Fishing for the 'Perfect' Boat - Warner Brothers buys boat to film 'The Perfect Storm' - Brief Article

Boat/US Magazine, March, 2000 by Elaine Dickinson

It was, well, like something Out of a Hollywood movie. On a routine day at the dock in Ocean City, MD, last spring, BoatU.S. member Mike McCook was meeting the captain and crew of his commercial fishing boat, the Lady Grace. As he had done a dozen times throughout the year, McCook met the boat when it came in loaded with fish from the deep Atlantic Ocean to settle up accounts.

But everything changed that particular day. A man approached him at the dock and asked calmly about "acquiring" the 85-foot steel-hulled longliner. McCook was ready to brush him aside as a dreamer or a kook and told him the boat was not up for sale.

But the stranger persisted and, it turns out, was working for Warner Brothers film studios tracking down the sister ship of the infamous Andrea Gail, the Gloucester, MA, longliner that sank in 1991 and was the subject of the gripping best-seller, The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger.

It all finally made sense. Warner Brothers was getting ready to begin production of "The Perfect Storm," the movie, and McCook's boat, the Lady Grace was just the ticket they needed. She and the Andrea Gail were built in the same yard in Florida and had the same distinctive green hulls. The Lady Grace didn't even have to be repainted to star in the movie.

"It really came out of the blue," McCook said just after the holidays as filming for "The Perfect Storm" wrapped up in December. "I knew of the 1991 sinking and I had read the book. I remember thinking at the time, 'This would make a really good movie.

McCook, who is a marine engineer and does claims investigations for BoatU.S. Marine Insurance, did in fact sell his swordfishing boat to Warner Brothers, with an option to buy it back when the film is completed. But not wanting to throw his captain, Sonny Layton, and crew out of work, he also negotiated to get them jobs with the production either as movie extras or technical support.

"We were working under the director's mandate to make this picture as accurate as possible," said Doug Merrifield, the marine coordinator for the film who helped track down the Lady Grace. "When we located the boat, everyone was very excited. It had a great look."

Also as part of the arrangement, McCook and Layton delivered the boat from Maryland to Los Angeles, via the Panama Canal, then Layton delivered the boat back to the East Coast for location filming in Gloucester, MA, last summer, and delivered it yet again back to Los Angeles, where it remains this spring during final editing. Warner Brothers also went to the expense of building a full-size replica of the Lady Grace (Andrea Gail) which was mounted on a hydraulic arm in a 120-by-50-foot water tank in Los Angeles. A full-size replica of the wheelhouse was built as well.

The film version of The Perfect Storm will premiere in June and stars former "ER" star George Clooney as Captain Billy Tyne. Up-and-coming young star and hip-hop artist Mark Wahlberg plays crewman Bobby Shatford and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio plays Linda Greenlaw, the captain of another longliner, the Hannah Boden that survived the same storm. Wahlberg starred in "Boogie Nights" and with Clooney in "Three Kings." Diane Lane plays Shatford's girlfriend, Christina Cotter.

The film is directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who directed "Das Boot," a film about a German U-boat crew during World War II, as well as "Air Force One," "In the Line of Fire" and "Outbreak."

The non-fiction book by Sebastian Junger was a surprise sensation in 1997 as it told the true story of the tragic Halloween northeaster of 1991, in fascinating, albeit frightening, detail. In addition to describing the meteorological phenomena that created a "once in a century" storm of enormous intensity off the Atlantic coast, Junger brought to vivid life the hard and dangerous work of commercial fishermen such as those who sail out of Gloucester, MA. The six-man crew of the Andrea Gail went down with the ship in that storm and an Air National Guardsman also died when his rescue helicopter had to ditch in the raging seas after it ran out of fuel while trying to aid a sailboat.

When the filming moved to Gloucester last September, 150 local fishermen lined up to get jobs as extras and about 40 were hired. As many as 15 local boats were also hired to cruise in and out of location scenes in Gloucester's Harbor Loop.

McCook and Layton spent a week-and-a-half on location, running the Lady Grace in and out of port so that film crews could get the footage they needed of the boat at work. Cameras mounted on helicopters overhead and on a crane aboard a barge filmed the boat motoring in and out of port, setting out lines and hauling them in. McCook and Layton even took the stars Clooney and Wahlberg out longlining.

"Mike was great," said Merrifield. "He was very helpful on board when we were filming in Gloucester and had a wealth of information about longlining. He really knew his boat."

Merrifield said McCook and his crew helped show the actors the ropes and taught them how to bait the lines. "When you see them fishing, they're really fishing. George Clooney actually became a pretty good skipper. I think even the locals in Gloucester were impressed," he said.