PRODUCTION NOTES

All Over Me follows a crucial period in the life of an adolescent girl as she starts to understand exactly who she is and how important it is to be that person without apology. The film presents a refreshingly different side of New York City, one where Patti Smith, not Frank Sinatra, is the patron singer/saint, where gay punks and grandmas share the streets of Hell's Kitchen, where girls rollerskate and rock out. The feature film debut of sisters Alex and Sylvia Sichel, All Over Me introduces them as filmmakers of striking intelligence and vigor.

Claude (Alison Folland, who played an impressionable teenager in Gus Van Sant's To Die For) and Ellen (Tara Subkoff) are best friends, 15 year-old girls who live across the neighborhood park from each other in Hell's Kitchen. As different in temperament as they are in appearance, sturdy, self-effacing Claude and fragile, volatile Ellen have long been at the center of each other's universe. But with school almost over and summer in the air, Claude and Ellen have begun to discover more of the world outside Claude's room. Claude has met people like Jesse (Wilson Cruz of the television series "My So-Called Life"), Luke (Pat Briggs, singer for the band Psychotica) and Lucy (Leisha Hailey, of the pop duo The Murmurs), who seem to understand her much better than Ellen does. Meanwhile, Ellen has a new boyfriend, Mark (Cole Hauser of Higher Learning, the DreamWorks television series "High Incident"), a macho neighborhood guy who shows signs of being violent.

Over the course of a few days, events lead Claude to question, for the first time ever, her friendship with Ellen. In the end, Claude realizes that she must let go of the person she loves most in order to be happy and true to herself, a painful process that will be recognizable to anyone who has ever had a close friendship deteriorate.

All Over Me was produced by Dolly Hall (The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, line producer of Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet), and directed by Alex Sichel from a script by Sylvia Sichel. Filmed on location in New York City in the fall of 1996, All Over Me is being distributed in North America by Fine Line Features.

All Over Me is the product of the dual visions of Alex and Sylvia Sichel. The sisters' separate accounts of how the script came into being make clear how indispensable each was to its evolution. Alex Sichel, a veteran of numerous independent film productions and a graduate of Columbia University's film program, had received a grant from the Princess Grace Foundation to make a film set in the riot grrrl music scene, which fused the do-it-yourself ethic of punk rock with in-your-face feminism. Sichel told her sister Sylvia, a playwright, about the project and invited her to collaborate.

According to Alex Sichel, "When Sylvia got involved, it became something more interesting because she said, 'I've always wanted to make a story about two best friends at that age.' So the story started out being about this music scene, and it became more about these two girls and their friendship."

"We melded our two ideas," Sylvia summarizes. "The friendship pulls you into the story, but the movie is also about someone learning what matters to her and about doing the right thing in the world."

Part of the tension in Claude and Ellen's relationship derives from their growing sexual confusion. Early in the film, some physical horseplay between Claude and Ellen suddenly crosses an invisible line into a more erotic zone; as Sylvia Sichel puts it, "the boundaries start to blur. The line gets pushed." Her sister agrees. "As adults, we think that sexuality and friendship have such very clear lines, but in fact there was a time when that was definitely not the case. We disconnect from that time. We don't want to remember."

The world outside is also changing the insular nature of Claude and Ellen's friendship, and for the first time, their needs are not the same. Claude has a job at a neighborhood pizza parlor, where she works with Jesse (Wilson Cruz), and is focused on practicing for the band she and Ellen planned to put together. But now Ellen has a boyfriend, the rather thuggish Mark (Cole Hauser) and he has become a bigger priority than the band, and perhaps a bigger priority than Claude.

"I think that from a woman's perspective we were all either Claude or Ellen at some point in our lives," comments producer Dolly Hall. "Things start to happen to you and suddenly you don't understand why you have this really strong connection to a person who may be very different than you. I think that's really profound, and also very universal."

While Claude sincerely, if awkwardly, tries to adapt to Ellen's new romantic status, Ellen is far less welcoming to Claude's new friend Luke (Pat Briggs), the gay punk rocker who has moved into the apartment downstairs. Ultimately Luke, who wears his sexuality as comfortably as his black nail polish or his guitar, and whom Ellen instantly pegs as "weird," will become the engine that changes Claude's friendship with Ellen forever.

Unperturbed by Ellen's frostiness and Mark's outright hostility, Luke pursues a friendship with his shy upstairs neighbor. "He kind of has to force Claude to be friends with him. I think he understands her better than she understands herself." remarks Sylvia Sichel. It is Luke, not Ellen, who genuinely encourages Claude to pursue music.

Music is a vital element of All Over Me, and fulfills a number of needs for Claude. In Dolly Hall's view, "Claude is looking to music to help her express some of her feelings, and I think that's why she wants to be in a band and write songs and be in that world, which seems to be a little more accepting of people who don't quite fit in." The soundtrack of All Over Me pulses with energy and feeling, and includes songs by some of the most acclaimed, talked-about artists in alternative music: Ani DiFranco, Sleater Kinney, Helium, Babes in Toyland and Cornershop, to name just a few.

It wasn't difficult for Sylvia Sichel to understand how important this propulsive music is to Claude, although her own specific experience was rather different. "I grew up on disco, and I deejayed in school, on the radio and in disco clubs. I would describe myself as someone who is overly emotional about music." She spent hours alone listening to records that music supervisor Bill Coleman hunted down, and became a convert. "The music is so full of feeling. It's great."

Alex Sichel is lavish in her praise of Coleman, who has worked with r&b and dance acts like Deee-Lite and Ultra Naté. "Bill's scene wasn't necessarily the punk scene — he did Party Girl which was dance and club music — but he took on this whole world and really got involved in the music. And then he had brilliant ideas like 'Jackie Blue,'" she notes, referring to the gloriously schlocky 1970s hit by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

Watching over Claude in her room is a big poster of Patti Smith, the iconic rock poet who was a founding mother of punk rock with her 1975 album "Horses," and who recently released her first album in eight years, "Gone Again" to critical raves.

"Claude has done her homework, she's researched the girl rocker thing." Alex Sichel explains. "In a way, the soundtrack tells the history of righteous girl music, which is Claude's music. Then she meets the most righteous rocker of them all: Leisha Hailey." Hailey, who sings in the pop duo The Murmurs and who wrote a song for All Over Me, makes her film debut as Lucy, who plays in a band and is absolutely comfortable with her sexuality.

Like the music of All Over Me, the look of the film, its play of shadows and light and color, is also deliberately grounded in emotion. "The colors that we chose and the lighting are coming from Claude's inner life." Alex Sichel remarks. "The film is very much from her perspective, we're seeing the world of her neighborhood through her eyes, and I think that this is a very emotionally confusing time. She has to figure out what it means to be true to herself as opposed to just doing everything for this person she loves."

Alison Folland, who plays Claude, was cast after an exhaustive four-month search. "We did a huge open call in New York City and 450 girls showed up." recalls Dolly Hall. "Then a friend of ours, who was working in the cutting room of the Gus Van Sant movie To Die For, told us about Alison's performance in that movie. We watched a rough cut, and we knew we had found Claude."

"Alison's such a natural talent," Alex Sichel comments. "She won't do anything that's not real, that's what her brilliance is."

Tara Subkoff, best known for her performance opposite Martin Sheen in When the Bough Breaks, plays Ellen, whose self-hatred is highlighted by her escalating use of alcohol and drugs. Alternately possessive and dismissive of Claude, Ellen is not always a sympathetic character. That didn't bother Subkoff, reports Alex Sichel: "Tara is so ready to explore anything that's dark, she just jumps right in there, in a way that's very brave. But that's why she's an actress, to bite into this kind of part."

Sylvia Sichel watched Folland and Subkoff create their characters' backstory at the neighborhood playground that has been, literally, a landmark in their characters' lives: "They sat in the playground we found in Hell's Kitchen, and went over the beginning of their friendship, where they played and what swings they used, which slides were their favorites."

Pat Briggs, the front man for the wildly theatrical band Psychotica, plays Luke, the tough, insouciant gay punk who is almost a brother figure to Claude. Alex Sichel wanted to audition the singer as soon as she saw his photo. There was just one problem: Briggs was on tour with the summer alternative music festival, Lollapalooza. Sichel sent Briggs a script and they began a marathon, cross-country dialogue. "It was like being on tour with him, I talked to him in every state." Sichel resisted casting the role until Lollapalooza was over. Briggs not only got the part, he helped behind the scenes, too, securing nightclub locations and contacting musician friends who ultimately contributed to the soundtrack.

The nearly symbiotic process that Alex and Sylvia Sichel began during the writing of All Over Me continued onto the shoot, with Sylvia present for each day of filming and rehearsals.

"It was very much of a collaboration." Alex Sichel affirms. "And we really feel like we made a movie that neither of us could have made alone but that is completely the movie each of us wanted to make. It's really both of ours."

Claude (Alison Folland) lives with her Mom (Ann Dowd) in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, across the park from her best friend, Ellen (Tara Subkoff). At 15, Claude and Ellen are practically inseparable in a world they have shared since they were little girls.

School is almost out for the summer, and as usual, Claude and Ellen are spending a lot of time in Claude's bedroom, practicing guitar for the band they plan to start. But Ellen is less concerned with putting together a band than she is with seeing her new boyfriend, Mark (Cole Hauser), that weekend. Claude can't imagine starting a band without Ellen, but Luke (Pat Briggs), a musician who has just moved into her building, encourages her to check out a punk rock club where she might find other girls to play with. Luke quickly settles into the neighborhood, befriending not just Claude but also Jesse (Wilson Cruz), who works with Claude at the local pizza parlor.

On Sunday night at the pizza parlor where Claude and Jesse work, Mark has an unfriendly run-in with Luke. Mark makes cracks about Luke's homosexuality, to which Luke responds with an I'm-so-unimpressed sarcasm. Luke obviously isn't intimidated by Mark, which infuriates Ellen's macho boyfriend all the more.

Late that night on her way home from work, Claude finds Ellen, completely wasted and barely coherent, alone on the street. She takes her home and cares for her unquestioningly.