DAVID GORDON GREEN'S haunting and melancholy drama Snow Angels stands alongside his earlier George Washington (2000) and All the Real Girls (2003) as yet another of the young director's very personal, uniquely big-hearted portraits of typical American communities. So it comes as something of a surprise not only that Snow Angels is based on Stewart O'Nan's 1994 novel but that it didn't even originate as a film for Green to direct.

Green was first approached about Snow Angels in January 2003, when his friend Jesse Peretz, director of The Château, asked him whether he would consider writing a screenplay of O'Nan's novel for Peretz, with Dan Lindau and Paul Miller of Crossroads Films producing. Despite never having adapted anything before, Green plunged in immediately: "I started dabbling in the adaptation as I was

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