An Oddity at the Greenwich Odeum

Award-winning actress and director Kyra Sedgwick brings her film back to Rhode Island

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“This film is a love letter to Rhode Island!” Kyra Sedgwick said to a cheering full house at the Greenwich Odeum Theater in East Greenwich Sunday night (April 2) at the premiere of Space Oddity, a movie she directed and filmed in North Kingstown and Saunderstown in the summer of 2021.

The movie stars Kyle Allen (West Side Story) as Alex McAllister, Alexandra Shipp (X Men) as Daisy Taylor, and Sedgwick’s husband Kevin Bacon (Footloose, Apollo 13) as Jeff McAllister. Set in Wickford, the plot follows the McAllister family in the aftermath of losing their oldest son Tom in a car crash that Alex caused. Instead of taking over the family flower farm, grief-stricken Alex is preparing for a “one-way” trip to Mars, until things are complicated by his connection to Daisy. Sedgwick says she loved the script for its honesty and hope, and because it reminds us that this planet is the only one we have and we have to take care of it, she said.

Local actors, extras, and crew members packed the Odeum for the 6pm screening, frequently hooting and applauding when they recognized familiar faces and locales, such as Robin Hollow Farm in Saunderstown, which served as the McAllister farm, and Wickford Middle School. Afterwards, Sedgwick joined producer Valerie Stadler and Rhode Island Film and TV Office director Steve Feinberg on stage for a Q&A session. Rhode Island, Sedgwick said, was a wonderful place to shoot “because the people here were so kind and lovely to us and not at all cynical about the movie business.” She credited Feinberg for his enthusiasm and dedication to the film industry.

Bacon, who was spotted lunching at Sophie’s Brewhouse in Exeter in June 2021 with his wife, did not make an appearance at the Odeum.

Space Oddity debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in March. It is in a handful of theaters across the country and available to rent on Apple TV and Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.

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