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Based on true events, The Mothman Prophecies examines a series of inexplicable occurrences through the eyes - and mind - of one man. Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton and Debra Messing star in this suspense-filled thriller about a man driven to extremes to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his wife's death - and how they might be connected to the strange phenomena in a town four hundred miles away. The folks with Sony sent us the following exclusive photos and production information. Gere, Linney and many more talk about making this movie and its basis in reality.

Here's a little background. When are you in a perfect moment? John Klein, (Richard Gere) a respected Washington Post journalist at the top of his game, recognizes that moment. It comes the day he and his wife Mary (Deborah Messing) are house hunting and find the place of their dreams. It's a little too big, possibly a little more than he wanted to spend, but one look from Mary tells him this is it.

Then on their joyful ride home, with a gust of wind and a passing shadow, the dream is shattered. The accident should have been avoidable. When Mary slammed on the brakes -- there was nothing there. For Mary, the incident was a premonition. John puts everything on hold to be with her, but his love isn't enough to keep her alive.

While removing Mary's possessions from the hospital, John remembers her last words: "You didn't see it, did you?" Then he discovers a sketchpad covered with odd drawings, variations of the same eerie apparition. John can't understand the significance of the drawings but is haunted by the unsettling images.

A couple of years later, John's grief has settled somewhat but he is clearly a man altered by tragedy. He lives his life and performs his job in a fog, an unexplainable presence always with him. While driving one night from Washington to Richmond for an assignment, he loses his way and ends up on a deserted country highway. When his car inexplicably breaks down, he walks to a nearby farmhouse. The homeowner not only threatens John but tells him he has been waiting for him. John is baffled.

Sgt. Connie Parker (Laura Linney) arrives on the scene and apologizes for the rude reception, but divulges that the entire county is on edge due to a recent series of odd disturbances. It is only now that John realizes that he is in Point Pleasant, West Virginia -- four hundred miles from where he thought he was. It is not logically possible. But here he is. How?

His curiosity piqued, John decides to stay in Point Pleasant to explore the reports of unexplained phenomena in the town. He soon realizes that they may all be related - not just to each other, but also to the strange sketches Mary had been obsessively drawing just hours before her death. But what exactly is the connection? The events defy simple explanation and, even more disturbing, seem to predict impending disasters. Plane crashes, earthquakes -- surely it must be a gruesome coincidence? The more he unravels, the more John begins to question his own sanity. Are there unknown forces behind the strange sightings? What terrible thing awaits the people of Point Pleasant? For John, it's a race against time to figure it out - and try to prevent something terrible from happening.

Based on the true events in Point Pleasant, Virginia, as chronicled in John Keel's book of the same title, "The Mothman Prophicies" is directed by Mark Pellington. It is author Keel's personal account of the occurrences which took place in and around the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia for the thirteen months leading up to a tragedy that made headlines around the world in December of 1967.

"I was not interested in making a 'creature' movie. I was not interested in making a sci-fi movie or even a supernatural movie. I describe it as a psychological mystery with naturally surreal overtones," said Pellington.

As Gere describes it, "This story we're telling is really psychological. My character has gone through a horrendous loss, losing his wife in the beginning of the movie. Everything that happens for him relates to that event, that trauma. So we have our own universe being projected all the time. I think one point we're trying to make in the film is everyone sees something different. It's not like every drawing is exactly the same. Some people hear something, some people see something, and some people feel something. It's the interpretation of reality based on one's mental make-up, one's emotional make-up."

It is the psychological aspect of the story that attracted Pellington to the project.

"Richard Hatem, the original screenwriter, did a fantastic job taking this book and putting it into a movie form," Pellington says. "By creating the character of John Klein as the pole by which all of these events revolve around, he established a hero for the story. This is difficult territory, and it's really easy to veer into melodrama or wackiness. It's really kind of unbelievable so you have to go deeper, to a metaphysical, naturally surreal, enigmatic, mysterious emotional place with this material to make it work. Otherwise it's ridiculous."

Though the movie will retain the basic overall detail of the book, executive producer Richard S. Wright gives Pellington credit for keeping the focus of the film on the human story and maintaining the psychological impact.

"People have been trying to make a movie of Mothman almost since Keel's book was published," Wright says. "There are a number of writers who took various cracks at it but it's a difficult subject to get right. Mark Pellington is the guy who figured out how to do it. We decided early on to stay away from UFOs but kept events we found more interesting, such as people seeing strange lights in the sky and getting phone calls featuring strange voices. We're looking at Mothman as a presence. We're not going for the full latex 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' version. Ours is much less obvious and more creepy."

As Pellington described to the crew as production began, "We never say 'creature' or 'monster.' It is never manifested in the same way to any one person, although there are similarities."

Lakeshore Entertainment president and producer Gary Lucchesi has been with this project for a long time. It is the believability of the story that convinced him it should be made.

"I'm a producer who believes 'If it can happen to me, I'm interested," he says. "If you think of the great Hitchcock movies - if you think of 'Rear Window' and Jimmy Stewart sitting there with a broken leg and he's a witness to a murder - you say to yourself, 'Well, that could happen to me!' and I find that intriguing. It's very Hitchcockian. It's what happens when sane reasonable people are faced with the unbelievable. In this case the unbelievable is the harbinger of fate, the harbinger of death."

For Lucchesi, having worked on four previous films with Gere, his casting decision was an easy one. He explains, "Richard is a populist movie star, a man who is very appealing to wide audiences. He was perfect for John Klein."

Of the choice to cast Gere as John Klein, Pellington says, "He's a great choice. You've got to have a guy that you're going to believe when people tell him that they saw these things or when he says, 'I got a call from an entity named Indrid Cold,' otherwise you'd have to laugh. Across the board you have to find that perfect person for each part and our mission was to do just that. The material drew the people. It was not hard to get a cast of this caliber and that's a testament to the material."

Commenting on Laura Linney in the part of Connie Parker, Gere says, "I loved working with her on 'Primal Fear' and I thought she was perfect for this. She's believable as a small-town person - smart, open. She would be someone in this town people would trust. Laura's had a life, like we all have, and that comes through her work."

Pellington also found Connie to be a source of strength for others in the story. As he describes the character, "She had to be strong, you had to feel like there was a backbone to her. You had to feel that there is a sense of fair play and strength and she could jack you up against a wall if she needed to but you have to get the sense, most importantly, that she's a good listener, that she'd be fair. Within five minutes of meeting her I'd seen a range of emotion that just told me I was sitting across from Connie. I think she bridges the gap between being a character actor and being a leading lady much like Meryl Streep or Jessica Lange who are also very attractive, but their looks never overpower their believability."

Linney was enthusiastic about the project, not only for the opportunity to play a very different part - that of a small town police officer - but also for challenge of the story itself.

She explains, "It's a very risky project, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do it, other than working with Richard again, which is the main reason I did it, and the producers who I've known for a long time. I think Mark Pellington is so visually interesting that he brings something to it that will be a little more unusual."

RE-CREATING POINT PLEASANT

Because The Mothman Prophecies is based on real events that involve the lives of real people, it was apparent from the start that the production staff and cast members alike had to approach the story with only the highest level of respect for the residents of Point Pleasant. As Laura Linney describes the town she helped create, she states, "It feels very remote, very much like a town within itself, a world within itself. It's a community of people who have been there for a very long time; their families have been there for generations. It's very self contained."

But Linney also sees the respect and the pride these people have in their community. "No one in this town is a hick," she says adamantly. "This is a community, all these people grew up together. All the histories are intertwined, so there's an ease and a respect that they all have. My character is a responsible character - she's a law enforcement officer and she's responsible for the town. It's scary but she is secure enough in herself that she knows what her own world is. I think she feels like she has control over that and she does, up to a point."

It's a trait that producer Gary Lucchesi sought to maintain as well and comments on in Linney's character. He feels that the level of sophistication Linney brings to the part of a small town cop is one of the reasons the two lead characters work so well together. "You have two very logical, practical characters: a police officer, Laura Linney's character; and a journalist, played by Richard Gere," he says. "She watched 'Meet The Press' and she's seen John Klein, and she recognizes him. She's not a country bumpkin."

As important as any single character in the story is the town of Point Pleasant. After investigating the possibility of actually shooting in Point Pleasant, the production found the small West Virginia town not only lacked the infrastructure to support the demands of the production but no longer has a bridge leading into the center of town. The search continued and the production found exactly what they needed in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where principal photography commenced on Jan. 24, 2001.

As Richard Wright explains, "The movie came to Pittsburgh largely for three reasons. It had the terrain to pass for West Virginia; it had a good crew base and the necessary services that a film shoot requires; and it was near a small town with a bridge that could be shut down for filming."

In addition, the area also had neighborhoods that served as both Georgetown and Chicago.

Kittanning, a small town in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, was selected to double Point Pleasant. At one point during the production a group of real Point Pleasant residents traveled down to Kittanning to see the filming. All agreed the production couldn't have made a better choice. One of the observers, Point Pleasant Police Chief Dale Humphrey peered though the window of the coffee shop set built by the film crew and stated, "This looks exactly like Point Pleasant. We even have a bar-b-que place that looks just like this."

RE-CREATING THE SILVER BRIDGE

One of the most important and difficult elements in the look of the film is the bridge leading across the river into town. The bridge that once crossed the Ohio River between Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, Ohio was an I-bar suspension bridge, a type that no longer exists. "The bridge sequence is to me like the unknown attack on the Trojan walls that you never knew was in the story" says Hoover, "but it is so huge that focally it will be symphonic in a sense. There's a psychological crescendo in the story but this is an actual physical event."

To create the event, production had to utilize for basic elements. Special effects supervisor Peter Chesney designed and oversaw the construction and operation of an actual section of bridge that would match perfectly the actual cantilever bridge that crosses the river into Kittanning. This section, dubbed the "stunt" bridge was built in Los Angeles then shipped to Pennsylvania where it could be loaded up with cars and actually tipped to an angle of about 40 degrees, for close-ups of vehicles sliding across the deck. A computer-generated component of the suspension towers and I-bar chains was then added to the actual bridge but as Richard Hoover noted, "The thing I am learning is - reality is better. The visual computers and models can accentuate that but in a sequence like this you really have to have reality."

The final element for the master shots of the bridge is a model built near Los Angeles. The model was 128 feet long, 28 feet high and had a deck five feet wide. It was a structure about which Hoover can say simply, "It's huge!" then more seriously, "We're doing maps of Point Pleasant so that everyone knows where every thing is in relationship to the bridge. Once we all agree on that, and have it all on paper the four big elements are one bridge."

For director Mark Pellington, the complexity of the story is not in the mechanics of the production's effects, but on the emotional affect of the film on the audience. "Richard Gere said something at the beginning of the film about just letting things happen, and I think that's what's happened on this film in every performance, every choice, exists in a zone that feels right." He explains, "That's subjective but if it feels right to me, and everybody else, we kind of go with it."

As for what he personally wants the film to be, Pellington says, "Perception is a trick thing. Everybody has their own experiences and everybody has little mind tricks or things that say, 'Was that real? Was it not real? From simple deja vus to blackouts. It's hard to put that abstraction in a box for people. How do you put that on a poster?" he asks. "My goal is to make it believable to the people sitting in the theater and for them to feel something even if they have no clue what is going on. Everybody wants to know, as the puzzle builds, why John is where he is and what's going to happen. Those are the two questions that need to be answered. If those are answered and the audience leaves the theater feeling something, and I hope a range of emotions, then we're okay."

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