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 Actress feels role was fated By Ed Blank Friday, April 28, 2006 Wilkinsburg native Jodie Lynne McClintock can tell you something about chance, or whatever you choose to call it. "It's been life-altering -- the synchronicity of all these things coming together," McClintock says. "I firmly believe there are no coincidences." After dozens of theater productions in Pittsburgh and New York City, she's making her movie debut at age 51 in "United 93" as Marion R. Britton, one of the 44 people killed on the Sept. 11, 2001, flight that crashed in Shanksville, Somerset County. Why that film at this time after 30-some years of acting? The answer begins with her own Sept. 11 story. The Westminster College alum was living with Arthur Pearson, her husband since 1986, at the Sunnyside, Queens, home they occupy to this day. "I thought my husband was dead on 9/11," McClintock says. "I had gotten up with a horrible migraine at 5 a.m. that morning and was just going back to bed when Arthur left for work. ... I knew he had a meeting in Manhattan. "I woke up at about 9:30, 9:45 and noticed the answering machine was flashing. There was a cell call message from Arthur trying to awaken me. He said, 'I have just seen a plane hit the World Trade Center from my rearview mirror.' "I ran to the television and turned it on. ... I was transfixed. And then the second tower fell. It occurred me Arthur might have been in his car under the rubble. I sat here on the floor and cried. "Six hours later, he walked through the door. His cell phone had been dead, and it had taken him six hours to get out of Manhattan. At 9:30 that night, Arthur turned on his computer while I was watching the coverage on TV. He said, 'Oh, my God' and fell to the ground sobbing. 'Look at the email.' "It said his friends Linda Gronlund and Joe DeLuca were on Flight 93." A few years passed before English writer-director Paul Greengrass began putting together "Flight 93," a film renamed "United 93" in post-production. "Paul was exceedingly concerned that we all look as much like our characters as possible. I went in with red hair, and they stripped it on the sides and took all the color out so it would be white and then dyed it black." McClintock was cast as Britton, a native New Yorker, and phoned the woman's next of kin. Surviving family members had been encouraged to share anything that might be of use in making the movie accurate. "Her brother Paul is a Lutheran minister out on Long Island. Her nephew Wren lives six blocks from Arthur and me. "Wren was very close to his aunt. When I met Paul and Wren after the filming, Wren said it was Marion's dream that she and he would share a little house together one day -- one floor for each of them -- in this (part of town)." In between conversations with Britton family members, McClintock made her movie debut. She had had a lot of acting experience even before she left Western Pennsylvania. She'd performed here at and with Sherwood Forest, Pittsburgh Laboratory Theater, Lovelace Marionette Theater and The Metro. Her many roles in New York include the maid Kathleen in the 1986 Broadway revival of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" with Jack Lemmon, Bethel Leslie, Peter Gallagher and Kevin Spacey. The production moved to London and then was taped and shown on TV in 1987. McClintock returned to London to shoot "United 93" at Pinewood Studios, "the home of James Bond," as she says. Some of the picture was filmed before her arrival. The air traffic controller scenes were done afterward. "We (passengers, crew, hijackers) were there for six weeks in November and December." Filming was done with two handheld cameras in overlapping takes that sometimes ran as long as 55 minutes nonstop. "Paul wanted strong actors who could be silent and still. We had to improvise in our auditions. Some screamed and jumped up. When it was my turn, I just took out my cell phone and made a quiet phone call." The reserved actors tended to be the ones selected, they noticed afterwards. "In the beginning we had a bonding experience. With the hijackers we did the full 45-minute run" -- roughly the final 45 minutes of the movie. "Everyone went full out. It was hard to turn off. "I was seated in the back of the plane. I noticed one of the (actors playing the) hijackers was sobbing. He was touching each of the actors passing him and said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry what this man did to you.'" "I said to him, 'You're an actor doing a job, and you're doing it very well.' And then we did it three times a day for the next month. "The last thing filmed at Pinewood was Linda Gronlund's phone call. I became great friends with Lorna Dallas, who played her. The most heartfelt, true work I have ever done was watching my new friend Lorna film Linda's phone call. It finally brought me closure." Ed Blank can be reached at edwblank@aol.com. 'United 93' is intense, compelling filmmaking
...To prove |
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