It was over a decade ago that producers David Kirschner and Corey Sienega were first introduced by producer Ed Elbert (Anna and the King) to David Gerrold's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning short story The Martian Child. As Kirschner recalls, "Corey read the short story and loved it. She called me and said, 'you should read this, this is perfect.'"
As it turned out, The Martian Child was exactly the kind of story that the producers were looking for. "We love projects that deal with the issue of childhood in some manner, as well as those that have an element of fantasy woven through them," says Kirschner.
For Kirschner, there was also a personal element in this story, which made it particularly appealing. "What was very moving to me when I read the story was the relationship between father and son. I lost my dad when I was very young and so many of the projects that I seem to be attracted to deal with the importance of men in boy's lives. In this case the story hit all the right buttons in terms of its humor and, more importantly, its emotions.
"We fought for the rights to the story and lost them, but then luckily got them back," Corey Sienega recalls "And finally, a short ten years later, here we are! This project is a longtime labor of love for David Kirschner and I and it's very exciting to finally see it come to fruition."
Kirschner, who also admits to having been somewhat of a loner as a kid, points out that the theme of alienation is something most people can relate to. "Dennis is a kid who doesn't quite fit in with the norms of what society is supposed to be. I think all of us go through a point in our lives where we're 'Martians.' We don't' fit in, we're from another planet. Sometimes it's when you're a grownup, sometimes it's when you're a kid and sometimes it's every day."
John Cusack topped the filmmakers' wish list to play David Gordon from the very beginning and the role was actually tailor-made for him, as Kirschner explains. "The screenwriters, Seth Bass and Jonathan Tolins, tell us that when they wrote it they had John Cusack in mind for the role of David. There's a real everyman, James Stewart quality to John Cusack, but not an everyman from a Frank Capra movie, an everyman from the world that we live in today - one that's neurotic, sometimes paranoid, yet humorous and quick-witted."
"In addition to John's amazing talents and acting abilities," Kirschner continues, "his strength for me lies in the fact that he's almost a brand name for audiences that enjoy his films and that he seems to make really smart choices. It was a big deal for us that he accepted this role because we really didn't know what he was going to say to the idea of playing a father. It's not something he had done before, so this was an important milestone in his career, the idea that he was old enough to play a father."
For John Cusack, it was both the nature of the story and the creative opportunities it would afford him as an actor that led to his accepting the role.
"I thought it was a story that was dramatic and intriguing while remaining small and interior, from a character point of view," says Cusack. "It's about a guy who tries to adopt a boy and they just try to fathom each other and figure each other out. I like that from an acting perspective because it's more character-driven."
"I also thought it was a very modern and compelling story about a boy who can't really fit in and doesn't know how to integrate himself into the world. I thought it was very interesting, the idea that he thinks he is from another planet, like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. It was a metaphor for alienation and not being able to fit in and find your place in the world. In a certain sense both David and Dennis think they are helping each other, but they both really need each other. It was beautiful and dramatic and felt like a very good story."
It was Cusack who introduced director Menno Meyjes to the project after they had worked together on the acclaimed feature Max, which was Meyjes' directorial debut.
The producers were familiar with Meyjes thanks to his highly-lauded writing career; David Kirschner recalls their first encounter nearly two decades earlier.
"I first met Menno, who had long hair down to the lower part of his back, in 1984 when Steven Spielberg introduced us. He had just finished writing The Color Purple and I was just starting An American Tail. Who knew that almost 20 years later we would meet again and he would direct this film?"
Meyjes himself was also drawn by the special appeal of the story and by its tribute to parenthood. "It was a total love story between a child and a man, but also a kind of a poem to parenting, to how difficult it is and how heroic it is, and how people give of themselves selflessly."

CASTING
Once John Cusack was attached to the film, he became the catalyst in attracting a strong supporting cast, including Amanda Peet, who had worked with him previously in the hit mystery thriller Identity.
"I came into Identity having just this huge crush on John from being a teenager and seeing him in Say Anything, recalls Peet. "It took me awhile before I could just have a normal conversation with him and think him about as an actor and as a person because I was so obsessed with his movies."
The combination of Cusack and the story itself proved to be an irresistible draw for the young actress. "I loved the whole redemptive element of the movie because John Cusack's character feels like an outsider at the beginning and then he is able to shepherd this child. I just thought it was beautiful."
Peet goes on to draw a comparison between the film's theme of alienation and young rebellion.
"I think that adolescents sometimes concretize their feelings of being alienated by going through some kind of fad like wearing all punk clothes or joining some kind of clique or finding some way to make their alienation official."
John Cusack, who has worked with his sister Joan on eight previous feature films, naturally thought of his talented sibling to play the part of his sister in Martian Child. As far as Cusack is concerned, the idea of casting Joan was definitely a no-brainer.
"I'm just being smart because whenever she comes on screen she knocks it out of the park. She's a great actress and comedian, so if I'm making a movie and I can get her to be in it, I'm just lucky to have her. And this time it seemed like a perfect fit."
Coming from a show business family, with his father, brother and three sisters all actors, Cusack reserves the highest accolades for his sister, Joan.
"I think she's probably the most purely talented member of our family. She can be dramatic or strangely hilarious at the drop of a dime and in a way that nobody else can. She approaches things from odd angles. And I think she just opens up some channel and then can basically do anything. My philosophy with her is if you do a scene with her you just get out of her way and try not to get run over. And then hopefully you'll ride her coattails."
For her part, his sister admits that she loves working with John because she has the greatest respect for the type of films he chooses to work on.
"I think making movies is hard, and getting a movie made is really hard, as is coming up with more complex themes. John really tries to aim high about making the best kind of movie he can think of or be in. He works really hard to get a special kind of movie made."
Joan Cusack's take on the central theme of the story is typically direct and succinct. "Life is pretty crazy and can be weird and it could be that we all are from Mars sometimes. But in the end it's about relationships and how you handle things and how you work through things and who you're committed to and how you accept people for what they are."
John Cusack sums up the eagerness with which the other cast members signed on to the film. "When the other actors had seen Menno's film, Max, they knew they were dealing with a talented director. And then I'd known some of them and I think it was a combination of all those elements that probably made it an attractive thing. I think we got a great group of really serious actors to do this movie; it attracted a lot of great talent. It's a pretty terrific cast."
Another good friend of both Cusacks is Oliver Platt, who had worked with John in The Ice Harvest and with Joan in Working Girl.
"Oliver Platt has three kids and he just said he loved the fatherhood aspect of the movie and wanted to be a part of it. He also thought it would be fun to work with me again," John Cusack recalls.
Sophie Okonedo, an Oscar nominee for Hotel Rwanda who plays the role of a children's home director, readily admits that Cusack's involvement was the main attraction for her as well. "I was a fan of John's already. It's one of the reasons I wanted to do the job, to get to work with him."
For Richard Schiff ("The West Wing"), who had also worked with Cusack previously, his faith in the actor's unique tastes and talents played a significant part in his decision to do the film.
"John and I had worked together before years ago in City Hall and we had a great time. I have always respected him as an actor. He really brings some life to the material, has a specific point of view and is a good guy. And that is not an everyday combination."
Schiff also had another, more personal, reason for wanting to do the film. "I liked the story a lot because I have a child named Gus who's about the same age as Dennis and who's very special in a lot of ways. He too is different. And I certainly felt that way myself as a kid. This movie is kind of one big metaphor for all of us who as kids felt a little bit different. Dennis takes it to an extreme, but at times we all felt that way. We all felt like we were from Mars, those of us who were not the center of the pack."
The filmmakers decided to take an unusual approach to the filming process, in deference to the character-driven nature of the story and the fact that this was the first major starring role for young Bobby Coleman. The decision was made to actually film the scenes, as much as possible, in the actual chronological order of the script, in what can best be described as a theatrical approach.
"At Menno's suggestion, we set out from the beginning to try and create a live theatre environment every day," says producer Corey Sienega.
This approach was particularly useful in allowing John Cusack to develop his characters' relationship with that of Bobby in a natural progression. In the story, it takes some time for the alienated child, Dennis, to begin to trust in his aspiring adoptive dad. In order to mirror this process, Cusack kept his distance from young Coleman during the early weeks of filming, when they were off camera.
"I wanted to sort of discover the relationship on camera and work with him," Cusack explains. "And I also wanted him to develop his own relationship with Menno, and his character. So much of the film is these two people just kind of trying to share the same space and communicate. So I didn't want to become too close with him too quickly. I just wanted to let it develop naturally."
It's a process that Bobby Coleman, with remarkable perception for someone so young, understood and appreciated immediately.
"Because John said he wasn't going to play with me so much in the beginning, we would be sort of nervous with each other. And then he would get more and more playful at the end. And that really helped me out."
Bobby's innate grasp of his character and instinctive understanding of the acting process was immediately apparent to both the filmmakers and crew. During the very first week of filming the scenes where David visits Dennis, sitting in his cardboard box at the group home, Bobby started to give director Meyjes some notes. Much to the amusement of Cusack, the filmmakers and crew, Bobby piped up, just before the 2nd take of the scene, "Menno, next time don't say 'cut' so soon because there's something John and I want to do." His watching parents were a little taken aback at this audacity, but it was soon apparent that their son simply had very good acting instincts.
As the filming continued, it was increasingly evident that the neophyte star had very impressive innate acting abilities.
"Bobby is the most natural actor I've ever observed," says Meyjes. "He is just a born actor. We would all sit there during dailies and laugh ourselves silly because before takes he would be acting up just like a little Tasmanian devil. And then I would say 'action' and he would just close down instantly and become Dennis. It was fantastic!"
John Cusack is equally enthusiastic about his young co-star. "He's got amazing instincts and very specific points of view and really was the custodian of his character, much more than I was. I tend to listen to pick things up and then I'll try to figure out what I want to do. But Bobby came in with very specific opinions; Dennis would do this, he wouldn't do that. I think Bobby is a guy who just always knew how to act and you can't really teach that kind of subtlety."
Cusack goes on to describe Bobby's instinctive grasp of his character's psychological make-up and his decision not to play the role in a self consciously cute way.
"I think a trap he could have fallen into would have been to really do an overly sentimental version of his character. But Bobby wasn't interested in being loved. He was interested in finding out what the truth was for Dennis. He's definitely a fragile character, but he's got a little Jimmy Cagney in him. He has strength to him that I think is very compelling, and watchfulness. He's an actor who can be completely still in front of the camera and not do anything and kind of let the camera come to him. Very sophisticated things. So he's a gifted guy and he's got great parents."
When Bobby was not in front of the camera, he easily captured the affections of the cast and crew with his joyful and engaging manner. In this respect he was a lot like any other child, proud of having lost his front tooth just before the start of filming, insatiably curious about everything around him. At the same time, his unusual intelligence would shine through.

Producer Corey Sienega describes how the experience of working with the young actor in some ways mirrored the story of the film.
"I think everybody on our crew really felt like they were part of raising Dennis, this little Martian boy. Everyone sort of took him under his or her wing and he was interested in everything. He just had a million questions and brought such wonderful energy to the set. At the same time he seemed to come up with a lot of little philosophical kind of statements that caught everyone off guard. For instance, his comment about Joan Cusack playing the role of John's sister in the film is a good example. He said to John, 'when your sister comes next week and you say 'hey sis,' will she think you're saying it as her real brother or will she think that you're playing the character?' He's a very deep little kid."
Joan Cusack, herself a mother of two young boys, is also taken with young Coleman's natural abilities. "Bobby's a great kid. I think children in general are magnificent and magical, the way they look at the world. He's been able to come up with this character and inhabit it, which I think kids are so good at doing. And he's good because he's really able to articulate it and he has great confidence in it.'
Although John Cusack had no previous experience of portraying a father on screen, he has had practice at being an uncle and has a natural affinity for kids, as his sister Joan attests.
"I think a huge key to the personality and puzzle of John is how much he loves kids and finds them enormously amusing and fantastic. I've seen that side of him so much in my whole life and he's that way with my own kids. It's just great!
John Cusack explains that his character, David, who is himself something of an eccentric loner, is drawn to adopt little Dennis because he sees in him a reflection of his own younger self.
"I think he sees something of himself when he was a kid, someone who at an early age is escaping into his fantasy life as a survival technique. Like a lot of other people he probably projects different things onto him and thinks that if he can save him, he can save himself. Dennis is one of these kids that nobody's probably going to take because he's a kid with special needs who's got some real problems. So David decides if he loves him enough that he can get him to let go of this Martian fantasy and join the human race. But Dennis doesn't have any plans on letting go of that fantasy."
What it brings up for Cusack's character is also what might be described as the central dilemma of parenthood, as seen from his personal perspective.
"On one level David's got to socialize the kid and integrate him to the world," says Cusack. "But on the other level he's got to let the kid be who he is. And that's kind of the ultimate thing that most parents try to do. I've seen that in my relationship with my parents and watching my sister with her kids and my friends with their kids. It's kind of like an art form. How much do you make them kind of conform to the world and how much do you let them be who they are? And I don't think there's an easy answer to it. People who think there's an easy answer probably don't have to raise a kid. So I think David's always struggling with that, just trying to find that balance."
In David's struggle to conquer the uncertainties and challenges involved with his instant fatherhood, he receives the most unqualified support from his late wife's friend, Harlee. Amanda Peet describes her character's perspective on the situation as well as her role in David's life.
"I'm the voice of his wife who passed away," Peet explains, "her positive voice and this voice of reassurance. It would be nice when we lose someone if we could have somebody around to give permission because when you have survivor's guilt you probably think you can't go on. You think you can't find happiness and you probably feel like the things that you would touch might break again because things have broken for you. Harlee lets him know that it will be okay, that he can open his heart again and have this joy. I like her. I think she has great spirit."
With regard to Harlee's take on the strange little boy that her friend has decided to adopt, Peet says, "Amanda thinks it's okay that Dennis is weird, that it's good to be unique. She's an optimist who thinks right now he has to be in a box and right now he has to hang upside down. But, you know, so what?"
In contrast to Harlee's attitude, Joan Cusack's character, Liz, has some serious reservations about David's desire to adopt the peculiar little boy.
"Liz is a concerned loving sister, which I can identify with," Cusack explains. "But she thinks maybe he should have a family and have a life first before adopting this child. And he's been through this tragedy and maybe this isn't the right time to do this. If you're looking for meaning in your life, having children is a great way, but it also calls for great commitment and sacrifice. I think children add enormously to life, so it's not a sacrifice that way. But it's not all about you anymore. So she's more concerned about whether he's ready for that."

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