Kevin Spacey and Cate Blanchett Make the 'News'

Then the project spun into limbo. Over the next five years, at least four major screenwriters, two directors, one superstar (John Travolta) and his wife (Kelly Preston), and one actor-director (Billy Bob Thornton) would all commit and then drop out before The Shipping News sailed back to Hallström again.

Things finally started to come together on Oscar eve, 2000. Sony Pictures (which was then cofinancing the film) and Miramax were desperately courting Spacey to take the lead role of Quoyle, convinced they needed to cinch the deal before he won his second Best Actor statuette. "It was the weekend American Beauty won and we couldn't get it done," remembers Winkler. "We were sure we'd blown it. His price would go up, everyone would want him, and so on. On Tuesday, my phone rang. It was Kevin and he said, 'I'll take the deal you offered on Friday.'"

"I first read The Shipping News six years ago. No one would have cast me as Quoyle then," says Spacey, referring to his former predilection for such dark material as The Usual Suspects and Seven. "But I've been gradually, deliberately moving into new directions. And here I am with the role I wanted to play a long time ago."

With Spacey's blessing, Hallström finally signed to direct and began assembling the rest of his all-star team. Screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs (Chocolat). Dame Judi Dench. Julianne Moore, whom Hallström and Spacey bombarded with phone calls until she signed to play Wavey. Finally, Cate Blanchett—the producers' original choice for Moore's role—announced she'd play the trashy wife, Petal. In the end, the film had a writer, director, and stars with 13 Oscar nominations and three wins between them. (But who's counting?) Even so, Sony dropped out—concerned about the script and the increasing budget, and skittish about plans to shoot in rural Newfoundland.

"It was so remote!" remembers Julianne Moore. "We were in Trinity, this tiny town a full day's travel from New York, and all they had was a convenience store. Flights home would get delayed for stuff like moose on the runway."

Sure enough, filming in Newfoundland—legendary for its fickle, severe weather—wasn't easy. There are no luxe hotels. Cell phones rarely work. The nearest supermarket is almost an hour away. It's so small that going to dinner at the local inn, one might just as likely have run into Spacey uncorking a bottle of white wine as seen Dench floating down in her pajamas for tea. "Being isolated is actually fantastic," says Spacey now. "You're forced to become an ensemble. There's nowhere else to go. It's like going off to summer camp. A cold, wet summer camp."

On the set, things were slightly more tense. Quick chats with Moore and Spacey found them both desperate for news of New York and L.A. And for all the actors telling you everything had been great, a glance at Spacey's director's chair—which bore the name of the legendarily difficult Val Kilmer—pointed, comically at least, to the contrary. Says Spacey now, "That's a private joke."

It will all be worth it, of course, if The Shipping News turns out to be an Oscar juggernaut for Miramax. But, says Jacobs, "don't count nominations yet. Those chickens ain't hatched." Sounds like good advice. Hallström—who was hospitalized for minor heart palpitations in early December—reshot scenes and tinkered with the print up until the eleventh hour.

"Listen, it's not an obviously cinematic story," says Spacey. "But when [Miramax head] Harvey [Weinstein] gets behind something, look out. And he is fully behind this film." He's right about Weinstein's impact, of course. Just look at last year. (And the year before that, and the year before that, and...) But steering into the Kodak Theatre on March 24 just might not be as easy as seal-flipper pie.