Milford's charm has won over a California film and TV director whose prior exposure to Connecticut had been limited to a train ride through the state once. Sean McNamara, a principal of Brookwell McNamara Entertainment, recently spent a few days in Milford scouting for a movie he hopes to film here during the summer. He liked the area so much that, before he left, he went looking at houses for sale near the water. "I had an amazing tour of the town," he said on the morning of his last day in Milford. He was sitting in the coffee shop of the Milford Hilton, where he had been staying. "Milford is like something out of a Rockwell painting - classic New England."
His tour guides were Tony and Sharon Romano of Milford, a couple he got to know when he directed their daughter, Christy Romano, in a sitcom on the Disney Channel, "Even Stevens."
McNamara also has directed Christy in other projects, including "Cutting Edge II: Going for the Gold" in 2006. In the movie McNamara is considering for Connecticut, Christy would portray a young welfare mother, a role unlike any others she has had so far. The leading male character is a law school student from a wealthy family. "Christy is really talented," said McNamara, who believes this role will showcase another side of the actress.
From Hawaii to Connecticut
McNamara said he got the script for this new movie when he was in Hawaii, filming a cable series about a young surfer. While he was there he met Pam Wallace, who wrote the Oscar-winning script for the movie "Witness."
"'Witness' is my all-time favorite movie," McNamara said, "so I asked her if she was working on any other scripts." She gave him one about an unlikely couple in Connecticut.
"Later, I was working on Cutting Edge II and talking to Christy. I suggested she read the script, and she totally loved it. She came back and said, 'We have to do this.'
"I never thought we'd be able to film at Yale University," he said (he did not know at the time that an "Indiana Jones" sequel would film at Yale this past summer). "Christy said, 'You should come and look at this place.'
"At the same time, there were rumbles in California - 'Where do we shoot?' I like to stay in America and I heard about Connecticut and its 30 percent tax break [for films shot in the state]."
When the Writers Guild went on strike a couple of months ago, most film projects stopped. McNamara said he decided to use the downtime "to see what's going on in Connecticut."
Starting the groundwork
On hearing McNamara was interested in filming a movie in Connecticut, the Anthony and Sharon Romano got started on the groundwork. They had an agenda ready for McNamara when he arrived: a tour of scenic Milford; a tour of Yale University and its law school, a potential setting for the film; a party in Hartford hosted by Milford State Rep. James Amann, the state's Speaker of the House, attended by other Connecticut film industry professionals; and a boat ride along the Milford shoreline. "The waterfalls, City Hall, the harbor, it was all great," McNamara said.
He remarked that, in the movie, there is a scene in which the law school student takes Christy's character out for a sail. "I saw all these cute houses along the coast," he said, "and I could envision a helicopter coming in from the water toward shore for aerial shots on that scene".
Milford's Stone Bridge captured his imagination too. "There's a romantic scene in the movie where the couple kiss, and I can envision them there on the bridge," he said.
Envisioning is a major part of McNamara's work. When he reads scripts, he says, he takes a long time because he tries to envision the scenes in his head. When he's scouting for sites, as he was in Milford, he envisions again.
"The second I see a location, I start planning shots," he said. "It's like I have a big puzzle and I'm putting it together, right down to where we'll have parking. There are infinite possibilities; I have to choose one.
He and the Romanos - whose Connecticut production company, Class Entertainment, will be involved in the movie as well - spent five hours on a walking tour of Yale with representatives of the university. They looked at the law school, university courtyards and walkways, the fencing gym, auditorium, hallways - everything depicted in various scenes in the script. "I'm impressed by the architecture at Yale," McNamara said. "I like the idea that it hasn't been in a lot of films. That's true of Milford too.
"I want to surprise people with things they haven't seen in movies before, like the Stone Bridge. He also wants to shoot films that offer audiences an alternative to the darker films that are produced. He and his partner, David Brookwell, have spent 15 years working in film and television, shooting mostly family films and programs. In fact, McNamara recently finished filming a movie based on the popular Bratz dolls, which is one of the top fashion-themed dolls in the country according to several websites.
Besides Christy Romano, McNamara has worked with other actors and actresses well-known to the younger generations: Shia Lebeouf, Hilary Duff, Raven Symone, Jessica Alba - all of them in family-oriented movies. "So many movies are cynical, mean-spirited," said McNamara. "This is a straightforward love story. It's about the rich and the poor, about education and the importance of it. At the end, the answer is education."
With that, McNamara went back to his hotel room to grab a jacket. Sharon Romano had arrived with a real estate agent - it was time to go house-hunting.