Titanic heroine goes for Plunge
By Catherine Milner, Arts Correspondent
Kate Winslet, heroine of the most expensive and profitable film
in history,
is to star in one that started with a budget of just £9,000.
The actress volunteered to take a role in Plunge,
a film about roadsweepers in
Bristol, shortly after finishing Titanic, last October. Plunge,
made by
Longboard Films, tells the story of four "nowhere men of the
Nineties . . .
fighting unemployment, boredom and depression" whose fates change when
one
finds a surfboard in a dustbin.
The discovery inspires the hapless heroes to take off to the Cornish
seaside,
where they meet Clare, a road sweeper, played by Miss Winslet.
Max Newsom, the
film's director, said the star accepted the part because of her "love
and
enthusiasm" for the project. "Obviously we can't pay her the sort of
money
that she got from Titanic," he said. "But we are not unaware of her
commercial
value to the film, so we have given her as much as our budget will
allow."
Negotiations between Longboard Films and her agent are continuing
- because
she did not tell her agent about the film. Mr Newsom said: "Kate
heard about
the film from a friend of hers who was working with us. On the day
he was
driving to Cornwall to do some filming, she asked if she could join
in. It had
been her birthday (October 5, 1997) the night before so she had had
only two hours sleep. But
she was great and fitted in perfectly."
The film, which hopes to become a cult classic like Trainspotting, has
already
prompted a bidding war between two leading distribution companies.
All the
money raised for the film, which now totals around £180,000,
has come from
private investors, including friends and family of the crew and cast.
Internet Movie
Data Base Plunge page