"Maybe Michael is really paranoid," Samuelson suggested on the Houston set. "I mean, here's a man who lost his wife to an FBI mishap. And it wasn't even an accident. Mistakes were made, but no one will look him in the eye and apologize. All they can do is look at him and say, 'She was a great patriot.' "
"This is a naturalistic film," director Pellington said. "But it has hyper-naturalistic elements to it, in relationship to Michael Farraday's journey, and his increasing sense of distressed paranoia as he goes deeper into his own neuroses."
Robbins sounded a similar note: "This is a thriller about Jeff trying to find the truth. But it's also about whether he's consumed by the truth and actually becomes what he fears."
With a reasonably straight face, Robbins continued: "I have to say, I believe there's something really dark about Jeff Bridges' character. I don't know whether we can trust him or not. Maybe he's motivated by some really negative things--like the death of his wife and who he holds responsible for that."
"Of course," Robbins concluded with an enigmatic smile, "I'm a great believer in disinformation as a way of selling this film."
Perhaps a little more disinformation might have maintained a sense of mystery. Unfortunately, as soon as PolyGram Pictures attached the "Arlington Road" trailer to "What Dreams May Come," the guessing game was over: Robbins and Cusack clearly are the villains of the piece, and their nefarious plotting obviously involves the terrorist bombing of a large building. Bridges might be paranoid, but he has every right to be.
"Arlington Road," a Lakeshore Entertainment production, passed from PolyGram to Sony's Screen Gems subsidiary after Universal Pictures consumed PolyGram earlier this year. Even so, the trailer remained more or less unchanged after the switch, and it continues to tell audiences a lot more than the filmmakers ever wanted them to know.
"It just seems to follow the basic trend of showing virtually the whole movie in the trailer," says Variety film critic Todd McCarthy. "It's something that's been going on for a while now--which I think is ludicrous. Unless you have someone really creative doing the trailer, you basically get an abbreviated version of the movie in three or so minutes."
