Taglines: For two sisters from a family of witches, falling in love is the trickiest spell of all.
Practical Magic movie storyline. Sisters Sally and Gillian Owens have a special bond with each other despite being different in personality and outlook. Having grown up with their spinster Aunts Frances and Jet in the long time Owens family home on an island off the coast of Massachusetts following the death of their father and then their mother, they are the latest in a long line of witches.
Rumors of the Owens women being witches have existed for generations in the small close minded town in which they live, despite there being no hard evidence. The Owens women are also under a curse that any man with who they fall in love is doomed. With this experience, extroverted Gilly decides to leave the island to live life to the fullest, in the process falling for Jimmy Angelov, an ethnic Bulgarian who grew up near Transylvannia.
More introspective Sally, who has sworn off the use of magic except in its most practical sense, has taken measures not to fall in love because of the curse, but ends up falling for and marrying Michael, a local merchant, the two who end up having two daughters of their own. The curse works its way into both Gilly and Sally’s lives in different ways. The outcomes of the curse on their collective lives become more complicated with the arrival into town of Tuscon police detective Gary Hallet, whose arrival is not by accident and involves more than just his stated professional purpose.
Practical Magic is a 1998 American romantic comedy film based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Alice Hoffman. The film was directed by Griffin Dunne and stars Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Aidan Quinn, and Goran Visnjic. The film score was composed by Alan Silvestri.
Bullock and Kidman play sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, who have always known they were different from each other. Raised by their aunts after their parents’ death, the sisters grew up in a household that was anything but typical—their aunts fed them chocolate cake for breakfast and taught them the uses of practical magic. But the invocation of the Owens’ sorcery also carries a price—some call it a curse: the men they fall in love with are doomed to an untimely death. Now adult women with very different personalities, the quiet Sally and the fiery Gillian must use all of their powers to fight the family curse and a swarm of supernatural forces that could take away all the Owens’ lives.
Practical Magic opened at #1 with $13.1 million in ticket sales. The film went on to gross $68.1 million worldwide, less than its $75 million production budget.
About the Production
Practical Magic was partially filmed on an artificial set in California. The film’s producers said the house was a big part of the depiction of the Owens’ culture, so they knew they had to build a house to accurately depict this. They built it on Coupeville, Washington. They brought much of the set from California and placed it inside the house, but it still took almost a year to perfect the image of the house and the interior.
The house used is owned by the Sundstrom Family and is located on San Juan Valley Road, San Juan Island. They built a replica of the outside of the house on the west side of San Juan Island so that it looked like the house was on the waterfront, but in actuality it is in the valley. They built the house in San Juan County Park but since the house was built only for this filming, it was torn down after the movie was released. Many of the small town scenes were filmed in downtown Coupeville Washington located on Whidbey Island.
According to Sandra Bullock in the DVD commentary, in the scene where the Owens women are drunk and slinging insults, the actresses actually got drunk on very bad tequila brought by Kidman. The cast also thinks that the supernatural elements of the house started to affect them; the cast and crew say that they have heard ghost noises while filming the coven scene at the end of the film. For the final scene with all of the townspeople at the Owens’ home, the entire population of the town where filming took place was invited to show up in costume and appear as townsfolk.
Composer Michael Nyman’s score to the movie was abruptly replaced with music by Alan Silvestri for the theatrical release. This last-minute change resulted in the release of two soundtracks, although as primarily a compilation album, only the two tracks of newly created material were changed. A 50-track demo (the last two tracks being “Convening the Coven” and “Maria Owens”) of Nyman’s score has been circulating among fans as a bootleg.
The complete Nyman score runs 62:30 and contains music that would later appear, in altered form, in Ravenous and The Actors, as well as a bit of his stepwise chord progression theme from Out of the Ruins/String Quartet No. 3/Carrington/The End of the Affair/The Claim. “Convening the Coven”, though not “Maria Owens”, was subsequently reissued on The Very Best of Michael Nyman: Film Music 1980–2001, and music that uses material related to this piece has not been used elsewhere.
Singer Stevie Nicks headlined the soundtrack’s published advertisements, promoting her songs “If You Ever Did Believe” and a new recording of her song “Crystal”, both songs featuring Sheryl Crow on back-up vocals.
Practical Magic motive trailer.
Practical Magic (1998)
Directed by: Griffin Dunne
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing, Aidan Quinn, Goran Visnjic, Caprice Benedetti, Camilla Belle, Lora Anne Criswell, Margo Martindale, Chloe Webb
Screenplay by: Robin Swicord, Akiva Goldsman, Adam Brooks
Production Design by: Robin Standefer
Cinematography by: Andrew Dunn
Film Editing by: Elizabeth Kling
Costume Design by: Judianna Makovsky
Set Decoration by: Claire Jenora Bowin
Music by: Alan Silvestri
MPAA Rating: Taglines: For two sisters from a family of witches, falling in love is the trickiest spell of all.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: October 16, 1998
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