Putting Teen Life on Ice
Ice Princess Movie Trailer. A recent national survey found that ice-skating is America’s second most popular sport, with only pro football gathering more votes from sports fans. One of the most beloved of the Winter Olympics events, skating has become not just a showcase for amazing speed, power and gravity-defying beauty but a sport celebrated for giving young firebrand athletes a chance to make their wildest dreams come true. It’s the rare sport in which a young woman can hope not only to become a champion, but to live out the enchanted life of a fairy-tale princess.
For all these reasons, figure skating seemed like a fantastic backdrop for a contemporary story of a young girl’s transformation and personal empowerment to Ice Princess producer Bridget Johnson and Walt Disney Studios’ vice-president of production, Karen Glass. They envisioned a kind of circa-2005 Cinderella story about a smart but awkward teenaged girl whose humdrum life as a high school brain changes overnight when she discovers she has the talent to become a figure-skating champion-if only she can believe this crazy-sounding dream is possible. Through hard work, faith and fierce determination against the odds, an “Ice Princess” is born.
“We were interested in a story about a young girl who overcomes all kinds of tough and entertaining obstacles to live out her most secret dream,” says Johnson. “We also felt that today’s world of figure skating was a youth subculture just waiting to be explored on screen. Skating is filled with fascinating characters, dramatic conflicts, the most extreme dedication and, like all sports, its own funny, dirty little secrets. It’s also an amazingly precise and difficult sport-and we wanted to capture how awe-inspiring the power, the grace and the sheer magic of it all can be up close.”
Taking off from the tradition of inspirational films like “Flashdance” and “Bring It On,” Johnson and Glass first approached screenwriter Meg Cabot, who previously wrote the acclaimed family film “The Princess Diaries,” the winning tale of a teen faced with a very different larger-than-life fantasy-discovering that she’s royalty. Cabot brought her trademark touches of modern fairy tale and contemporary humor to the story of Ice Princess, and screenwriter Hadley Davis built upon Cabot’s story, using her own experiences as a teenage ballerina to shape the dramatic conflicts and humorous skating characters.
“Ice Princess was inspired by my own story,” says Davis. “Like the film’s Casey, I grew up on a pond in New England, where I skated on winter afternoons. My passion, however, was not skating but ballet-a world with many similarities to that of figure skating. The girls I danced with as a child and teenager in Boston Ballet-and their stage mothers-were indeed the prototypes for the three competitive `Ice Princesses,’ their parents, and skating coach Tina Harwood.
But it is the central conflict of Ice Princess that hits closest to home. Like Joan Cusack’s character, my parents wanted me to attend a top-notch college-rather than dance-and at times forbade me from performing on a school night. At their urging, I gave up ballet to attend the University of Pennsylvania. I do not have regrets but I occasionally have `what if’ pangs. Ice Princess is the answer to my fantasy: what if I had gone after my Sugar Plum Fairy dream…”
When executive producer William W. Wilson read the script for Ice Princess, he was taken aback not only by the humor and athletic suspense of the story, but by the story’s emotional impact, even on an adult. “I was really moved by the story of this young girl who grew into an incredible skater against all odds,” he comments. “I found it really inspiring to watch someone stick by her dream, no matter how difficult, and go for it.”
In the search for a director, Johnson looked at over a hundred feature films, short films and television movies trying to find a director who was able to capture real performances with a light touch and comic timing. She found what she was looking for in Tim Fywell, the British director who recently won acclaim for his magical portrait of an eccentric family living in a decrepit English castle in “I Capture the Castle.” Despite the fact that Fywell had no personal experience with figure skating, his ability to spin a compelling story with teens at the center was clear.
“Tim is a really gifted person who cares passionately about storytelling,” says Bridget Johnson. “He wanted to make a film that would resonate not only with a younger audience but would also be a lot of fun for adults as well, and we all shared in that vision.”
It was the underlying theme of a girl’s empowerment that most captured Fywell’s attention. “This story is about the way that teens need to discover their own dreams-not their parent’s dreams or the dreams they think they are supposed to have because that’s really not going to work-but the things they most want to do in life for themselves,” he says. “It’s really about a girl finding her own way, and it’s also a very funny story about a teenager in a strange new world, and those are the kinds of stories that most interest me.”
Always a big sports fan, Fywell also saw Ice Princess as a chance to provide a dynamic and different visual take on the increasingly athletic and extreme world of triple jumps and lightning-fast spins that skating has become today. He was excited to take on a challenge that would push him to his own creative edge.
“I didn’t know that much about figure skating when I took on Ice Princess, but I was definitely intrigued by it, and I knew that I wanted to find a way to really go into this world and make it involving for everyone,” he says. “The task for me was to try to really bring skating to life and put the audience out there on the ice with Michelle as she experiences the thrill of flying through the air. With some innovative camera work, I think we were able to capture skating in a new way.”
From Vampire Slayer to Ice Princess
At the core of Ice Princess is rising teen star Michelle Trachtenberg, who, as Casey Carlyle, finds her former life put on ice and a whole fantastic new world opening up to her when she uncovers her true talents as a skater. After starring in the movies “Harriet the Spy” and “Inspector Gadget,” Trachtenberg developed a major following when she took on the role of Buffy’s mysterious younger sister, Dawn, in the cult television hit, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Now, she takes on an entirely new challenge with her biggest role yet, and one that takes her not only into the world of competitive skating but into the heart of a teen girl trying to forge her own path in life. Amazingly, Trachtenberg had almost zero skating experience when she came to Ice Princess, but through a combination of determination, hard work and great coaching, she was able to realize her own skating fantasies as she learned to glide and spin in record time.
For the filmmakers, Trachtenberg was the perfect embodiment of Casey’s mix of charming innocence and top-notch smarts-and had all the right qualities to reveal her character’s rocky path from a timid, uncertain girl to a confident, mature, amazing young woman. As producer Bridget Johnson notes: “Michelle brings a real vulnerability, a certain knowingness and a wonderful poise to the role. She has an inner beauty, a sort of unspoiled quality, yet she is also very funny, and that combination is what we needed for Casey. From the very start, Michelle was always our `Ice Princess.’”
Director Tim Fywell adds: “For this story to work, you really have to get inside Casey’s head and feel that you’re with her in her struggle to succeed, her drive to compete, her awe at suddenly being popular and her dream to take a wild risk and do something different with her life. Michelle has that ability and she also brings a fantastic warmth, a kind of kooky personality and a psychological truth to it that makes Casey very natural, real and just a lot of fun.”
The young actress found herself immediately able to relate to Casey and her struggle to figure out her future. “The most amazing thing about Ice Princess is that it’s about a girl that everyone can connect with, someone going through an experience most people go through at some point in their lives, but in a really magical way,” Trachtenberg says. “I think we all feel like we have a certain path we’re supposed to follow in life, whether from our parents or what we learn at school, but Casey makes a bold decision to follow her heart that takes her on this incredible journey of self-confidence and empowerment. I think a lot of girls will relate to that. I also hope that lots of girls will go to this movie and think, `OK, Casey took a risk and she reached her goal; I know I can too.’”
Trachtenberg threw herself into the role with a commitment not unlike that of her willful character to training for her skating scenes. “I knew I was going to have to train a lot,” says the actress, “but I had no idea that it was going to be months and months of the most intense training sessions, as well as intense ballet classes and hours and hours of being on the ice. I started from scratch and was trying to accomplish what my character accomplishes in the movie, which seemed rather impossible at first. But because I trained so much I can do a lot of fun tricks. And when I watch ice-skating I know all the lingo and I can say, `She didn’t get enough height in her axel’ or `She flubbed her footwork.’ That’s a cool feeling.”
While skating “doubles” performed the more difficult skating maneuvers-such as the double and triple jumps, which take skaters years and years of 7-days-a-week training and constant crashes to develop-Trachtenberg was able to do a significant portion of the on-screen skating herself, which makes her very proud. She continues: “I always loved watching figure skating and I always thought it was so beautiful to see all these girls on ice but I also thought I could never do it, because I was such a tomboy. At one point, I even decided to take lessons but I lasted for only one lesson. That’s around the same time that I was cast in `Harriet the Spy,’ and acting has always been my passion. But who knew skating was still going to be in my future?”
It was also a special thrill for Trachtenberg to meet, and skate with, sports idols and Olympians Michelle Kwan and Brian Boitano. “I thought I was going to be so intimidated by Michelle,” she recalls, “because she’s such a phenomenal skater, but she was such a sweetheart! We got on the ice together and she was just stretching and doing her usual warm-up and she was so sweet-she turned to me and said, `You know, you’ve got this great comfort on the ice, and you’re really quite good, very natural!’ And it was like, `Oh my God, Michelle Kwan just gave me a compliment on my skating.’”
Says director Tim Fywell of Trachtenberg’s skating: “She really threw herself into the whole skating side of the story very strongly. We discovered that, like Casey, Michelle has a natural kind of elegance and ability on the ice and, through her hard training, she’s become quite a skater.”
The film’s skating coordinator, Jamie Isley, agrees: “I think my very favorite moments in making Ice Princess came on my very first and very last days working with Michelle as a skater. I so remember on that first day, she came on and had only ever skated a few times before in her life and we were holding hands to keep her steady-and to see her go from that to where she was truly pulling off real skating moves with so much realism and heart was incredibly fulfilling and special.”
Two further aspects of skating that Trachtenberg related to in Ice Princess were the cold-blooded competition and the infamously meddling “Skating Mothers,” who were not so different, she discovered, from the “Stage Moms” she encountered as a teen in the acting world. “I was very surprised at just how cutthroat skating is when you get to the elite level. There’s definitely a lot of backstabbing and a lot of parents pushing their kids so hard that it’s scary. I grew up in the entertainment world and you do see a lot of intense, determined parents. They push their kids, and it becomes the parents’ dream, not their child’s. But that’s what makes Casey so remarkable. She enters this incredibly tough world and she learns to believe in herself and do it her own way, and she triumphs.”
Of Mothers and Daughters
Ice Princess also delves into one of the most important relationships in a teen girl’s life-the often volatile and revealing bonds between young women and their mothers-casting two highly lauded actresses in the roles of Casey’s and Gen’s moms: Joan Cusack and Kim Cattrall.
A two-time Academy Award nominee (“Working Girl,” “In and Out”), Cusack plays Joan Carlyle, a teacher and single mother who has struggled for years making sure her whip-smart daughter would get the chance to attend Harvard University and follow the path she had dreamed of for herself. When Casey takes up figure skating instead of physics, Joan is thrown for a major loop.
Cusack was immediately intrigued by the role because it seemed so true to life. “I think a lot of parents can really relate to Joan’s experience of coming to this point where you have to let go of your children and your hopes for them and let them discover for themselves what they want to do with their lives,” she explains. “A mother like Joan just wants what is best for her gifted daughter, but it’s tough to give your kids independence. She’s worked really hard so that Casey would have lots of opportunities and she thinks it’s such a great dream for Casey to go to Harvard. I think everyone can understand why she might want that for her daughter and why she has a hard time swallowing Casey’s decision to skate instead. But, in the course of the story, she comes to realize that she can’t impose her own dreams on Casey.”
For the filmmakers, Cusack, a mother herself as well as an acclaimed comic actress, offered a unique mix of quirky personality and emotional authenticity. “Joan’s got tremendous heart,” sums up Bridget Johnson. “Her presence just elevates the work of everyone around her in every scene.”
In preparing for the role, Cusack had a lot of fun developing a tight-knit relationship with Michelle Trachtenberg, whom she came to admire. “It was inspiring just to be around Michelle because she has so much exuberance and excitement about everything,” says Cusack. “It was fun to be in her world and to think about the mother-daughter bond from her perspective as well. Michelle is such a talented, smart and genuine performer that playing her mom was a pleasure.”
Adds Trachtenberg: “Meeting Joan was incredible. She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever worked with. She’s just so funny and great to be around. The other interesting thing is that Joan and I both have the same birthday, and we seem to also have a lot of the same personality traits, so we were great as mother and daughter, especially because I think Casey and her mom are really kindred spirits, both very independent, passionate people who, no matter how much they don’t see eye to eye right now, really love each other and always will.”
Also joining the cast is Emmy Award-winning actress Kim Cattrall in the key role of Tina, Gen’s mother and Casey’s steel-hard coach. Best known to television viewers as the ravishing seductress on the HBO series “Sex and the City,” Cattrall takes a 180-degree turn with the character of Tina-a tough-minded former skater and ambitious mom who has long been trying to redeem herself from a sports controversy that dashed her own dreams when she was a young girl.
Cattrall loved the idea of doing something so unexpected. “Tina is so completely different from what people perceive me to be, I thought it would be really interesting to play her,” she says. “I also felt it was a wonderful transition, to go from a half-hour comedy for adults to a Disney movie that is a very moving story for teens, families and especially mothers and daughters.”
Growing up in Canada, Cattrall was surrounded by ice-skaters and hockey players and fell in love with the sport watching the Olympics year after year. “I always thought it was such a great metaphor for life to see these skaters crash to the ice, then get back up and do a triple jump or a camel spin and go on to win,” she comments. “I also knew some competitive skaters as a kid so I know the tremendous dedication and sacrifice that go into it. You have to start very young, it’s a tough road and, even for those who make it, it doesn’t last very long.”
She continues: “This is why Tina Harwood knows it won’t be easy to train a great champion. Her daughter Gen is good enough to be a champion, but she doesn’t really want to be a skater-she wants to be a teenager, discovering boys, and doing things that take away from her skating practice. Then she meets Casey, who not only has amazing talent, she has tremendous desire. But Casey’s mother wants her daughter to focus on getting into Harvard. So you have these two moms at odds with their daughters and with each other over what they want for their kids-a really interesting and realistic situation.”
On set, Cattrall found herself developing two equally rich, but very different, relationships with Hayden Panettiere and Michelle Trachtenberg. “Hayden was such a delight and challenged me in a lot of different ways,” says the actress. “I do see myself in Hayden quite a bit. She makes me laugh, she’s courageous and way beyond her years. There were times when I felt like I was the teen and she was the 40-something-year-old. Michelle, too, is a beautiful young woman. Seeing Michelle skate was especially emotional for me because she worked so hard and turned out to be so talented. She truly put her butt and her heart on the ice for this role, and I applaud her for it.”
Panettiere was amazed to see Cattrall make such a complete transition between her character in “Sex and the City” and her Ice Princess persona. “She became exactly the way I imagined Tina, she hit the nail on the head and totally created this very tough coach and mom who you know deep down is trying to face up to her own past,” says Hayden. “I think the audience will be thrilled to see her in such a different way. And for me, it was truly great, because I really came to love her like a mom.”
Sums up director Tim Fywell: “We were really lucky to get two such fantastic actresses to play two very different moms with two very different agendas, but who both want so much for their daughters to do great things in life. Joan and Kim are each very funny and very warm, and yet very opposite. They were perfect for a story that is also about how the dreams of mothers and daughters are so often connected.”
Ice Princess (2005)
Directed by: Tim Fywell
Starring: Michelle Trachtenberg, Joan Cusack, Kim Cattrall, Hayden Panettiere, Dermot Mulroney, Trevor Blumas, Kirsten Olson, Connie Ray, Jocelyn Lai, Roy Bradshaw
Screenplay by: Hadley Davis
Production Design by: Lester Cohen
Cinematography by: David Hennings
Film Editing by: Janice Hampton
Costume Design by: Michael Dennison
Set Decoration by: Jaro Dick
Art Direction by: Dennis Davenport, Aleksandra Marinkovich
Music by: Christophe Beck
MPAA Rating: G for general audiences.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: March 18, 2005
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