Shipping Out: Launching the Big-Screen Version of E. Annie Proulx's Prizewinner Provided Challenges for Both Director and Star

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LAST SPRING, DIRECTOR LASSE HALLSTROM was sitting in the house that is at the center of his cinematic interpretation of E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, explaining what drew him to the high-profile literary adaptation. "The novel is such a wonderful mix of poetry and journalism and trivia and humor, and a document of the island" of Newfoundland, Hallstrom said. "And I wanted that range for the movie. And also this whole image of the house: This is the key image that drove me to the project, the visual of this house being lashed down to rocks. It's the ultimate image of a house being protection from the outside world."

The house, in fact, was reassembled after being built in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and shipped in pieces to a former potato field on the southeastern coast of Newfoundland. (The island, along with Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench and Julianne Moore, is one of the real stars of the film.) The interior of the house was dressed to look drably '40s, with …