Tagline: Partly cloudy with a 90% chance of total meltdown.
A Seattle morning show weather girl must struggle to pull her life together after committing career suicide before a live audience in this existential crisis comedy featuring Mark Harmon, Jon Cryer, and Jane Lynch. Sylvia (Tricia O’Kelley) was a notable fixture on Seattle’s most popular morning television program before she discovered that her boyfriend Dalke (Harmon), the show’s anchor, was cheating on her with his co-host Sherry (Kaitlin Olson).
Her career in television imploded in just the time it takes to have an on-air meltdown, Sylvia is forced to move in with her slacker brother Walt while she tries to get back on her feet. Now Sylvia is thirty-five, unemployed, and single. No one will hire her for fear that she may flip out on a moment’s notice, but Walt’s best friend Byron sees something in Sylvia that no one else seems to notice. Now, as Walt attempts to show Sylvia that there’s more to life than fame and fortune, the woman whose life has just fallen apart wages a valiant effort to finally get over herself and discover the secret to living a more meaningful life.
Weather Girl is a 2009 comedy film written and directed by Blayne Weaver. The film stars Tricia O’Kelley, Patrick J. Adams, Ryan Devlin, Kaitlin Olson, Mark Harmon, Jon Cryer, Jane Lynch, Blair Underwood, Amie Donegan, Lucas Fleischer, Melinda McGraw and Kit Pongetti.
The Inception
“I got the idea for Weather Girl after dating a woman about five years older than me,” explains Blayne Weaver, writer/director of Weather Girl. “The difference in age was minimal but the difference in where our heads were was huge. Not that she was ready to settle down, but the pressures she felt professionally, from her friends and from society kept hammering home this idea that ‘she didn’t have time’. I really liked the idea of this woman who seems to have it all (great job, ‘perfect’ boyfriend), but then gives it all up and has to start over again with those pressures looming over her.“
The Team
Tricia O’Kelley and Blayne Weaver first worked together on Weaver’s debut feature film, 2006’s Outside Sales. The film was a truly independent endeavor with a budget under $100,000. Weaver and his partner in Secret Identity Productions, Brandon Barrera, sold their house to finance the film.
O’Kelley played the romantic lead in Outside Sales and worked tirelessly for no pay because she loved the script. When she read the script for Weather Girl, she again connected to Weaver’s writing. “I was only a few pages into the script and already I knew that I had to play this role” she recalls. Over beers at an LA pub, they had the first real conversation about the realities of raising financing for the film.
“Honestly, I tried to talk her out of it” laughs Weaver. “I was still terribly in debt from Outside Sales, having sunk every penny I had (and didn’t have) into it. I warned her that the film would become her baby and she would want do ANYTHING to make it great… even go into a ridiculous amount of debt.”
O’Kelley ignored Weaver’s foretelling of doom and poverty, and they began pre-production with the intent of making another film for under $100,000. This delusion was dismissed as soon as they started working with Steakhaus Productions. Steak House was brought on to produce the film alongside Tricia. She had a great reputation in the indie film world and soon became an irreplaceable member of the team because of her knowledge of the terrain and ability to get things done. “We had an early meeting with a possible crew member and Steak asked the questions that we didn’t think to ask. It became clear that Steak just knew how to make movies” Says Weaver.
For cinematographer Weaver turned to frequent collaborator Brandon Trost. Trost and Weaver first worked together on Outside Sales. “Trost has DP’d over thirty movies and he knows how to get the best quality out of whatever equipment the production can afford” explains Weaver.
Weaver had never worked with production designer Michael Fitzgerald but they hit it off immediately. “In order to pull off the look and feel of a television studio, we had GET a television studio. So, we had this huge space and Michael suggested building the other main set piece on the soundstage. Well, that scared the hell out of me” remembers Weaver. Fitzgerald undertook construction (night and day) of a one bedroom, one bath apartment with a hallway and a room across the hall IN ADDITION to the set of ‘Good Morning Seattle’. These realities swelled the budget way beyond the tiny film Weaver and O’Kelley had initially conceived. That meant more investors… This meant that they needed NAMES.
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Weather Girl (2009)
Directed by: Blayne Weaver
Starring: Tricia O’Kelley, Patrick J. Adams, Ryan Devlin, Kaitlin Olson, Mark Harmon, Jon Cryer, Jane Lynch, Blair Underwood, Amie Donegan, Lucas Fleischer, Melinda McGraw, Kit Pongetti
Screenplay by: Blayne Weaver
Production Design by: Michael Fitzgerald
Cinematography by: Brandon Trost
Film Editing by: Abe Levy
Costume Design by: Sarah Trost
Art Direction by: Samson Kellman
Music by: Andrew Hollander
MPAA Rating: PG for language.
Oistributed by: Secret Identity Productions
Release Date: July 10, 2009
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