Product Description
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Sally Field stars in this limited-release movie about
four siblings dealing with the death of their mother. Bonuses:
featurettes, commentary, deleted scenes.
.com
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When it seems inevitable that Anita (Sally Field) will
succumb to cancer, her grown children return home to help prepare
her funeral arrangements in the dramedy Two Weeks. But as the
film's title implies, death isn't as immediate as they had
expected, and the four siblings are left to confront each other,
as well as the memories of their childhood, as they watch (and
wait for) their mother pass away. A bittersweet comedy based more
on dialogue than action, Two Weeks is a wonderful showcase for
the always reliable Field. When her character is during
the second half of the picture, the film loses some of its
impact, since Field is the strongest and most compelling cast
member. But Julianne Nicholson, who plays Anita's daughter Emily,
brings quiet strength to her role and outshines the male co-stars
who play her brothers Keith (Ben Chin), Barry (Tom Cavanagh),
and Matthew (Glenn Howerton). A gifted actress with an expressive
face, Nicholson more than holds her own in scenes with Field and
gets across the pain, sadness, and desperation of a daughter
about to lose her mother. Some of the witty familial bantering
between the brothers seems forced and clichéd, and the viewer is
acutely aware that the actors are working hard to outdo each
other. Still, Two Weeks gets across the conflicted emotions
people feel when faced with the death of a loved one. --Jae-Ha
Kim
Interview with Steve Stockman, director of Two Weeks
Tell us about your background and how it prepared you for the
making of this film, how did "Two Weeks" come about?
Ive been a commercial director and writer for most of my career
so far. Two Weeks grew out of personal experience. It went like
this: When my mother died at home in 1997, the whole family was
there. The mortuary guy came to pick up her body in an unmarked
white SUV. He had one of those rolling stretchers where you flip
a lever and the wheels pop down. My mom lived in a suburban
neighborhood. It was about 5 in the morning, the sun was just
starting to brighten the sky. The guy wheels my mother's body out
of the house, and loads it into the truck. I'd just had this
excruciating night-long ordeal with my family and I stood there,
watching from the top of the driveway as the truck pulled away.
Just then, a car came up the street, dropping newspapers one at a
time in the driveways of the ing houses. And I thought, I
wake up every morning on my own street, in my own neighborhood.
And somewhere, this is going on. It happens all the time. This is
part of everyday life. How come we don't know what it's like?
Seven years later I had just finished a script and I couldn't
come up with a new idea to write. I kept looking at my list of
brainstormed "high concepts," hoping to find one that grabbed me:
Mafia Nanny? No. Talking Dog Detective? No. Time Traveling
Archeologist? No. Hooker Brain Surgeon? Way no. I had all these
notes from when my mother died -- I did a lot of writing while it
was happening. I kept coming back to the notes, and remembering
those moments -- a lot of them were really funny. Of course the
rational, I've-been-in-the-entertainment-industry-since-I-was-18
side of me was thinking, "Great. A dying mother comedy. They'll
line up for that." But I couldn't leave it alone. So I took a
deep breath, and wrote it. I started the script in a writers'
workshop, and I was really surprised by the reactions -- the
funny parts were funny. The sad parts were sad. And better still,
everybody could relate. They'd all been through it, or knew
someone who had. Which was great, because I got a lot of
suggestions from other people's experiences that were terrific,
that I immediately "borrowed" and which I can now say were
entirely my idea, every one of them. The end result isn't just a
comedy (though many parts are really funny), and it's not just a
tragedy. We've tried to make it about truth. About a family
trying to figure things out when the one person who really holds
them together can't hold on anymore.
What about the DVD: Will the final cut be the same as the
theatrical, and will there be any extras that you can tell us
about?
The DVD cut is the same as the theatrical. There are two very
cool extras: - My favorite: Since nobody ever listens to the
directors track (and its my first movie
its not like Im
Francis Cla) I invited Dr. Ira Byock, an end of life expert
and director of palliative care at Dartmouth, to comment with me
on the film. I talked about what went on with the making of the
movie, and Ira gave his perspective for people who are facing, or
have faced, the same situation. Having someone else with a
different perspective was great, and hopefully theres a lot of
information thats fun, and useful for people. BTW, After this
successful experience, Ira and I are now available for to do
commentary tracks for other films, weddings, and Bar Mitzvahs. -
When I did Q&As after screenings this Spring, several people
said they were looking forward to discussing the movie in their
book groups. So we came up with a Group Discussion Guide you can
flip through on screen, that gives you questions for group
discussion. We got the idea from paperbacks that do the same
thing.
What do you want your audience to take away from this movie?
Our first and most important takeaway is, we hope,
entertainment. We tried hard to create a film thats an emotional
ride: Very real, very moving, and very, very funny. And if we
succeed there, its a home run. Im also hoping that, as part and
parcel of delivering an entertaining film, we managed to dig out
some truth that will be valuable and relatable and informative,
and bring people together in the way that the best movies do.
How was working with Sally Field? Was she your first choice for
the role?
I had a very short list of amazing actresses I could, in my
dreams, picture doing the part, and Sally was definitely one.
Working with Sally was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Sally
plays Anita, the mother in the film. Day one of the shoot, Ben
Chin (her oldest son) is behind the camera, interviewing a
still-y Anita about her life. We're shooting 13 pages of
dialogue, almost all hers, that will take about 10 minutes of
screen time in the finished film. That's a lot of shooting, and I
budgeted two days to shoot it. But Sally wanted to do it in one.
Great, I think, I can be a day ahead of schedule after the first
day. They'll think I'm a genius. We're shooting in a house in
Nashville, TN. The crew is a little nervous -everyone is at the
beginning of a film, but this is the first day with our two
biggest stars, one of whom is a living legend. So everyone's a
little keyed up. Finally, we're ready, and Sally and Ben walk
onto the set. Ben crams into a tight space next to the camera. He
seems a bit nervous, too. Ben's British and has been a little
worried about his American accent all week (turns out it's
perfect, but nobody, including Ben, knows that yet). Sally sits
down on the couch where she'll be interviewed, puts her script on
the floor, her bag with her knitting, water bottle and cell phone
next to it. She waits patiently for everyone to be ready. The
assistant director calls "Action," and Ben asks her the first
interview question. And there, in front of the camera, Sally
Field becomes the character. You can hear jaws drop all over the
set. She's perfect. Not good. Perfect. And she continues to be
perfect the entire day. She doesn't miss a line in 13 pages of
heavy dialogue ("Fantastically memorable writing," I try telling
myself.) Every gesture, every look, is real - it's Sally, yet not
Sally...like she's slipped on a coat of character and became
someone else. We did three takes at the most of any of the 14
scenes...one particularly emotional scene was so perfect we only
did one (it's the "I can see the end of my life" speech near the
end). Sometimes I just asked for a second take because I wanted
to see what else she had. Never because I didn't like the first
one. There was one scene that didn't work quite right. It felt
like a gratuitous joke to her, not something the character would
actually do. We discussed it. OK, we argued about it. She was
right, of course, but the screenwriter in me felt the piece
needed some humor at that moment in the film. When she did it,
she adjusted her performance to add a wistfulness, a bit of
darker emotion behind the humor. So now a scene I wanted for
comic works, but it's deeper and better than it would have
been otherwise. And it still only took three takes. The most
astounding thing about that first day was how high she set the
bar for the rest of us. It would have been tough for anyone, cast
or crew, to walk onto the set and not give their all after that.
What are your favorite movies to recommend to people? What DVDs
do you have on your shelf at home?
Im a movie omnivoreI like any genre, as long as its a good
movie. So my tastes range from the fairly obvious The Godher I
& II (and yes, I listened to the director commentary on both.
Twice.) to The Hidden, a 1978 cult fave horror film. The home DVD
library is ed at teaching the kids what quality movies look
like, from the Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogy, to Jackie
Chan, to Miyazaki (Spirited Away is our favorite) to Buster
Keaton (go right for Sherlock Jr.), anything by Preston Sturges,
Casablanca and Singing in the Rain, which we just watched AGAIN
last weekend.