Rock Bottom is a story of greed, perspective, and love. Overall, this is a feel good Romantic Comedy that seeks both laughter and sympathy from its audience. We see the journey of Frank, played by Gary Cooper, and his early success in life as a banker. As we know, in 1935 bankers were not thought of as the good guys to say the least. Nonetheless, Frank finds much success in what he does until one day when he is fired! The bank cannot afford to keep paying all of their employees, and even though he has emotional ties with the people at his bank, they let him go. As Frank is enduring this struggle to find a new job, he runs into an old friend from high school. This friend is none other than Vivian, his love from high school played by Claudette Colbert. Vivian is a single blue collar mother fighting to provide her kids with a decent life (which will attract an audience, as most people in 1935 are in this situation). The two sides of blue collar and white collar are mixed together as the two begin to fall in love. By the end of the movie we are hoping that the audience feels good about where they are in life. Ironically, we have doing a low budget film and we are taking the side of the blue collar worker (who in 1935 probably didn't make a lot of money) and sending a message to say that they should be proud to be a blue collared worker and they should be proud to be an American!
A helper in mix would be Maxwell, Vivian's mentor. Maxwell, played by Sam Jaffe is also a blue collar man and has been from the very start. He is a hard working man and is always on the look out for Vivian's best interest. We have chosen this cast because they are all from Columbia pictures and they have all worked with Frank Capra before. We wanted Frank to be our director because we like the way he handles the interactions with the characters. He does a great job with the positioning of his actors. You can see the leadership within the great timing of the actors with their lines.
Of course this team would not be complete without the help of Joseph Walker, a cinematographer from the ASC (American society of Cinematographers) who has had a history working with Mr. Capra. His variance of distance is just the right amount from what we've seen. We really like the way he can mix in close-ups and long shots in the same scene while still having that continuous effect. This is definitely a movie that has to flow from scene to scene and even within scenes because of movement of setting.
For the Hays code, we will be abiding by the rules. There should not be any dispute on whether or not our movie is too scandalous for the public eye. The biggest step we would take towards breaking that rule is the scene where Frank and Vivian share a milkshake. We feel that this is perfectly appropriate.
Special thanks to all that voted! Hope to see you in theaters!!
Nice job with this. I like the tone a lot. Good ideas with this movie.
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