‘Two Harbors’ well received at screening
Monica Isley - Lake County News Chronicle - 03/22/2007
The Community Center in Two Harbors became the site of a movie screening last Friday when a group of about 20 people gathered to munch popcorn and watch the independent film, “Two Harbors.”
Unlike other movies these people had seen, this one was accompanied by the writer/director/producer, James Vculek, who used Two Harbors for the opening shots of a production that has won eight awards.
Vculek kept a low profile before the film started, watching from the sidelines and, admittedly, enjoying the audience’s reactions.
“It’s fun watching with an audience,” he wrote a few days later in an email. “A very different experience than just watching it on a monitor, as I did numberless times while editing it, and not knowing how it would be received.”
After the showing, when the applause died down, Vculek hung around to answer questions. He said that although he has written a few plays and had them performed onstage in the Minneapolis area, “Two Harbors” was his first film.
The film, about a jaded junk dealer who believes in extra-terrestrials and the sweet, vulnerable young woman who believes in him, is based on a true story that took place on the Gunflint Trail in 1983.
At that time, a woman, and a man who “belonged to a space cult,” according to Vculek, sat in a car for six weeks and eventually died, waiting for aliens to arrive.
Vculek wrote the film without a title, until he drove through Two Harbors one day and decided the name fit the idea of two lost souls finding a harbor in each other, albeit with tragic results. The bleak, winter shots added to the sober feel of the movie’s end.
However, it didn’t prevent the humorous moments from shining through, and the audience’s delighted laughter at well-written and well-delivered lines were undoubtedly music to Vculek’s ears.
Alex Cole and Catherine E. Johnson, as Vic and Cassie, seemed to fit the leads. In fact, Vculek said that he rewrote the female part to suit a younger woman after watching Johnson in a stage production.
He admitted that for a first film, this one was a bit overwhelming. Independent films are often shot with low budgets using personal funds and with few people involved.
“We had to run all over the place to film this,” Vculek said.
The two characters in the film meet when Vic leaves his booth in an antique store and discovers Cassie in another booth, selling the only two of her collection of handmade dolls that she can bear to part with. The dolls--all 250 of them--show up again in the poignant last scene.
Inevitably, the question arose: where did the dolls really come from? Vculek smiled before he answered.
“My mother made them” he said.
The film’s art director came up with the pattern for the six-inch dolls, and some of the crew tried their hand at making them. They learned it wasn’t their forte.
So, Audrey Vculek was recruited, and in one week she had produced nearly all of the button-eyed creatures.
“Two Harbors” is available online at www.indieflix.com. Click on “drama” and scroll down to read what others say about it.
