Read It Here First: Auditions Set...

This is the press release we sent this week to local and regional media outlets. We expect stories to begin surfacing soon.

And if you or anyone you know is interested in being in the movie (vocally), please come!

OPEN AUDITIONS SET FOR NEW MOVIE
Great voices wanted for award-winning director’s second feature

PROVIDENCE, R.I. _ The director who brought Rocky Point Park to life in the critically acclaimed film YOU MUST BE THIS TALL is hosting open auditions for voices that will be an integral part of his next feature-length documentary movie, now deep into production and set for broadcast and release in early 2009.

David Bettencourt and his crew seek nine men and women of varying ages to be voices in ON THE LAKE: Life and Love in a Distant Place, which will document the international tuberculosis epidemic of the late 1800s into the 1950s using the focus of the old Rhode Island State Sanatorium, now known as Zambarano Hospital, in Burrillville.

The auditions will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 2, at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Warwick, R.I. Auditions will be held in the order in which candidates sign in at the hotel on March 2. Candidates will be expected to read short scripts, which will be available at the hotel on March 2 for rehearsal.

These vocal roles will be cast:

-- A central narrator, could be male or female. Wow us!
-- A middle-age male doctor/hospital superintendent, circa 1905.
-- A 26-year-old female nurse, originally from Nova Scotia, 1934-35.
-- Her boyfriend (and future husband), a 25-year-old patient originally from Pennsylvania, 1934-35.
-- A middle-age hospital superintendent who lectures on the overall considerations of TB, 1941.
-- A middle-age male doctor who lectures on the history of TB, 1941.
-- A young female nurse who lectures on the mental-health aspects of TB, 1941.
-- A middle-age male doctor who lectures on the use of surgery on TB patients, 1941.
-- A 19-year-old female patient who falls in love but dies tragically, circa 1950.

The winners will be posted April 1 on the official movie web site. Recordings will take place in a Rhode Island sound studio during the summer. Winners will be notified of their precise dates in late spring.

“In bringing this important and moving story to the screen,” Bettencourt said, “great, original voices will enhance our original score and the wealth of photographs, film footage, letters, and other materials we are using.

“The real power of this story is the triumph of the human spirit from the tragic circumstances of TB, which was the number-one killer in the 1900s, as feared as bird flu is today or AIDS was two decades ago. As grim as life in this distant place sounds, it was the setting for many extraordinary stories of love, marriage and family. This is anything but a `disease-of-the-week movie.”

ON THE LAKE is being produced and written by G. Wayne Miller. Most of the crew from YOU MUST BE THIS TALL is back for Bettencourt’s second feature film.

YOU MUST BE THIS TALL earned a coveted five stars from The Providence Journal, which also named it one of the Top Ten movies of 2007, Hollywood releases included. It won Best Documentary Film in the 2007 Northampton Independent Film festival and enjoyed an extended run on several regional wide-screen theaters. The DVD continues to enjoy brisk sales.

Production of ON THE LAKE began last fall, with filming continuing throughout Rhode Island. Bettencourt and crew filmed last month in Saranac Lake, N.Y., site of a well-known sanatorium, and will soon film in Colorado and New York City, where renown sanatoria were also located.

The Crowne Plaza is at 801 Greenwich Ave., Warwick, R.I., 02886, tel. 401-732-6000. Directions at this site.