The challenge of making her first independent film as writer and director began for screenwriter Karen Moncrieff, it all began with a stranger she spied at a poetry class, an intense, quiet young woman who sparked her imagination.

"A teenage girl showed up at this poetry workshop I was in, otherwise all adults.  She'd sit in the corner, hiding, hair covering her face, scribbling on her jeans and on her skin," she recalls.  "But when it came her turn to read, out came this amazing, beautiful work.  Some drive to be heard had brought her there, but she could barely muster up the courage to speak.  I had a strong urge to set her off on a journey--one which would not only let her discover her strong, clear, beautiful voice, but force her to find the strength to stand up tall and use it."

Moncrieff did so by sitting down to write a screenplay that took off in directions she did not anticipate, becoming a story that, though not autobiographical, incorporated many of Moncrieff's observations of families, relationships and emotional turmoil.  The result was her very first feature film script, which went on to win the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship for new writers.   

Even before that, producer Peer J. Oppenheimer was drawn to the script's sharp, lyrical tone, and optioned it.   

"This may be an oversimplification, but I learned early in my career that film is not an industry where you can succeed by playing it safe.  There is no safe," says Oppenheimer. "So letting Karen direct this script, a difficult script and her very first, was an easy decision.  Her vision of what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it, down the very tiniest of details, convinced me one hundred percent that she would succeed." 

Blue Car was first seen at the 2002 Sundance  Film Festival, where it won over audiences and critics alike with its deft, you-are-there emotional realism and its standout performances--including David Strathairn's complicated portrait of a veteran teacher drawn to his most promising student and 16 year-old Agnes Bruckner's evocation of Meg's substantial gifts and unconscious yet powerful sexuality. 

If there's a hint of Lolita about Blue Car this time the tale is told from the perspective of a distinctly contemporary Lolita herself, an angry, troubled, gifted young woman with an inner longing and sensual power she does not yet understand. 

The mistake-prone path to becoming who we most want to be in life - a good parent, a resilient daughter, a transforming teacher, a person who never crosses the line between right and wrong -- comes to the fore in Blue Car, a story about a fiercely talented young woman searching desperately for someone to trust in offers plenty of raw emotional energy but no easy answers.  This is by design.

Moncrieff is drawn to a highly personal form of filmmaking that seeks out the turbulent moments of revelation that arise from true family interactions, from real encounters between vulnerable, broken, not always ethical yet not necessarily bad men and women, parents and children. 

"I'm most interested in people who are flawed, who search for answers and strive to be better," says Moncrieff.  "The characters in Blue Car are flesh-and-blood human beings who make terrible errors, who show very bad judgement at times, and who struggle against themselves, but to whom we can ultimately relate.  In all that happens to her, Meg is searching deeply for the same thing that drives us all:  emotional connection. These characters - Meg, Lily, Mr. Auster -- exist in a grey world of complex motivations and changing desires.  They are never wholly altruistic or wholly selfish.  But they elicit compassion, I hope, even when they do the most unfortunate things."

The characters do indeed end up doing unfortunate things - a mother ignores her children's warning signs, a daughter who knows better commits crimes, an authority figure abuses his power -- but with a palpable honesty that allows the underlying hopes, confusion, resolve and uncertainty of each of their inner lives to emerge. 

Moncrieff had envisioned her characters so clearly and so completely while writing that casting them was a vital part of the creative process. 

From the moment she penned the first lines of the screenplay, she always saw acclaimed indie film star David Strathairn as the English teacher Mr. Auster. Strathairn's innate intelligence and quiet charm seemed perfect for a man who begins as an erudite and authentically inspiring teacher but ultimately is undone by his own fragility, subtle deceits and longing to connect.  The closest thing Meg has to a father, Auster is at once a mentor and a danger to her, a contradiction Moncrieff wanted to see drawn subtly and powerfully.

  "I'd been a fan of David's work for years and when he agreed to do the movie, I was thrilled," she says.  "It is such a tricky part and I knew I needed an actor who could invest it with humanity and warmth, yet who would be fearless in going to where Auster ultimately goes.  I think David peels back the darkest layers of a man's heart in this role.  His performance was ultimately very subtle but also brave, generous and, despite Auster's choices, beautiful."

Strathairn says it was Moncrieff's script that fuelled his performance, one he approached as an exciting challenge.  "I thought Karen had done something very interesting in this story:  using the lens of poetry, she explores how a person discovers the meaning not just of their words, but of their life," he says. "It was also obvious to me that we were headed into sticky terrain.  But Karen's approach was so confident and so contagiously positive that I felt together we were ready for whatever lay ahead."

Taking a page from his extensive work with John Sayles, Strathairn asked Moncrieff to provide him with some written "character notes" to help immerse himself inside Auster's tormented soul. 

"What I ended up writing was Auster's inner monologue, his 3 a.m. rumination on fading youth, isolation and longing," says Moncrieff. "If you engage a great actor's imagination, he'll usually come up with great things, and David did not disappoint."

Ultimately, Strathairn sees the character of Auster as intentionally drawn to push emotional buttons and raise many unsettling questions about what constitutes appropriate adult behaviour, but he wanted to get to the essential humanity of the character rather than judge him outright.  "The challenge to playing Auster was never to sentimentalise him," he explains, "to avoid the trap of making his love of poetry in any way cloying or melodramatic, and also to not undermine his ultimately irresponsible actions, while at the same time to validate them as sincere, best-intended and heartfelt."

But if Auster's attraction to his young student is comprehensible, its results are no less shattering to young Meg, a young woman in desperate need of someone to trust.  Playing Meg is newcomer Agnes Bruckner, who evokes both the teenager's naive bewilderment and her smouldering sexuality, as well as her complex role inside her broken family.

For Bruckner, the role was a do-or-die proposition.  She recalls:  "When I first read it, I knew I had to do this movie or I would never be happy again.  It felt like a life or death decision.  It was so real and so moving and it was about everything I was going through in my personal life - my own parents had just separated - and it felt like a sign that everything was going to be OK."

Bruckner believes in letting instincts rule her performances and with Meg this took her in unforeseen directions.  "A lot of people say Meg is sexy but I never thought of her that way because she doesn't think of herself that way," she explains.  "Her sexiness is not intentional.  Mr. Auster notices her more because she's this very unique creature and her poetry is so beautiful and I think the way he really listens to her makes her feel good inside.  She is very smart and very special but when it comes to understanding what love is, she's a regular teenager."

Despite all the turmoil, trouble, and deceit Meg goes through,  Bruckner feels the character emerges as a person she really likes, a young woman with real hope for the future.  "Meg is like so many people I know and, really, like all kinds of teenagers who have the potential to do something wonderful," she says. "Things aren't ever going to be easy for her, but she figures out a lot in this story, leaps over some important hurdles, and realises that what she needs is something very simple - to feel loved." 

Blue Car was shot, in true indie style, in 20 days.  The bulk of the movie was shot in Dayton (in order to take advantage of the talent at the local Wright State Film School) with the crew's rented apartment standing in for Meg and Lily's home.   

The key crew then travelled to Oxnard, California to film the Florida beach scenes.  Adding to the intimacy of the film is the cinematography of award-winning director of photography Rob Sweeney.  Although the film had been budgeted for digital video--a popular choice with low-budget filmmakers these days--Sweeney bucked the trend. 

He and Moncrieff argued vehemently to shoot Blue Car in 35 mm, to fully capture the lyrical subtleties of mood and emotion in the script. 

Eventually, they won, and Sweeney went on to win accolades for his work at Sundance. 

Rob's camera work is very subtle and intuitive," says Moncrieff, "which made him perfect for this movie.  I wanted our work behind the camera to be invisible, so that the audience would only see characters and story, rather than impressive cinematographic technique.  Rob did a beautiful job in creating a visually bleak world that feels painfully real."

KAREN MONCRIEFF (Writer/Director)

Karen Moncrieff received the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting Award for Blue Car, which went on to become a breakaway hit at the Sundance Film Festival.  It is her debut feature film.   

Moncrieff has also written and directed several short films, including the Cine Eagle Award-winning Galatea's Make-up, which screened at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, AFI's Summer Shorts, the Temecula Valley International Film Festival, and World-Fest Flagstaff, where it won a Silver Award. 

Moncrieff received her B.S. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and completed the certificate program in Film Studies at Los Angeles City College.   

Moncrieff is currently writing an adaptation of the Martin Cruz Smith novel "Rose" for Miramax, which she will also direct.