Hill of Beans

By now your local cineplex may very well be showing The Beans of Egypt, Maine, a new film based on the successful 1985 novel by Carolyn Chute. Last spring Hanover held the film's world premiere, because the screenwriter who adapted The Beans is Bill Phillips '71, a fulltime town resident and parttime visiting professor of film studies at the College.

For this open screening Phillips and the Hopkins Center's Director of Film Bill Pence invited the movie's producer, Roz Heller, director Jennifer Warren, and one of its young stars, Patrick McGaw. All won the applause of the near-sell- out crowd. Subsequent showings have been equally positive.

The movie was made on an excruciatingly tight $1 million budget, which dictated filming on the West Coast rather than in Maine. So this eponymous Egypt is really a location a few miles outside of Seattle, Washington, where there is a sizable community of film technicians many of whom are usually engaged in shooting the faux-Alaskan Northern Exposure.

While there are some light moments in the film, by and large Beans is a quirkily sombre tale of two generations of backwoods Downeasters destined to repeat the mistakes of their elders. Actress Martha Plimpton especially evokes the star-crossed nature of Chute's characters, and the production was justified in waiting a year for her availability. You won't have to wait that long.

Green Beans: No relation to L.L..