format. When the success of those three movies proved to us that our audience loved seeing the characters come to life, moving to the big screen was a logical next step.”
The first American Girl movie, “Samantha: An American Girl Holiday,” aired in 2004, followed by two more made-for-television films based on the series. Gillan was an executive producer of all three. “The success of ‘Samantha,’ ‘Felicity’ and ‘Molly’ made it clear how much girls loved seeing “their girls’” stories come to life and made the transition to the big screen inevitable.”
“Without much in terms of marketing dollars, we did exceptionally well,” says Goldsmith- Thomas. “So after the third one, we started exploring a lot of options and pondering how to make the transition to theatrical releases.
“We all fell in love with Bob Berney at Picturehouse and Colin Callender at HBO because they were committed to maintaining the same high standards,” continues Goldsmith-Thomas. “They both totally got it. Like us, they realized that American Girl is not simply about selling books and dolls. It is about exposing young kids to beautiful, sincere characters with beautiful, sincere stories to tell.”
Berney was equally enthusiastic about the project. “We all agreed that Kit Kittredge was the perfect choice for the first theatrical release,” says the president of Picturehouse. “Kit is a wonderful character, a spirited, ambitious young girl living in very difficult times. Her story is inspirational in the way it teaches the importance of giving to those who are less fortunate.”
“It was my two daughters who introduced me to American Girl books, and I was struck by what wonderful stories they were – they were celebrations of different times in our history yet they dealt with real challenges of every day life that young people today can relate to. ” says Callender, president of HBO Films. “When you combine these great characters and stories with the remarkable marketing machine behind American Girl it seemed like a natural theatrical franchise.”
Once the partnership solidified in February 2007, things began to happen very quickly. “We were fortunate to have Ann Peacock write a truly heartwarming screenplay that attracted a great group of creative people from the start,” says producer Lisa Gillan. “Once Abigail Breslin signed on, director Patricia Rozema came on board as did the rest of our amazing ensemble of actors. It all came together unusually fast.”
Director Rozema, best known for her acclaimed 1999 film Mansfield Park, has two young daughters, so she was already very familiar with the American Girl books and dolls. “I loved Kit, this little reporter who wants to write, who wants to express herself, who wants to do good. So many kids’ movies are about, ‘Oh, I can have love, I am a princess, I own the world now.’ There aren’t many that show kids and adults trying to hang on when material goods aren’t flowing their way, and showing that what’s valuable is not material.”
Gillan believes that Kit’s story has a very timely message for modern girls. “It is a wonderful lesson for young girls who are seeing women doing more and more amazing things, like running for president,” she says. “I think Kit has an almost Churchillian point of view about life. He said ‘Never, Never, Never Quit’, and Kit doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word. Giving up doesn’t seem to be at all part of her character.”
For Rozema, the first priority was getting all the characters right. “American Girl isn’t just dolls,” she points out. “It’s characters. The dolls are one representation of those characters. The books are a representation of those characters. I don’t think kids who know the character already from the books are going to be disappointed at all. There are new elements that you haven’t seen in the books, but this won’t be a situation where people say ‘Hey, the text said this and the movie says that, what’s going on?’ It’ll be more like, ‘Oh, here are all these lovely characters I know and recognize in this new adventure.’” According to Goldsmith-Thomas, the audience for American Girl films “isn’t just little girls and their mothers, as we found out with the three TV movies we made. Every American Girl character has some sort of family element, whether it’s parents or siblings or grandparents or aunts and uncles. An entire family can go to the theater and enjoy tagging along with Kit and her friends as they embark on an adventure.”
Casting Kit
The filmmakers knew that finding the right actress to play Kit was essential to the success of the film. Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin, who won over audiences, critics and Academy members as the plucky Olive Hoover in Little Miss Sunshine, was everyone’s first choice to play Kit. But she had a very short window of availability before starting another film. This meant the filmmakers had to finalize the script and cast, prep the movie and shoot it all in the course of about four months.
“We did this feature on a very, very, very tight little schedule with a lot of limitations,” says Rozema. “Every shot had to be completely constructed. You couldn’t just shoot from any angle, because, oh my goodness, there was a satellite dish or something else that would be out of the period.”
To help speed the process, Rozema decided to use three cameras shooting simultaneously. “If we got that magic moment, it was covered on every side, and we didn’t have to repeat it and repeat it to get it each time,” she says.
This approach gave the director and her cast additional creative freedom. “The kids didn’t have to think about continuity as much, they didn’t have to remember ‘Oh, I had the fork up to my mouth on this line.’ If the moment was fresh and free, and we caught the spark, we had it on camera at different angles instantaneously.”
Although the expedited production schedule was a challenge at times, the director says it ended up being an extraordinary experience, “The whole enterprise has been so full of unabashed goodwill. It’s very hard to be really bitter or angry or blaming with little kids around. Their faces teach you things. They teach you things. We think we bring them up; they bring us up.”
Breslin lived up to the filmmakers’ expectations as the perfect Kit, says producer Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. “We couldn’t have been more thrilled with Abby,” she says. “She brought humor, warmth and intelligence to the role, and an enthusiasm and passion for the project that was simply infectious. “Abby handled the material like such a pro,” she continues. “Right from the beginning she understood the arc of the story. She recognized that Kit’s life was not all on ‘the sunny side of the street’ and that life can be very tough, but making it through the tough times makes everything that comes after even more valuable. Abby understood that within the story, Kit’s whole perspective on life changes, and with that change in perspective comes a change in values.”
Breslin learned some of the history of the Great Depression from her grandmother, who grew up during that era. “I showed my grandma the doll and the outfit that I wore and she told me that it was kind of like the clothes she used to wear when she was younger,” says the actress. “The Great Depression was when people were buying a lot of things on credit and then they didn’t have enough money to pay it back. And so they stopped buying things, which made the stores and the factories close, until everybody was basically out of work.”
In the movie, Kit is trying to convince the editor of the Cincinnati Register to publish her story so she can begin her journalism career. “She just wants more than anything else to become a reporter,” says Breslin. “That helps when she tries to solve the mystery, because she writes down everything that could maybe be a clue, like somebody had a tattoo or they were wearing boots or they had dark hair.”
Explaining why Breslin was perfect for the title role, Rozema says, “She is a very keen observer and a feeling person, like Kit. And quite daring, in her own quiet way. There is something admirable about Abigail Breslin that’s a lot like the character of Kit Kittredge.”
Madison Davenport, whose young acting career has included television and feature film roles, plays Ruthie Smithens, Kit’s best friend and daughter of the local banker. A self-acknowledged girl’s girl, Davenport says she adored the period costumes. “It’s so cool to wear some clothes you don’t normally wear. These clothes are so sweet! Why can’t girls wear these clothes now? You never find cute dresses like these in normal stores.”
Davenport was decidedly unenthusiastic about the changes the filmmakers had planned for her hair, however. “I dyed my hair brown, and it is normally blond. I was kind of weirded out. But, I mean, I feel exactly the same until I look in the mirror.” Davenport quickly struck up a friendship with costars Abigail Breslin and Zach Mills. “We made up nicknames for each other and played games, ran around and hung out with each other off set. So even though much of the story is about people losing their money and their homes and stuff, we all managed to have a really good time because everyone was so nice and the set was a lot of fun.”
Mills, who appeared opposite Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman in Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, plays Stirling, a boy who comes to live at Kit’s house as a boarder after his parents lose their house. “My mom and I end up renting a room while my father goes off to look for work. The sad part is he doesn’t write to us like he said he would,” says Mills. “Something I learned about doing this role was that the Great Depression wasn’t all that great and people lost everything they had and sometimes they lost each other, too. Kit’s story is all about overcoming things like that.”
At the center of the mystery is a young hobo named Will, played by actor Max Thieriot, familiar to many young movie fans from his appearances in family films including The Pacifier and Nancy Drew. Seventeen-year-old Thieriot, however, admits he had never heard of the American Girl dolls or books. “As a teenaged guy, American Girl was never really on my personal radar,” says Thieriot. “Once I knew that I might be cast in this movie, I went to the American Girl store in Los Angeles just to check it out and I could not believe how popular the place was. It just blew my mind watching these little girls and how they act and react with all the dolls and clothes and books. I realized I was going to be a part of something very, very big and, if the crowds at the store were any indication, a lot of people will be seeing this movie.”
British-born actress Julia Ormand, who plays Kit’s mother, was fascinated by the amount of research that comes with each American girl doll. “It’s really a journey of discovery about what people in America went through in the Depression in the ‘30s—how people as a population faced hardship and social stigma. “This is a family that starts off pretty sound economically,” she adds, “and a child who has no real awareness of social issues. She’s introduced to people from a social class that she wouldn’t normally have encountered, and instead of coming at it with prejudice she comes at it with a lot of heart.”
Ormond has appeared opposite some of Hollywood’s premier leading men, including Brad Pitt (Legends of the Fall), Harrison Ford (Sabrina) and Richard Gere (First Knight). Even so, she found Breslin to be a formidable acting partner. “Abigail is really remarkable,” she says. “She’s in virtually every single scene. For anyone, but especially a child actor, it’s an incredible amount of pressure. She has an openness that’s completely right for Kit and an easy access to an emotional range that is really quite extraordinary. She also has an incredible comprehension of how things work: camera needs, marks, all those sorts of things.”
Ormond’s leading man in Kit Kittredge is Chris O’Donnell, who plays her husband. He is, she says, “the quintessential American male. Not just in looks, but also in his stoic determination. He has these very moving scenes where he’s struggling to hold it together, to protect the family from what he’s really going through. It’s kind of a tricky balance of a 1930s male who perhaps would have a different approach to somebody today, but nevertheless really a touching moment for anybody who feels a responsibility of providing for their family.”
For O’Donnell, who is probably best known for playing Robin to Val Kilmer’s Caped Crusader in Batman Forever and for his starring role opposite Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl was a special project. “I really wanted to do something for my daughter and it’s a great script. It’s a great American tale of a time that was really tough in our country, the Depression, and you get a chance to see how families stuck together. Today we’re just super-consumers, and people are buying, buying, buying. But it wasn’t always like this. It really puts things in perspective.”
The actor acknowledges that the quality of the cast says a lot about the script, as well people’s familiarity with American Girl dolls. “Talent attracts talent. When a cast like this gets put together, people start to say, ‘I want to be a part of that, too.’”
“Abigail’s as mature as any adult actor I’ve ever worked with, so that’s been fantastic,” says the actor. “And Patricia Rozema, the director, stays real focused. She keeps people in good spirits and she really listens. I think it’s real easy as a director to sit back and watch the monitor, but she’s always listening. She pays attention and makes sure you hit all the right beats in a scene.”
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl’s supporting cast is rich with actors known for their commitment and talent. Stanley Tucci, recently seen in The Devil Wears Prada plays Mr. Berk, a boarder in the Kittredge household who is a magician by profession.
“Kids will instantly love the mystery of it,” says Tucci, a two-time Emmy winner. “It’s a wonderful story to be told through a child’s eyes. The story is always pertinent, because there’s always poverty no matter how wealthy a country we are. The moral is everybody pitches in together and does what they have to do to help each other as a community to get through the tough times.”
Tucci came to the set immediately after finishing another film and had little time to prepare. He credits the director and the script with making it easier for him to jump onto the fast moving train that was the Kit Kittredge production. “It’s a good script and very clearly written,” he says. “Patricia thinks very quickly and she’s not afraid to change things instantly and be spontaneous. Only a director who thinks that way and takes everything in stride—and also has a great sense of humor, which she does—could make a movie this way.”
Magician David Ben was brought on to teach Tucci the tricks of his character’s trade. Ben says he taught the actor a broad range of things he can do around the dinner table with everyday objects for the people who are living there. “Part of my own career is reconstructing magic from different time periods, particularly from the ‘20s and the ‘30s,” says Ben. “The filmmakers wanted a period levitation. Magicians have been floating people since around 1900 and you see still Criss Angel and David Blaine do it, but there was a particular style to how people floated in the ‘30s. And that’s what the filmmakers wanted to recreate.”
Academy Award® nominee Joan Cusack turns in a memorable performance as Miss Bond, the dizzy mobile librarian who is levitated by Mr. Berk. An admirer of Patricia Rozema since she saw the director’s interpretation of the Jane Austen novel “Mansfield Park,” she was thrilled to work on the project. “It’s a very empowering movie about little girls and about confidence,” says the actress. “If I was a little girl and there was a little typewriter and a little bed and the little glasses and all the little things they have that go with the doll, I would love it.”
For the role of Miss Dooley, the man-hungry dance instructor who also boards with the Kittredges, the filmmakers brought in Jane Krakowski, who won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical “Nine.” “They had assembled an amazing cast of people, so I said yes immediately,” she says. “I get to dance a little bit in the movie and it’s been fun to sort of learn all the dances of 1934, like the Shorty George and the Lindy Hop and the Shim-Sham. It’s a little blast back into that time period.”
Dylan Smith, who plays Frederick Burke, calls his role in Kit Kittredge “a dream part.” “Playing a bad guy is always lots of fun, plus it’s a children’s movie, so there’s room for real colorful imagination. Then there’s the monkey, whose name in the movie is Curtis. I had to work very closely with the monkey.”
Curtis proved to be a temperamental co-star “There was a memo to the cast and crew, outlining all the dos and don’ts with monkeys,” remembers Smith. “Don’t wear a hat around the monkey. Don’t find yourself in a confined space with the monkey. Don’t stare the monkey in the eyes, and no sudden movements around the monkey.” The first day of shooting with the monkey, Curtis, Stanley Tucci and Smith were in a car backing up, remembers the actor. “The monkey’s in a confined space. Stanley’s wearing a hat. He had to turn the car around to back the car out, and when he turned around, he was facing the monkey, wearing a hat, staring at him in the eyes. He panicked slightly, hit the horn and the car sort of jilted back. So it was smooth sailing after that; nothing else really could go wrong.”
Wallace Shawn, who plays the editor of the Cincinnati Register, brings some first hand knowledge to the role. The well-known character actor is the son of William Shawn, legendary editor of The New Yorker. “I think being a journalist is a great thing to do. If you want to be a reporter, and you want to be a good reporter, you have to be willing face the reality of the world, which can sometimes be upsetting. But it is a great deal of fun to be a reporter because you get to meet all kinds of people and ask them things you would never dare to ask them if you just met them in the street or on an airplane or at dinner. You get to ask them whatever you like really, until they throw you out.”
In addition to the distinguished cast of professional actors, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl marks the film debut of four very lucky and talented young girls. Jordan Rackley, Elisabeth Perez, Erin Hilgartner and Brieanne Jansen were selected from more than 2,400 fans during a nationwide talent hunt for four “real American girls” to play Kit’s next-door neighbors and classmates.
“We held the open auditions at our three American Girl Place stores,” says producer Ellen L. Brothers. “Two days each in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. We received thousands of emails and letters from girls saying they would love to be in an American Girl movie. The number of girls who showed up exceeded our expectations. They waited hours and hours just for the opportunity to audition.”
Jordan Rackley, who plays Lillian, came to Chicago with her best friend Haley for the audition. She had previously appeared in community theater productions of “Peter Pan,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Annie” in her hometown of St. Louis. “One of my aunts was born during the Great Depression,” says Rackley. “So it’s kind of neat because I feel like this is probably what she felt like in these clothes and stuff. And I feel really different when I’m in them.” Normally poised, Jordan admits that when she got the call to be in the movie, her scream of excitement was so loud her dog barked in celebration, too.
Elisabeth Perez, who plays Eleanor, another one of Kit’s classmates, is ten years old and lives in Napa Valley, California. Even before being cast in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, she had written and staged her first play, which was based on the life of Helen Keller. Perez had plans to be a professional actress and was thrilled to launch her career with such a special project. “It has been a dream to be in a movie and even more of a dream to be in an American Girl movie,” says the youngster. “When I was five, my Aunt Mary gave me my first American Girl doll and when I was even younger, my older sister Madeleine read me the books.”
Just eight years old when she was cast as Kit’s next-door neighbor Florence Stone, Erin Hilgartner lives in Ithaca, New York. When she saw the lines at the open call in New York, she was afraid that she wouldn’t get a chance to audition. “But they saw every single girl who was in line,” she says. Hilgartner says she enjoyed “absolutely everything” about being in the movie—travelling to Canada, all the special treatment she received from the hair, makeup and wardrobe departments and meeting all the famous Hollywood stars. Now, she can’t wait to see herself on the big screen.
Eleven-year-old Brieanne Jansen surprised everyone in her family when she decided to audition for the movie. After being caught in a frightening hostage situation with her family seven years ago, Jansen had been understandably reluctant to put herself in new situations. This experience has renewed her self-confidence. “I’ve learned that being myself is the best way to be,” she says. “I was picked for this role because I didn’t try to be something that I’m not. I learned that I can dream as big as possible because dreams do come true.”
“With kids who haven’t acted, you sometimes get something remarkable,” says director Rozema. “Something way better than kids who already have these expectations of how to present themselves. They all brought a passion for American Girl and they took the work very seriously. It was an absolute joy for the entire cast and crew and I think they will all be very happy when they see themselves in the movie.”
Recreating Depression Era Cincinnati
In Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, present day Toronto stands in for Kit’s hometown of Cincinnati more than 70 years ago. Production designer Peter Cosco was responsible for faithfully replicating the era for the film.
The first step for Cosco was finding the Kittredge home. He was looking for a house built in the mid 1920s, but it also had to be in a neighborhood where everything around it was appropriate. “So much of the story takes place in the backyard and side yard. Sometimes we’d see a house that looked perfect from the street, but when you went into the back yard, there was a big addition, or the neighbors had a big addition.” The filmmakers eventually chose a house that backs out onto a ravine, which eliminated the problem of having an apartment building or a modern house across the way.
The interior of the Kittredge home was built from scratch on a soundstage. “You can control everything, you could lay it out for your needs when you build it,” he says. “It gives you the advantage of making it a little bit bigger or just reconfiguring the insides.”
For the homes furnishings, Cosco got help from the American Girl books and accessories. “Often the best thing is to go to actual source material from the period, like magazines or catalogs of the day, like Sears,” he says. “In this case, American Girl already had a wealth of material. For instance, we knew that in Kit’s attic she’s got a little roll-top desk, a little chair that goes with it and this metal-frame bed that’s got flower stencils on it, so we found the bed and then created the stencils. It was really helpful to have this very specific, and very accurate, source information to work from.”
A serendipitous find at the house translated into an overall decorating scheme. “We found a coach light on a post, a little leaded glass thing that was original and I decided that it would inform all our decisions,” Cosco says. “The house already had some Arts and Crafts details, so we used that as our starting point and really ran with it, creating an Arts and Crafts theme that was a popular decorative style in the ‘20s.”
For Kit’s hideaway, Cosco needed to fabricate not just the perfect tree house, but the perfect tree, as well. “It’s a refuge for Kit, where she goes to write, and Patricia wanted it to be a very magical space,” the designer says. “We constructed a tree with a steel armature, and welded on the branches. The bark is cast plaster and burlap. The actual tree house was placed onto this structure, and then a canopy of leaves was put on top of that.”
One of the most complex and visually rich settings in the film is the Hobo Jungle, which Kit first visits in search of a story for the newspaper. Cosco found the perfect location under an old bridge by a river. “It’s an open bridge, so it’s got many of the qualities railway bridges of the time would have had,” he says. “We did a lot of research to recreate what a hobo settlement would have looked like.”
The set included an open fire pit, a cooking area, a laundry area and many tents and sheds. A path that snaked through the woods gave the effect that the hobos had their own individual spaces, which also helped to give the location a real sense of dimension and scope.
The evening before shooting began at the Hobo Jungle, flash flood warnings were issued in Toronto. “A section of the set literally washed away,” remembers Cosco. “I stood there watching bits of our set dressing floating by in baskets or washtubs. Odetta, our set decorator, jumped in and I followed her. I’ve said to her since that if I didn’t see her jump in, I probably wouldn’t have. The two of us were almost waist-deep in water fishing out these things as they were floating by.”
Kit’s father is a car dealer, so naturally automobiles figure prominently in the film. Beau Boyd, the picture car captain of Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, was responsible for finding and maintaining a fleet of about 70 vintage cars. “We had to find pre-1934 cars that run semi-decent and look new,” says Boyd. “Some of them had to seem brand new, because there was a dealership scene with eight brand new cars.”
Finding the vehicles involved a lot of legwork. While there are companies that rent vintage cars to movie shoots, Boyd prefers to work with collectors. “Collectors generally put more money and time into their car. We go to car shows and meet people, give them a card, and say, ‘I’d like to rent your car for a movie.’ That’s the best way to find them.”
The fleet includes Ford Model As, Grahams, a Maxwell, a Peter Witt streetcar, some trucks and a trio of extremely rare cars. “The prize is the 1934 Chrysler Airflow,” says Boyd. “The Air Flow is important to the story because Kit’s dad is one of the few people with a very upscale car. When he loses his dealership and loses the car, it changes the whole tone of the film.
“They only made it one year,” explains Boyd. “And we have three of them. It’s a very pretty car, in addition to being very rare. At the time, most of the cars were square-bodied and this was a departure because it was very art-deco and way ahead of its time. It only lasted one year because it didn’t sell well. It was too radical.”
For costume designer Trysha Bakker, the film was a return to familiar territory since she also had served as costume designer on two of the made-for-television American Girl movies. Among the challenges for each film has been replicating the main doll’s signature outfit. “We have to find the fabric that looks like it, and if we can’t find the fabric then we have it printed.”
One of the problems the costumer faced during the film of Kit Kittredge was the difficulty of finding authentic Depression-era clothing for the shoot’s more than 100 costumes. She ended up creating many of them from scratch using old catalogs like Sears Roebuck and vintage photographs by Dorothea Lange to find the right designs.
As the film progresses, Kit and her family have less money to spend on clothing and the costumes reflect that. “The characters start to wear the same clothes over and over again and they started to get a little more threadbare,” says Bakker. “We used sandpaper and rasps and we put the clothes in TSP and washed them over and over again to take the color out and age the garments down.”
One of the most heartwarming days of filming for Bakker and the entire cast and crew was July 4, 2007, when the production was honored to host a vivacious 6-year-old girl from eastern North Carolina named Eliza Bourg, who has been battling Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Through the work of the Make A Wish Foundation, the production learned that Bourg is a huge fan of American Girl and Kit Kittredge in particular. She also loves movies and television. Bourg was invited to visit the sound stage in Toronto and was immediately whisked into her own “star” trailer. She was put through the hair and makeup process and then costume designer Trysha Bakker brought in a special little hobo dress just for her. Without telling Bourg or her parents, the filmmakers had decided to include her in the Thanksgiving dinner scene at the Kittredge house. Eliza has now completed chemotherapy treatment and is doing well.
“Having Eliza visit the set was the purest example of what making this movie was all about,” says producer Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. “On the most important American holiday, this sweet little American girl courageously battling an illness stepped on set and opened all of our eyes to what adversity and hardship is really like. It was as if a modern-day Kit had joined us all for the Thanksgiving feast.”
Director Rozema adds, “Words really can’t describe the impact Eliza had on all of us that day. Her spirit seemed to mirror Kit’s. It was a reminder of the sense of community human beings can share when faced with crisis. Her story inspired all of us that day and we certainly hope that Kit’s story will inspire people as well.”
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008)
Directed by: Patricia Rozema
Starring: Abigail Breslin, Stanley Tucci, Joan Cusack, Chris O’Donnell, Julia Ormond, Glenne Headly, Jane Krakowski, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Wallace Shawn
Screenplay by: Ann Peacock
Production Design by: Peter Cosco
Cinematography by: David Boyd
Film Editing by: Julie Rogers
Costume Design by: Trysha Bakker
Set Decoration by: Odetta Stoddard
Art Direction by: Michele Brady
Music by: Joseph Vitarelli
MPAA Rating: G for general audience.
Distributed by: Picturehouse
Release Date: June 20, 2008
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