Timothy Hutton is a veteran of Hollywood, having worked for decades, since he was playing young teen roles. Starring in a movie for the head of the studio was a first for him though, and it brought home some of the harsh realities of the industry.
Timothy Hutton Talks The Last Mimzy
“Well, the first thing you realize is it’s going to get released,” said Hutton on The Last Mimzy. “You know that you’re going to be having a movie come out in a considerable amount of theatres and that there’s going to be a very thoughtful ad campaign and certain monies will be spent for that. I don’t think any of us, as time went on, after the first couple of days of rehearsal, it wasn’t Bob Shaye, head of New Line anymore, it was the director and he was really great about that, because he would ask us questions about what we thought of this scene, or how we felt it was going, that kind of thing.”
Hutton plays a workaholic father who focuses more on family issues when his kids come into possession of toys from the future that give them magical powers. Although real life is not so fantastical, the issues are real.
“There were times when I was away doing a movie and my son was Captain of the Varsity basketball team and he still is a jazz drummer, and he would have these concerts, so that’s sort of on the event side. Then there were times when he might have been going through something, I was away so I would try to work it out before the arrangements were even made to go do the film. I learned as the years went on that the best way to handle this is to look at the schedule before committing to the film, tell them that there’s a week that you need to go and do this, that there’s a tournament happening, or there’s a jazz concert happening there, and then even more on a general level, just to be able to come back to New York and be with them and take them out to dinner and check in with them. So I was very concerned about it, probably because I didn’t have that so much with my dad who was an actor. We would come to the set once in awhile, but rarely would he come to where we were, which was Boston, so I think I, I don’t want to say overcompensated, but it certainly was on my mind.”
The Last Mimzy
Perhaps Hutton’s whole life was research for The Last Mimzy. “I’d definitely experienced that with my son Noah, I’d been away and his mom’s telling me that there’s something going on and that it would be good if I also got involved so that both of us could kind of figure it out together, and I would say, ‘Oh, I’m sure he’s fine,’ that kind of thing, which I say in the film quite a bit. But again, it’s a different kind of thing, there wasn’t really anything extremely extraordinary that had to be dealt with like there is in the movie. I remember when I read the script I thought, ‘Oh God, I’m the last guy to know what’s going on here.’ The babysitter’s just seen the swirling things, and I say, ‘Don’t you want to get paid?’ And then the very next scene is, I say, ‘I’ll call her in the morning, I’m sure she’ll be fine.’ And Joely’s freaked out and I say, ‘Look, we have two bright kids, I think we should be very lucky.’ So when I finally got to do the scene where I come home and I say, ‘I’ve taken a leave of absence,’ I was much more into playing that part of it, and not being so behind the curve.”
The Last Mimzy is based on the short story, Mimzy Were the Borogoves, but the film jumps off on its own. “I actually read it before a long time ago because my mother’s in the business of making miniature books. She’s a book binder and all that sort of thing, and in the miniature book world there are a couple of things that sell particularly well. One is beautifully bound books that contain stamps. The collectors really love those, and then the other is anything having to do with Alice Through the Looking Glass or Alice in Wonderland, or anything by Padgett. So she gave me the Padgett story, Mimzy Were the Borogoves, and then we all read it again. I must say, as I was reading it I thought, ‘Okay, there’s this and there’s the script, but it has the same spirit.’”
The Last Mimzy opens tomorrow, March 23rd.
For the trailer, synopsis, and more movie info, go to The Last Mimzy Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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