ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Darrel Manson

Love, Weddings & Other Disasters

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“Don’t give up on the crazy; that’s what makes love love.”

Dennis Dugan’s Love, Weddings & Other Disasters begins with a spectacular breakup during a skydive, which ends up sweeping a wedding party off a dock, which becomes a viral video that earns florist Jessie (Maggie Grace) fame as “The Wedding Trasher”. Soon, she gets her first job as a wedding coordinator and is determined to make it wonderful for the couple.

The wedding really isn’t the focus of the story. It serves as the background for various stories of people falling in love. They include Lawrence Phillips (Jeremy Irons), an overly finicky caterer from whom Jessie has taken over for this wedding, and Sara (Diane Keaton), a blind date he’s been fixed up with who really is blind; Captain Ritchie (Andrew Bachelor), a Duck Boat tour guide who has fallen in love with a woman he’s only seen once on a tour and is searching for her; nerdish Lenny (Jesse McCartney), who happens to be the brother of the groom, and Olga (Melinda Hill), a Russian stripper, who are chained together as part of a reality TV dating show.

Naturally, all the plans for the perfect wedding begin to fall apart, but when all the stories converge, we discover that it is not perfection that brings happiness, but finding the joys within another person that brings completeness to our lives together.

The various stories are somewhat uneven, but the “Love Boat” style construction does manage to bring us some interesting situations and gags along the way. The film also includes some interesting and appropriate songs by Elle King, who serves as the Greek chorus bringing the stories into focus.

It is said early on of Jessie that she is busy working on weddings rather than getting married herself. That gives us a hint into the target idea of the film, that we can often lose ourselves in our work in ways that keep us from finding the happiness of love. That is expanded most clearly in the story between Lawrence and Sara. In fact, I’d have been content for most of the film to be their story (but that may be in part because I identify with the age of the characters).

The film is also a statement about the concept of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The perfect wedding can easily be something that takes all the joy out of the celebration of love that should be the real focus.

Love, Weddings & Other Disasters is showing in theaters (where open) and on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Saban Films.

Esau – Sibling Rivalry with Biblical Echoes

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We didn’t need psychologists to tell us about sibling rivalry. Any parent with two children will be familiar with the concept (as will anyone with brothers or sisters). It is certainly present in biblical stories, starting with Cain and Abel. The sibling rivalry story that is most involved  in the Bible is that of Jacob and Esau (beginning in Genesis 25). That story echoes throughout Esau, a English language film from Russian-French director Pavel Lungin based on a novel by Israeli author Meir Shalev.

Hearing that his father is ailing, Esau (Lior Ashkenazi), a writer living in the US, returns to Israel to visit his family he left 20 years ago. There he must confront his embittered twin brother Jacob (Mark Ivanir), who has taken over the family bakery. Their father Abraham (Harvey Keitel) is in failing health and deteriorating mentally. Esau begins to write about his family history, flashing back to their youth when both brothers (played by Yoav Rotman and Lion Ravich) were in love with the same girl, Lea (Shira Haas), who eventually marries Jacob. Jacob’s daughter Romy (Omer Goldman) finds in her uncle someone to appreciate her as Jacob does not, which adds to the tension the brothers are dealing with.

We also see the troubled family life the two boys faced with their stubborn and angry father (played in the flashbacks by Omri Raveh) and their mother Sara (Yulia Peresild) who tries to placate him. The two boys have different personalities. Esau is bookish and favored by his mother, while Jacob is more like his father. (Those familiar with the biblical narrative may note that this is a reversal, one of many.)

The dissonance between this story and the biblical one could in part be explained by this being Esau’s story. The biblical account is really a pro-Jacob story. But the way this both is and is not a biblical story reminds us that the stories we read in the bible are not just moral lessons or legends. They are very much our stories. We can see ourselves in the stories of the patriarch, the kings, the prophets. Watching Esau and Jacob navigate their family and personal barriers, we know that we have lived through such times.

Bread is very much a part of this family and the story. Jacob is continuing the family bakery business. The book Esau has written before the story begins is a book about bread. (But he tells someone at a signing that he’s not a baker, he just writes about bread.) When we see the family during the boys’ youth, we see the whole family working dough and making bread. Bread is not just their business, it is their lives. So it is appropriate that when reconciliation between Esau and Jacob becomes a possibility, it is shown by them breaking bread together

Esau is available on VOD.

Photos courtesy of 2-Team Productions and Archstone Distribution

The Loss Adjuster – Job lite

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“It’s only when you’ve lost everything that you realize what you’re really missing.”

In Vincent Woods’s film The Loss Adjuster, a modern-day Job is having one of the worst days of his life. It begins with his wife leaving him and goes steadily downhill.

Martin Dyer (Luke Goss) is an insurance adjuster who spends his day dealing with other people’s bad days—burglaries and property damage. He is a kind and gentle man who tries to bring comfort to the people he deals with. His day begins when his wife, no longer satisfied with their financial issues (which we learn are her fault), abandons him. As he is sits in shock and grief, his office calls and loads him with calls to make, paying no attention to his anguish. As he goes from one meeting to the next, those he meets impart small bits of wisdom. But also at each stop there are additional revelations and suffering that he must deal with.

The film begins with a voice over about a wealthy man who falls out of a plane. As the falls the wind strips him of all his possessions. The opening of the book of Job tells of a wealthy man who is stripped of everything of value in his life. The bulk of the book is made up of theological/philosophical discussions between Job and three friends about the justice of God and suffering. There is a touch of that here, but never really seeking any depth to such serious questions. Martin doesn’t really reflect on how all this misfortune came to him.  And like the man who fell out of the plane, but the end of the day, he is near naked, stripped of everything he has valued. It is when he has given up his attachment to his past that he becomes able to move on to new possibilities.

The film is set in the Christmas season, but it isn’t really a Christmas movie. However, it does evolve into an ending that is based in hope and grace, but even that is a cheap knockoff of hope and grace.

What I find unfortunate about the film is that, like the ending of the book of Job, there is a miraculous restoration of love and wealth.  I should note that I struggle with the ending of the biblical story as well, as do many. The ending of the book of Job is sometimes seen as at odds with the overall story. There is certainly a good deal of dissonance between the last chapter and all that came before. The deus ex machina ending of this film actually makes all the struggle that Martin has been through seem unimportant. The basic of the Job story is that Job is existentially changed by what he has gone through. Martin just has a bad day, then gets a great reward.

The Loss Adjuster is available on iTunes.

Photos courtesy of Trinity Creative Partnership

Princess of the Row – Love on Skid Row

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In Van Maximillian Carlson’s Princess of the Row, the model of familial loves is boiled down to a teenage girl and the love she has for her father. That may not seem a very difficult concept, but the father in this instance is problematic.

Alicia (Tayler Buck) has been bouncing around the foster care system. Not because she hasn’t been placed in good homes, but because she constantly runs away to join her father Bo (Edi Gathegi) who lives on L.A.’s skid row. Alicia loves her father unconditionally. But to the rest of the world Bo (actually Sgt. Beauregard Willis) is the kind of person we avoid at all costs. While the homeless in films are often shown as noble, unlucky, or kindly, Bo is threatening and even a bit disgusting. He suffered traumatic brain injury in Iraq and also suffers from severe PTSD. He mutters to himself, stares off into the distance, and suddenly erupts into violence. But for Alicia, he is the only family she knows.

When Alicia is with her father, she has to assume the parental role, making sure he is safe and has food. There are brief moments when he recognizes her and says something loving to her. She tells him, “I love it when you come back to me”, but those times are fleeting. Alicia, who wants to become a writer, has written a story about a unicorn that expresses something of her feelings for her father. That metaphor is really about her own dream, a dream that may be as unlikely as a real unicorn.

When Alicia tries to get help for Bo at the VA, the foster care people try to separate them. They go on the run. The one person they find willing to help, ends up being a child trafficker. In time, Alicia will need to find a way to live her own life without being tied to her father.

The film has won a number of festival prizes, both for the film itself and for the actors. It is an interesting coincidence that the film is coming out on Thanksgiving weekend in the midst of a pandemic in which we are being asked to forego family gatherings. This is a film that can remind us that the bond of family is something that is precious, but also may require letting go of each other for life to grow into maturity.

Princess of the Row is available at select theaters and on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Gravitas Ventures

Nimic – Short and Deep

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We may not expect an Oscar nominated writer/directorto bring us a short film. But then we don’t often know what to expect from Yorgos Lanthimos (three nominations between The Lobster and The Favourite). Nimic is twelve minutes worth of the kind of surreal weirdness that makes Lanthimos’s films attractive to some (including me) and off-putting for others.

Matt Dillon plays a cellist and father. One day coming home on the subway, he asks a young woman (Daphne Patakia) for the time. A strange connection takes place which will affect their lives in a very bizarre way. The film could be categorized as either dark comedy or light horror.

Lanthimos often seems to deal with people who are losing their sense of identity and their place in the world. (Or maybe it’s really about finding a new place in the world.)  In that way, this is very much in line with The Lobster and The Favourite. The surrealism of Lanthimos’s films leads us to some very existential questions of what it means to be who we think we are and who we are if we are not that person. Of course, such depths often surprise us in short films. Just as we settle in for a brief entertainment, we have to ask ourselves what it all means.

Photos courtesy of Mubi.

Nimic can be seen on the streaming service Mubi.

Uncle Frank – The Person You Decide to Be

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Family can be a place of pain or a place of healing. It can be the place we try to escape from or the place we need to return to. It is where we hear words that are like a knife in the heart or like the warmth of a hug. In Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank, it is all of those things.

The story is told from the perspective of Beth (Sophia Lillis), in high school when we first meet her. But the focus is really her Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany). During one of his rare visits to their southern family, Beth is fascinated by Frank and how different he is from the rest of the family. He lives in New York City where he teaches. Beth has no idea why her grandfather (Frank’s father) is so rude to him. When Beth talks with Frank he tells her, “You get to be the person you decide to be or the person everyone else tells you you are. You get to choose.” That conversation changes her life.

(L-R) Sophia Lillis and Paul Bettany star in UNCLE FRANK Photo: Brownie Harris Courtesy of Amazon Studios

Beth heads off to New York for college. When she crashes a party at Frank’s apartment, she discovers that he’s gay and has a long-time partner, Walid (Peter Macdissi). When Frank gets a call to tell him his father died suddenly, he and Beth drive down to South Carolina for the funeral. Frank doesn’t want Walid to come because he doesn’t want his family to know he’s gay. Walid, knowing that Frank will need his support, rents a car and follows them. In time the three of them are on a road trip.

As Frank talks with Beth on the trip, he recalls his youth and the discovery of being gay. It was young love, but it also carried a great deal of condemnation from church and home. After the death of his first love, Frank has carried guilt and shame all these years, even though outwardly he seems comfortable with his life (at least while he is in New York). But when his father’s will surprisingly and cruelly outs him, his emotional turmoil overwhelms him.

SOPHIA LILLIS, PAUL BETTANY and PETER MACDISSI star in UNCLE FRANK

It all goes back to that conversation between Frank and Beth about choosing who you will be. In New York, Frank is the person he has “decided to be”, but does not live that out when he comes home. His father has always looked at him with shame and loathing—that is what society says Frank should feel. When at home, that is who he becomes. That serves as a kind of demonstration of the way pride and shame often play out for LGBTQ people. They may go to gay pride events, but remain closeted to the people closest to them.

(L-R) Lois Smith and Margo Martindale star in UNCLE FRANK Photo: Brownie Harris Courtesy of Amazon Studios

However, Frank may be surprised by how his family responds to his sudden outing. The revelation may be hard for them, but these are people who have loved him his whole life. They may not be able to put that into words well, but it comes through clearly. There is a nice supporting cast that makes up this family, including Margo Martindale and Stephen Root as Frank’s parents, Steve Zahn as Frank’s brother and Beth’s father, Judy Greer as Beth’s mother, and Lois Smith as Frank’s Aunt Butch. While not everyone is welcoming to this news about Frank, there is grace that comes out in various ways.

Uncle Frank is available on Amazon Prime.

Photos courtesy of Amazon Studios.

Last Call – Dylan Thomas Rages

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“You think your self-destruction is grand theater…. You’re just a performer in your own pathetic vaudeville show.”

Legend has it that on November 3, 1953, famed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas spent the day at The White Horse Tavern in New York. When he got back to his hotel, he claimed to have had 18 double whiskeys, which he considered a record. Soon he collapsed into a coma from which he did not recover. Last Call is a dark, yet poetic fictive version of that last day (and via flashbacks his family life and the weeks leading up to that fateful day). It should be noted that this is not meant as a biographical film in any factual sense. This is much more about trying to capture “the truth of the person” rather than events.

Thomas (Rhys Ifans), one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, is in the US for a lecture tour. At various colleges he is worshipped by the crowds (mostly young women). Yet, he is far from happy. He is a mixture of insecurity, narcissism, and alcoholism. On the day in question, he goes to the White Horse at 9:00 am and orders a double. When it comes he begins to tell the bartender Carlos (Rodrigo Santoro) and others at the bar that drinks need to have names to be more than just a drink. So with each of the 18 double shots that Carlos pours for him through the day and night, he christens it with some aspect of life. Drink number one is innocence, number two is enthusiasm, and he continues hitting on hope, faith, disappointment, death, resurrection, success, disappointment, and many other bits of wisdom. As he names each drink, he pontificates to those present about each aspect of life—and especially about how his life is playing out as a tragedy.

Between these various scenes in the bar, we flashback (and occasionally forward) to episodes either on the tour or with his wife in Wales. (One of the affectations of the film is that everything in the US is in black and white, everything in Wales is in color. That leads to a few interesting hybrid scenes when he hallucinates his wife, who is still in Wales, speaking to him in the bar.) In those scenes various supporting characters show us much of the failure in Thomas’s life.

Writer/director Steven Bernstein say the film is “a kind of long poem”. Other than when Thomas is reading his poems on the tour, the words all come from Bernstein, but they are written with the same kind of free verse cadence as we might expect from Dylan Thomas. We first note the poetic aspect of the film when in the first scene we hear Dr. Felton (John Malkovich) tell his friend “I’m not one for poetry.” Yet as he explains why he doesn’t care for poems, he is being very poetic. Bernstein fills the film with such poetic language.

There is also a bit of visual poetry, most noticeable in scenes where Carlos dances (once with a mop in the background as Thomas speechifies and later a bit of a tango with a young fan of Thomas’s) or during a scene where Dr. Felton performs an autopsy on Thomas as various onlookers pass out.

The use of color scenes amidst all the black and white scenes is also a kind of visual poetry. Those color scenes, all set in Wales, reflect Thomas’s concept of home and love. Yet, it is something he struggles to accept and to give. Those scenes include times of intimacy with his wife, but also of distance, such as his wife’s letters to him begging him to send money for the family.

While the film shows us a variety of relationships that Thomas has, for me the most interesting side character is Carlos. He serves not just as the one who keeps filling Thomas’s glass, but as a foil to his ideas. Thomas obviously thinks of him as an uneducated servant. But it turns out he is very well educated, quoting Shakespeare and Aquinas freely. While others look at Thomas with awe, Carlos sees him as a fraud. He tells Thomas that for all his words, there’s nothing there. For all his fame and success as a writer, he is a failure as a human being.

There is a certain irony of watching Thomas seemingly drink himself to death. One of his most famous poems is “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, which speaks of fighting against impending death. (We hear the poem being read on the lecture tour.) Yet the man we see in this film seems to be challenging death to take him. In one scene with Dr. Felton, the doctor asks him “Do you want to die?” over and over. It is a question Thomas fails to answer. Unlike the words of Dylan Thomas in the poem, the character in this film is far from raging “against the dying of the light”. He rages, but seemingly at life itself.

Last Call is showing in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of K Street Pictures.

Team Marco – Life Is Delicioso

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“Life is delicioso; you just have to bite it.”

Team Marco, from director Julio Vincent Gambuto, is a story about generations learning from each other. It asks us to look up from our screens to see the world, and more importantly, the people around us. It also reminds us to cherish the love that fills our lives.

Middle-schooler Marco’s (Owen Vaccaro) plan for the summer is to reach Level 100 in a particular video game. His absent father has promised that if he makes Level 100, he will take him to a big video game expo. But that plan hits a road bump when his grandfather Nonno (Anthony Patellis) nearly burns down his home and moves in with Marco and his mother Anna (Anastasia Ganias). When camp for Marco falls through, Anna talks a reluctant Marco into babysitting his grandfather and talks a reluctant Nonno into babysitting his grandson.

It’s a difficult start. Nonno doesn’t understand the fascination Marco has with his game. Marco is resentful that Nonno has taken over his room. Nonno forces Marco away from his screen and takes him to the bocce ball court where Nonno and his cohort of older men play every day. In time, Marco begins to become attracted to bocce. In a bet to get control of his life, Marco recruits some others his age to form a bocce team.

The film is not so much about knocking screens and virtual entertainment as it is about the value of real connections. Marco, through his video game, has virtual connections with people in many countries. But those relationships do not carry the kind of love that Nonno has with his friends—and Marco begins to find with his new friends.

There is a bit of crossover, though. Much of the time playing his video game, Marco plays wearing a VR headset. There he sees the game in a new way. When Nonno tries to teach Marco bocce, at one point he blindfolds him. He is told to see the game in his head before he tries to do it with his body.

My favorite scene is when Marco’s team meets the older team. Nonno’s friends are all older Italian men. Marco’s team is boys and girls, and different ethnicities. The younger team tells the older bunch that their advantage is their diversity and the ability to build networks that expand their horizons. It serves as a reminder that those kinds of connections that Marco had with his online game are not without value. But we know that the connection Marco has with his new friends, and with Nonno and his friends, is special.

The film teaches that we make choices that may expand our worlds. We may find our insular lives satisfactory, but there are other things that can bring new knowledge and joys.

Team Marco is available on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Collective – The Press, the State, and Trust

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“The way a state functions can crush people sometimes.”

In 2015 a fire broke out in Colectiv, a Bucharest nightclub. Twenty-seven people died because there was only one exit. The corruption that allowed that to happen enraged the populace and led to the fall of the Romanian government. But after four months, thirty-seven other victims died in hospitals because of infections. Collective, from German-Romanian director Alexander Nanau, takes us into the controversy, the investigation, the governmental response to these new deaths, and the reasons behind those deaths.

We learn that while Romanian officials were telling their people that their hospitals were as good as any in Europe, in reality, they were a disaster. The main problem, we discover, is that the disinfectants that were being sold to hospitals were extremely diluted, making them completely ineffective. The company that made the products provided bribes and kickback to administrators and officials. As the investigation is underway, the owner of the company dies under mysterious circumstances.

Nanau has brought us an observational documentary. There are no interviews or voice overs. Rather the camera allows us to be present for a variety of events. It takes us into the newsroom of Sports Gazette (Gazeta Sporturilor) where Cătălin Tolontan leads a group of investigative reporters. We meet a burn victim who models for art photographs. We go to press conferences with the Minister of Health as he tries to defend the corruption being discovered in hospitals and the government. When a new Minister of Health takes over, he allows Nanau access to his meetings as a way of being transparent.

It may seem a bit strange that the investigation seems to be led by a sports journal. Tolontan had experience with investigative stories dealing with the government, mostly with the Ministry of Sports. His expertise was an important part of why the story ended up in that newspaper, which is among the most read in Romania.

One of the key issues involved in the film in many ways is trust. Whom can we trust? The government spokespeople? The reports from labs who test the disinfectants (those labs are accredited by the government)? The doctors who run the hospitals? The press? The filmmaker?

When Vlad Voiculescu becomes the new Minister of Health halfway through the film, he shows a great amount of trust by allowing Nanau to bring his cameras into his offices. Voiculescu, as an outsider, wants to establish transparency so that the people can have a sense of trust. The idea is that trust will beget trust. Voiculescu seeks to bring reforms to the health care system, but he is challenged by some who want to undermine his efforts.

I should note that the film doesn’t end on a hopeful note. As the new election looms in Romania, Voiculescu is faced with the idea that the reforms he was beginning could vanish when the next government takes over. That election, in 2016, reflected the populism that was also taking place in other countries, including the US and the UK. It may make us wonder about where we place our trusts—as individuals, and as a society.

Collective is the winner of several awards from film festivals around the world. It is Romania’s official submission for Best International Film consideration.

Collective is available in theaters and on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Interview with Ron Howard, director of Hillbilly Elegy

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I recently had an opportunity to join with some other writers in a roundtable interview with Ron Howard, director of Hillbilly Elegy, based on the memoir by J.D. Vance about growing up in Appalachia and the Rust Belt and eventually going to Yale Law School. The film deals mostly with his family life and the trials involved with his mother’s addiction and the role his grandmother had in his life. Here are some of the gleanings from the questions asked.

You’ve made a lot of films that deal with true stories and some documentaries as well. Is there something about those kinds of stories that appeal to you?

I think that maybe as I’ve gotten a little bit older I’ve found that there’s something very powerful in choosing a subject where you can witness something extraordinary—it happened. You present it to an audience not as fiction—not as something you wish could happen, but as something that has occurred. I think that in the relationship between the storyteller and the audience, there’s that understanding that in some ways allows a filmmaker to take even bigger risks with characters when it’s based on reality. I discovered that with the first movie that I took on that was based on real events. That was Apollo 13. I also found one other thing. When audiences know it’s based on a true story they tune in in a slightly different way. It’s kind of a different kind of exchange. It still meant to be exciting, exhilarating, emotional, dramatic, you know, and entertaining in those ways, but you kind of connect to audiences’ hearts and minds in a slightly different way. That appeals to me.

Now as a kid, I always liked history, and the first film I ever made that was a serious film was a documentary about the Depression that I made when I was in high school. So I’ve always been fascinated by true stories. I was just afraid to delve into them and it took all the way to 1995 and Apollo 13 for me to do that. You asked about documentaries, that’s something I’ve only had the nerve to try in the last six years or so, and I really, really enjoy it. I never want to give up scripted films and television shows, because I love working with actors and creating moments, but there’s something about capturing events and recounting them that’s a different kind of creative exercise and a slightly different kind of storytelling, but more alike than I guessed it would be. I’m able to use more of my experience on a documentary than I ever thought I could. I feel very grateful that through Imagine Entertainment and various relationships that I have this opportunity to work in different media.

HILLBILLY ELEGY (2020) Director Ron Howard and Glenn Close on the set of Hillbilly Elegy. Cr. Lacey Terrell/NETFLIX

This is a story about American mythology. What can we tell about ourselves in these characters regardless of where we come from?

Of course, that’s a very personal thing. It deals with different relationships and aspects of J.D.’s life and his family’s experience. There are multiple themes and story values. People are going to take from it what they will and evaluate it through their lens. That’s fair enough. When I read the book, I didn’t believe that there was a movie in the big sociopolitical overview. Which is interesting. I enjoyed reading what J.D. had to say and what he thought. But it was the family that intrigued me. What I felt I could relate to, of course, was some of the cultural specificity and understanding specific reasons behind the economic hardships that family faced and some of the cycles of abuse and addiction and whatnot, which is very powerful. But I really hope that people realize that I was looking not broadly at an entire generation or society. This is J.D. Vance’s family story. To the extent that it does reverberate in people’s lives, I think it goes far beyond Appalachia or the Rust Belt. I think what’s interesting about it is in addition to that cultural specificity, you do have the sort of universal shared sets of experiences. I was enthusiastic about the possibility of offering new perspectives on this kind of shared humanity. I hope it does resonate with people from all corners of the country.

When asked about where this film fits within the thread of his other works, Howard began pointing to the place of family in some of his films.

It’s my first family story that is based on real events. Well, Cinderella Man was arguably a family story as well. I care about characters. I care about dimensional characters. I’m not that interested in bad guys. I’m really interested in how people work together to try to achieve something. When you talk to J.D., he does not think of this as a pull yourself up by the bootstraps type story at all. He thinks of it more as a rescue story. He feels that he simply would not have been able to achieve any of these ambitions, any of these goals, without the important women in his life, especially Mamaw, and his sister Lindsey, and then later Usha, and even his mother Bev, despite all her difficulties, was able to be there for him at a couple of times and allow the right things to happen. I think that really interested me. That this is a story about people who could have difficult lives, packed with regret, some of which they own, some of which they feel the victims of, but at a particular moment, they may have the opportunity to make a huge difference in a life of somebody they care about, and change the course of a family.

HILLBILLY ELEGY: (L to R) Glenn Close (“Mamaw”), Amy Adams (“Bev”). Photo Cr. Lacey Terrell/NETFLIX © 2020

He continued in this theme when asked about the way the women in this story filled in for the absence of a father figure.

J.D. himself leaned very heavily on Papaw. In his mind his grandfather Papaw was a great guy. After he passed he began to recognize that Papaw had made some mistakes and some regrettable decisions along the way. It wasn’t until he was older that he began to realize that it was in fact the women in his life who had made the difference. When I asked him, “When we were beginning to adapt the book, what were the two most dangerous periods in your life? I have to narrow this story down. Where were you the most distressed?” He cited these two times: when he was 13 and 14, and then again when he was at Yale. I was surprised by the Yale answer. I thought it might have something to do with the Marine Corps, which was so important to him. He said “Well, the Marine Corps was important, but almost 100% positive—once you got out of boot camp. It was a great growth experience for me and an opportunity I’m grateful for. But it was Yale where it almost all came tumbling down.” I found that very surprising, but it was at Yale that he began to realize that there was so much he could lose. As a boy he felt bad. He really wasn’t happy. He knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t much see the future. He couldn’t see the forest for the trees. At that time he didn’t even realize he’d been rescued by his very heroic grandmother. Later he fully understood that. In a lot of ways that’s why he wanted to write the book.

What were the hardest parts of trying to adapt this book that has so many different levels to it?

I think you just said it: there were so many different levels. This is one of those things where it’s very trying to decide what you want to leave out. By the same token, what I liked about it, unlike other movies based on real events that I’ve done that were tremendously eventful—whether it was about race car drivers or Nobel Prize winning schizophrenic geniuses or going to the moon—this was about the turning point in our lives that to anybody else on the outside, you might not even notice it happening, but within your family it’s historic. It’s seismic. It’s trying to find those twists and those turns and those turning points in J.D.’s life that were really the ones that we needed to dramatize. So we started looking at these two crisis points. It’s tricky, because it’s nonstop struggle. You don’t get a lot of comfortable time in the movie recognizing the times of peace and harmony, which there were some. But this is about these two periods when he was most in jeopardy—emotionally and to some extent physically, and when his future was most in doubt. It was really filtering through his life not just the book but also all of the interviews and identifying something we could present within the framework of an entertaining, engrossing, suspenseful, emotional movie narrative so that people could sit and watch it and lose themselves in it in a way you hope they will.