You’ve been clamoring to see the grand white Victorian from Practical Magic,
and I can understand why. It’s one of my all-time favorite movie
houses. Producer Denise DiNova says that the house where the Owens
family of witches lived played such an important role in the story that
they decided to build it themselves: “I don’t think we could ever have
found a house that could have matched our needs.”
The story takes place in New England, but the house was built on San
Juan Island in Washington State, where the weather would be more
amenable for shooting. In the shot above, you can see how close the
house is to the water.
It looks like a real house that was built in the 1850s, but it’s really
just an “architectural shell” that took 8 months to build and was
(sadly) destroyed after filming was over.
After their parents die, sisters Sally and Gillian go to live with their
aunts Frances (Fran) and Bridget (Jet), played by Stockard Channing and
Dianne Wiest:
The movie was based on the bestselling novel by Alice Hoffman.
Derek of Derek M Design
tells me that the entire exterior set was built on an old Indian burial
ground, so they weren’t allowed to dig there or disturb the site. The
entire house was built on a giant platform. Here’s a photo he sent me of
it being taken down–you can see that it was “empty” inside:
Entry:
The Potions Room:
The pantry is where the Owens women store ingredients for their magic
potions. The props department reportedly filled hundreds of bottles to
put inside these glass-fronted cabinets.
Sally's shop in town:
The town they used was Coupeville on Whidbey Island in Washington State. Debi Ward Kennedy
says that the production designers painted everything in the town white
for the movie. After filming was done, they repainted the buildings
their original colors.
The attic:
The stairs go up from the attic to the lighthouse-like tower:
After they accidentally killed Gillian’s boyfriend Jimmy (played by Goran Visnjic,
who you may recognize from “ER”), the sisters cast a spell to bring him
back to life. Unfortunately, he came back as a kind of zombie who was
way creepier and even more evil than the original Jimmy had been.
Here he is, confronting Officer Gary Hallet (Aidan Quinn) in the attic:
Gillian in the attic bedroom, possessed by Zombie Jimmy:
The parlor:
They tie possessed Gillian to a chair and plan a kind of exorcism for her in the parlor. They round up women from the town (via the school’s phone tree, of course!) to help them.
The kitchen:
“The Aga is almost like a shrine,” production designer Robin Standefer
says of the gas stove that is the focal point of the kitchen. “This is
the place where they do their work; it’s where they place the cauldron.”
The conservatory:
“The house
itself has a certain magic to it,” production designer Robin Standefer
says. “There is a whole world in this house and garden. These women are
outcasts and this place is their sanctuary.”
Director Griffin Dunne says he was enchanted by the script: “It was
literally like a cauldron. Every emotion, theme and ingredient you could
imagine was swirling around in it. I particularly liked the women’s use
of magic; it comes right from the title. It’s about a more practical,
almost holistic approach that seems like a gift that virtually anyone
could have.”
Practical Magic fans knows that the best fan site on the Internet is Amas Veritas. You can find a lot more information there, including floor plans for the house and drawn elevations that were used for building it. I found a few of these photos there.
Others are from a Victoria Magazine photo shoot in 1998. And the rest were ones I took while watching the movie (all rights belong to Warner Bros).
HookedonHouses.net
25 de octubre de 2009
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Una curiosidad que encontré casualmente por la red :)
¿Ya he dicho que Practical Magic es una de mis pelis favoritas de brujas? ;-)
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