For Turner resident Danielle Nicole Blevins, it would seem that the third time is the charm. The 17-year-old singer/actress will hear her voice gracing the soundtrack of the Maine-based feature film “Finding Home” when it debuts at Auburn Flagship Cinemas tonight. Performing the powerful Patsy Cline classic, “I Love You So Much, It Hurts,” Blevins places her personal stamp on the movie after a couple of creative near misses.
Originally, she was slated to appear in a featured role opposite screen legends Genevieve Bujold and Louise Fletcher. That was before the young performer learned the true meaning of growing pains.
“I auditioned for the part of the [teenaged] Amanda and actually received the role,” Blevins said of her initial reading for director Lawrence David Foldes when she was still a pint-sized 13-year-old. “By the time they actually started filming, I had grown a good six inches and was as tall as the lead actress,” Blevins said with a chuckle. “So, it wasn’t able to work out; but as they say, when a door closes, a window opens.”
In the film industry, broken promises are as plentiful as outsized egos but Foldes and his wife, producer Victoria Paige Meyerink, remained true to their word after assuring Blevins that they would find another way of utilizing her distintive talents in the film. “We decided to give her a small role in another scene just to make it up to her and also so that she could get her Screen Actors Guild card from it,” Foldes said.
While filming a funeral sequence for “Finding Home” at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea church in Stonington, Foldes discovered that Blevins possesses an extraordinary vocal instrument. “During a break, I heard this absolutely angelic voice coming from the floorboards under the church,” Foldes recalled. “I went down into the basement of the church and there was Danielle entertaining the extras with an a cappella rendition of ‘Amazing Grace.’ She had everybody mesmerized.”
Foldes quickly incorporated Blevin’s performance of the hymn into a short scene in the film; but her solo spot wound up on the cutting room floor. “I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ for the movie but [the editor] thought that it was a dub over my voice. No one believed that it was really me. So they couldn’t use it,” Blevins said. Noting the unusually mature quality of Blevins’ delivery, Meyerink said: “Danielle sings with her soul and her voice really has the power to touch people. She has an amazing vocal range and such depth.”
After wrapping the film, Foldes and Meyerink decided that they wanted to use Floyd Tillman’s haunting ballad “I Love You So Much, It Hurts” for a particular dramatic scene but discovered that acquiring the rights to Patsy Cline’s original recording of the tune would be cost prohibitive. “The rights were really outrageously expensive,” Foldes said. “Then we remembered Danielle and asked her to record the song for the film.”
Along with Foldes and Meyerink, Blevins will be present for Flagship’s special director’s screenings of “Finding Home” Friday and Saturday evenings. The young vocalist is confident that audiences in the Twin Cities are in for a memorable cinematic experience. “I think this movie portrays Maine very well,” Blevins said. “It has beautiful scenery and there are no fake Maine accents.”
In a summer crammed with overblown Hollywood blockbusters, Foldes’ intimate, psychologically layered film is proving to be the little independent feature that could. There is already an Oscar buzz surrounding Genvieve Bujold’s comeback; and the movie has been keeping box offices busy in Camden and Bangor, necessitating additional showings. Foldes expects that the movie’s distributor, Castle Hill Productions, will open the drama nationwide this fall.
While Blevins enjoys the attention swirling around the film, she is already hard at work on a follow-up recording to her well-received 2002 “American Girl” album, which was honored by the North American Country Music Association Awards.
Being increasingly sought after for various artistic endeavors is something Blevins says she can handle. “I think I do get tired,” the young chanteuse confessed, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a good tired.”
Mark Griffin may be reached at [email protected] BLEVINS Page X
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