The main character in Beyond The Rain, Tom Summers, laments the current state of Hollywood affairs, pointing to the corporate risk management mindset of Wallstreet, only pouring huge mega-bucks into movies that to their way of thinking can’t miss, into cookie cutter success scenarios. But even the mighty Kong did not live up to mighty Hollywood expectations.

Beyond The Rain taps into an ocean of fans yearning for a good old-fashioned romance with a twist. And what better twist than the universally beloved The Wizard Of Oz. Hollywood power brokers can have their cake and eat it too: a film that benefits from the legend of Oz, however as a creative ‘horse of a different color.’ The titanic success of Titanic took the industry by surprise a few years back. But it wasn’t so much that it had been done before or that the story of the doomed ship was a winning box-office formula. It was an honest to goodness love story, requiring less suspension of disbelief than the one between Kong and his little lady.

Indicative of the genius of The Wizard Of Oz, most people do not label it as a romantic love story, not in the traditional sense of a movie romance. It appeals to the true meaning of what it means to be a ‘romantic,’ and the core message of the film is love -- Dorothy’s love for Toto, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and her home.

Beyond The Rain is inspired by this same universal sentiment, the core theme that also made It’s A Wonderful Life such a timeless classic. George Bailey loved his wife certainly, just as the lead Tom Summers loves his former flame. However it is his love for his student Jazmine, a love that is less romance and more romantic, that is the character-catalyst for the story, fueled by the plot-catalyst romance of his college sweetheart. The villain is also less cookie-cutter, taking the form of racism in Margy Weeks and the very society in which she lived in. And the other villain is, cringe … Hollywood itself.

© Copyright 2007 Beyond the Rain