Hot Stuff
Browse
Genre Picks
Extras!
Stores
More Ideas
| |     |
I've Seen It:
| |
My Rating:
| |
Avg Rating:
| |
| |
| Sammy Prescott, raised in the small upstate-New York town of Scottsville and orphaned as a child, is now a single mother who is extremely devoted to and protective of her 8-year-old son, Rudy. Unfazed by its social limitations, she is content to live in the comfort and security of the small town in which she grew up, working in the local bank and attending Sunday church services. She is thrilled to receive a letter from her brother, Terry, indicating that he is coming for a visit. They have remained close over the years while leading very different, separate lives. Terry wanders from state to state, working odd jobs, getting into bar fights, spending nights in jail and getting into trouble with women. He is totally charming but irresponsible and seriously self-destructive. Terry arrives with the intention of borrowing money and getting out of Scottsville as soon as possible. Once there, however, he prolongs his visit with Sammy, much to her pleasure. Quickly filling a void in the lives of both her and Rudy. Engaging in some heavy male bonding with his nephew: although Terry's choices of activities with the young boy (such as taking him to a pool hall late one night) are often questionable. Temporarily freed of the constraints of single motherhood, Sammy feels reinvigorated and begins to break free of her old routines. Armed with a new attitude, a better sense of herself and a zest for life, she begins to re-evaluate the choices she has made - and has yet to make - in her life. Yet in a string of increasingly traumatic incidents, Terry disappoints Rudy time and time again until Sammy is almost frantic, torn between her desire to help her brother and her maternal instinct to protect her son from getting hurt by yet another 'father figure'.
|
Here's what our members thought of this title. 5 stars = very good, 1 star = poor.
|
 
|
|
Sammy Prescott, raised in the small
upstate-New York town of Scottsville and orphaned as a child, is now a single
mother who is extremely devoted to and protective of her 8-year-old son, Rudy.
Unfazed by its social limitations, she is content to live in the comfort and
security of the small town in which she grew up, working in the local bank and
attending Sunday church services.
She is thrilled to receive a letter from her brother, Terry, indicating that he
is coming for a visit. They have remained close over the years while leading
very different, separate lives. Terry wanders from state to state, working odd
jobs, getting into bar fights, spending nights in jail and getting into trouble
with women. He is totally charming but irresponsible and seriously
self-destructive.
Terry arrives with the intention of borrowing money and getting out of
Scottsville as soon as possible. Once there, however, he prolongs his visit
with Sammy, much to her pleasure. Quickly filling a void in the lives of both
her and Rudy. Engaging in some heavy male bonding with his nephew: although
Terrys choices of activities with the young boy (such as taking him to a pool
hall late one night) are often questionable.
Temporarily freed of the constraints of single motherhood, Sammy feels
reinvigorated and begins to break free of her old routines. Armed with a new
attitude, a better sense of herself and a zest for life, she begins to
re-evaluate the choices she has made and has yet to make in her life.
Yet in a string of increasingly traumatic incidents, Terry disappoints Rudy
time and time again until Sammy is almost frantic, torn between her desire to
help her brother and her maternal instinct to protect her son from getting hurt
by yet another father figure.
|
Mark Ruffalo is on the up. After years of toil
in the theatre, the brooding 33-year-old finally broke into the public
consciousness with an acclaimed performance as Laura Linney's directionless
sibling in 'You Can Count On Me'. US critics hailed Ruffalo as the new Brando,
and producers started taking notice. As a result, he will soon be seen dodging
bullets in John Woo's WW2 action-fest, 'Windtalkers', playing mind games with
Robert Redford in 'The Land Castle', and playing it for laughs with Gwyneth
Paltrow in 'A View From the Top'. It has been a struggle, but at last Mark
Ruffalo is standing at the brink of stardom.
What attracted you to 'You Can Count on Me'?
I liked the simplicity of the story, the complexity of the characters, and the
way that so much was not being said between them. It reminded me of a
modern-day Chekov. They just had these tremendously complex lives, and I
thought it would be interesting to see if we could pull that off.
Your wife, actress Sunrise Coigney, was pregnant when
you made the movie. Did your relationship with Rory Culkin, who plays Linney's
son, make you think more about your impending fatherhood?
It kind of keyed me into the joy of it. I had such a good time with him. But
yeah, I guess so. I did feel responsible for him. I did have a pretty profound
sort of response to that kid.
How did you go about bonding?
We'd go looking for salamanders, running around in the woods, fishing, swimming
and boating. We did everything, basically, offstage - off screen, I mean - that
we ended up doing onscreen. Basically what happened was, he and I were the only
ones that were left around the lodge when everyone else went off to work, and
he would be at my door at seven o'clock in the morning going, 'Mark! Mark!' and
we'd go out and just kid around.
How difficult has it been getting this far?
I've had a very difficult time and actually quit at least 4 or 5 times. I did
30 plays in Los Angeles and yet I couldn't get a job. I thought, 'I've done all
this work, why isn't it paying off?' That really starts to hurt your
self-image, and I already had a questionable self-image coming into the game. I
was really insecure and I didn't particularly like myself very much.
You're making up for that lack of work now. Where does
your drive come from?
Maybe it's a fear that I don't have much time to fill up and I have to put as
much in as I can now.
You really feel like that?
I do feel like I'm driven. Also, I feel creatively quickened at the moment,
really creatively alive. Artists have spurts of very creative times in their
career and I know better now that when you're on that wave, you should just
take it and ride it.
Do you attribute this feeling of time running out to
the suicide of your best friend when you were 24?
That probably has a lot to do with it. Certainly when that happened I had a
different understanding of how short one's time on the planet is. I was
struggling with the same problems as he was, and when that happened it made me
really want to live. I can definitely see that as possibly being a part of this
need to keep creating.
What did your mother say to make you not give up? It's
down to her, I believe, that you carried on.
She'd never told me to do anything before, and she said, 'I've let you do
everything. I've tried to let you make all your own choices in your life but,
Goddammit, Mark, I'm not going to let you do it.' I wanted to go back to
Wisconsin and work with my father doing construction painting. She called my
dad and said she'd never talk to him again if he let me come up there. It was a
pretty powerful moment for me. I woke up.
So what has 'You Can Count On Me' done for your
career?
It's blown the doors off. It's put me on the map. It turns out that people just
needed to be told about me. You can be the best actor in the world but unless
something like this happens, you're not going to get the jobs. Certainly there
are actors out there who should be working their asses off because they are a
hundred times better than ninety per cent of today's movie stars; they just
haven't had a break that made them known to the public world on a big scale.
'You Can Count on Me' did that for me.
After 'You Can Count on Me' you worked with John Woo
on 'Windtalkers'. Did you get much action in?
I ended up doing a lot of action. I don't know how my body stayed in any
athletic form in the debauched theatre scene, but I'm pretty athletic and I
immediately could do the things that he was asking. I was running and jumping,
throwing grenades, getting blown up, rolling and fighting, doing hand-to-hand
combat. Basically, it was what I did when I was a kid. It was great fun.
Acting-wise, the demands must be very different?
You don't really have to act when there's a bomb going off next to you. After a
five-gallon gasoline explosion went off behind me, I just went flying to the
ground, scared shitless. I realised then that I'd wasted all that money and all
that time on acting classes.
Has this left you hungry to do more work in Hollywood?
John Woo is the least Hollywood person you could imagine. He's family oriented,
he's a loving, gentle human being, and he respects the hell out of actors. Now
I've not had to work with Michael Bay, but I get a feeling that Michael Bay and
the Jerry Bruckheimer machine is much more harsh and impersonal. That makes me
nervous a little bit. Ultimately, though, unless someone is outrageously
horrible to me when I meet them, it will be the material that will decide
whether or not I do the work.
|
|
|