By Fred Topel | Image property of Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Hollywood loves to compare things to each other. Everyone wants to have the next something else, even in indie movies. Laura Linney makes The Savages, playing a woman joining her brother in putting their father in a nursing home, and everyone wants to compare it to You Can Count on Me.
Linney Talks The Savages
"Some people have mentioned that to me," said Linney. "Before I made the movie, some people said, 'You don’t want to make that movie, you’ve already played a sister.' I was like, 'What? Do I never play a wife again? Do I never play a lawyer again?' But they feel so different too. The only thing that I feel a kinship between the two of them is the remarkable experience I’ve had working with both of these fictional brothers. Both of them are amazing people. It was a deeply satisfying working relationship with Mark [Ruffalo] and Phil[ip Seymour Hoffman.]"
Hoffman and Linney quibble like the most natural siblings on film. That's acting. "We certainly knew of each other. I’ve always loved his work. We knew each other as acquaintances and would run into each other backstage. I’d see him in New York every once in a while but nothing more than 'Hi, how are you? How’s it going?' As actors sort of do."
Wendy Savage has more to worry about than just her dad. She's having an affair with a married man, and only seems to attract unavailable men. "She went after the wrong people. There are reasons for that. Jon and Wendy’s lives are so formed by whatever relationship they had with Phil [Bosco]’s character, the other Phil [playing their father]. Their childhood is so much with them and they’re in different stages of arrested development but while Phil’s character’s is coming off that sense of abuse, she was just ignored. There was just neglect and you can see that in how they respond to the situation. The crisis of having to take care of their father. My character has this romanticized vision of what their relationship is and what has to be done. I’m going to decorate the room. There’s this sense of still desperately trying to have a relationship with [her dad] in a very sort of childish way. Phil’s character is sort of like stopped that long ago. But both are going to be better people than their parent was. What do you do when you have to take care of a parent that didn’t love you? And how do you accept the fact this parent didn’t love you?"
The Savages
The Savages
The Savages
Throughout the whole ordeal, Wendy remains optimistic that dad could get better, and seeks out better institutions for rehabilitation. "A lot of it was somewhat ego-driven. She wants daddy’s little girl to do the best for him so it will enhance the relationship that isn’t there. It’s a romanticized view. Of course, you want someone to be in the nicest place you can get them into."
Linney also sports brunette hair in the film, an increasingly more familiar look for her various roles. "That was important to [director] Tamara [Jenkins]. That it was exactly the way it was. I was making Nanny Diaries. I had one day off in-between films. You can dye your hair from blonde to brunette quickly but you cannot dye your hair from brunette to blonde. It will not stay on your head and it will turn green. We had an issue because I couldn’t turn the hair around so it was a wig. It was very important to her that her hair was dark."
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