When director Nathan Frankowski came here to shoot the movie “Renee,” I wanted to see if there was more to Orlando than just theme parks. I wanted to see the gritty underside of the city.”
He would need that for “Renee,” a drama built around the life story of Central Florida native Renee Yohe, whose battles with depression, addiction and self-injury (cutting) inspired the charitable foundation To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA). Frankowski wanted to film in places where the real Renee might have gone, where the addicted go for their drugs.
“We found abandoned buildings, Parramore, all these out of the way places. It’s not the Orlando on post cards and billboards. But it’s real. We’re shooting a different texture of the city.”
“Renee” has been filming in and around Orlando for the past month, from downtown to Thornton Park, Eatonville to Full Sail University in Winter Park. It’s a movie with a certain heat behind it, thanks to its ties to TWLOHA, and its stars – Rupert Friend, Chad Michael Murray and Kat Dennings. Dennings, 24, the pretty, pale and pouty-lipped star of “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” took the title role.
“I have a lot of friends and some family who have been through similar things,” Dennings said this week, on location at a 1920s vintage private home in Thornton Park. “When I read the script, I didn’t think I could do it. Too difficult. But that told me that I should do it.”
“Kat strikes me as a young actress who is grounded in challenging herself,” says Winter Park character actor Brian Patrick Clarke, who plays her father in the film. “That’s who you want for a story like this – somebody committed to taking chances.”
Murray, most famous for TV’s “One Tree Hill, says “There’s this enigmatic thing about Renee that pulls you in. She’s captivating. Kat has that. She’s a very free spirit. She doesn’t care what people say. She’s gone to very dark places for this and it’s been a pleasure to watch her do it.”
“Renee” follows Yohe from her days in addiction to the beginnings of her recovery, when friends Jamie Tworkowski (Murray) and David McKenna (Friend) took her in, sobered her up and got her into rehab. Earlier this week, the cast and crew crammed into a house on Shine St. for a “Welcome Home” celebration for Renee, a scene set just as she gets out of rehab. Her parents bring her home and her pals Jessie (Juliana Harkavy) and Dylan (Mark Saul) welcome her at a surprise party. With each take of their reunion, every actor tries something a little different. The tone is flip and off-the-cuff – real.
“You look so HEALTHY!”
“Thanks. What’s new with you guys?”
“I have a manager now.”
“Shut UP!”
“You’ve gotta come hear the band next time we play. There might be a song about you.”
“That’s so amazing! I feel nauseous!”
“Renee” has concert scenes and musical fantasy sequences, since the real Yohe is a big music fan and rock bands were among the first to popularize the ubiquitous TWLOHA t-shirts, raising awareness both for self-injury and for the group trying to do something about it.
“Visually, because it’s a story about somebody abusing drugs and who is into music, the film can branch off into these fantasy worlds,” says Frankowski, a filmmaker best known for the Creationism documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”
Dennings says that “It doesn’t hurt to do a tough movie with a message,” meaning that this film, about the birth of a cultural phenomenon, has a built in youth audience. “And it’s an important subject.”
About that message, Frankowski, who had a hand in the script, says “We’re not setting out to have all the answers,” and Murray agrees. The path Renee takes to sobriety and self-esteem is not a smooth one.
“It’s ‘Today I’m dealing. Tomorrow, I’m dealing,’” Murray says. “It’s a step by step, day by day thing. That’s what this story says about how you beat addiction. One day at a time.”
“Renee,” which finishes filming next Wednesday, has an edge, a “name” cast and hot subject matter that invite comparisons to another Central Florida underbelly movie – the Oscar winning “Monster” (2003). Much of the local crew from that film is also on board “Renee.” Frankowski wasn’t around for that one. But he knew if he wanted to tell this story, he needed to do it where it really happened.
“The first talk about this movie was that we’d shoot it in Georgia. I said ‘No WAY,’” the director remembers. “Our producers had made ‘Letters to God’ out (in Winter Garden) and they sort of pushed me to shoot out there. But it looks like another corner of Disney World. Too pretty.
“No, I wanted the real Orlando, which becomes a character in the movie. And all these neighborhoods, downtown, the back streets. That’s pretty attractive too, in its own way.”
