CRAFTING THE SAVAGES:
ABOUT THE FILM'S ORIGINS
Like so many Americans, writer/director Tamara Jenkins woke up one day to discover she was living in a strange, new, rapidly aging world. Every day, she walked her dog by a neighborhood nursing home, observing aides wheeling their ever-multiplying charges around the block. She'd seen her grandmother go into a nursing home and then watched, as her own father developed dementia. Through it all, she began to realize that almost nobody was writing about these core experiences - except in the most grave, mawkish or sentimental of ways. Thus it was that Jenkins decided to tackle the subject from her own raw, real, comically tinged perspective. She was fascinated by how younger adults react to seeing their own parents drop through the rabbit hole of aging, and wanted to dig under the skin of our societal anxiety about growing up, let alone getting old.
"It was something that was happening all around me and at first I was scared to write about it. It's an intimidating subject, but ultimately, I think THE SAVAGES is a story that is not just about confronting death but really also about seizing upon your life, even in the smallest of ways."
. Jenkins had earlier come to the fore with her critically acclaimed screenwriting and directing debut, SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS, the gritty and hilarious story of a poor Jewish family trying to make it on the fringes of Beverly Hills in the freewheeling 1970s. Starring Natasha Lyonne, Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei, Carl Reiner and Jessica Walter, the film became a cult favorite - and established Jenkins' skill at traversing dark territory with devastating wit.
No one was quite sure where Jenkins' imagination would go next, including producer Ted Hope, who, impressed by her previous work, had signed Jenkins to a blind deal to write "whatever she wanted to write, provided it had some humor to it." Hope, who had since founded the production company This is that with Anne Carey and Anthony Bregman, remembers vividly the moment when Jenkins called him and told him she had figured out what her next movie was going to be about. She invited him to her spoken word performance at The Moth, a Gramercy Park venue devoted to urban storytelling where listeners can hear everyone from storytellers-in-training to master storytellers and bestselling authors.
"At the performance, Tamara told the story of taking her dad who was suffering from dementia on an airplane cross-country," explains Hope. "She had the audience in hysterics. It was incredibly moving and heartfelt, and it had these real characters that were unique and fascinating to watch. And all of the things that came out in that performance--the dynamic characters, the raw emotions, that balance between humor, tragedy and real life--Tamara was able to put on the page, and up on the screen, in THE SAVAGES," says Hope.
Jenkins notes that her story-telling stint at The Moth was just one of several seeds that led to the multi-layered creation of THE SAVAGES. "The story came together as a mosaic made out of all these little fragments of ideas, some of them from my own experiences, some of them from things I observed around me," she explains. "Then, it really started to come together through the characters of Wendy and Jon, these two adult siblings who have such completely different ways of dealing with the world and yet are thrust into this completely primal experience in which they've got no choice but to rely on each other."
The story began to broaden out into another rich but rarely-explored cinematic theme - the complex web woven by brother-sister relationships. As Jenkins continued to write, she began to see Wendy and Jon in terms of two rather unlikely-seeming fairy tale characters: Hansel & Gretel, the duo forged by the Brothers Grimm who, abandoned by their poor woodcutter father, find themselves lost in a haunted wood.
"I was reading Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment, and I remember latching onto this idea that Hansel & Gretel were very much like Wendy and Jon," Jenkins recalls. "Hansel & Gretel is really a story about children confronting mortality for the first time - they are rejected by their parents, thrown into the woods and forced to find their own way, to grow up and become individuals, in a sense. So I started to see Wendy and Jon as a modern, middle-aged version of Hansel & Gretel - a brother and sister forced on a journey into this surreal Old Age Land they're not really sure they'll survive."
But if Jenkins was partly driven by that simple, resonant allegory, she became even more excited by how true-to-life Wendy and Jon became - each organically developing an opposing reaction to their father's dire situation, with Wendy obsessively hoping to make it all right and Jon trying to maintain a sense of cool, detached realism. "I really love these characters," Jenkins admits. "They're terribly human and incredibly flawed and completely screwed up and I adore them for it. They're these two mismatched, damaged people who are both in a kind of arrested development. Even though they're in middle age, they really aren't finished people yet, and that makes them very interesting."
Jenkins was also intrigued by the idea that Wendy and Jon find themselves in a position where they feel they must care for a father who did an exceedingly poor job of caring for them when they were children. "It's a situation that I've since discovered a lot of people find themselves in and it raises a lot of provocative questions," Jenkins comments. "It makes me happy to be able to create a conversation around something that's on a lot of people's minds. Most of all, I wanted to create characters who you can identify with because they're not perfect and they're doing one of the scariest things anyone ever does. I wanted to capture the reality that nobody really knows what they're doing when it comes to these issues."
While the territory was bound to be dark, humor was equally central to Jenkins' approach. "This story is definitely not THE SEVENTH SEAL," she laughs, referring to Ingmar Bergman's classic yet gravely serious drama about death. "It's a different kind of perspective on the whole heartbreaking mess we find ourselves in."
Ted Hope and Anne Carey were delighted with the complete screenplay, which they could see right away bore Jenkins' unmistakable creative imprint. "Tamara is somebody who always finds either the funny sadness or the sad funniness in situations," they commented. "In this story, you feel like you're parting the curtains and getting an incredibly intimate look into a private world. It's a heartbreaking world, yet the movie is also incredibly funny and hopeful. It's about two people who didn't even think they really had a family coming to understand the importance of family. Even though their family was so extremely dysfunctional, Wendy and Jon still feel that mysterious love and support that exists beneath all the contentiousness. The story makes you yearn to know what the next chapter in these people's lives will be."
Also coming on board as executive producers were Tamara Jenkins' husband, the Academy Award winning screenwriter Jim Taylor, and his long-time writing partner, Alexander Payne, the Oscar®-winning director of such films as SIDEWAYS, ABOUT SCHMIDT and ELECTION. Payne, who is known for his demanding approach to writing and filmmaking, was impressed with Jenkins' point of view. He says of the screenplay: "It was funny and sad and real at the same time."
Jim Taylor found his wife's script to be both "very humorous and very touching." He summarizes: "I think we're often so reverential about these kinds of experiences that we tend towards sentimentalism and don't explore the humor in them. But being able to laugh at something so difficult helps everybody survive."

Writer/director Tamara Jenkins began her film career writing and directing several award-winning short films including FAMILY REMAINS which received a Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Short Filmmaking at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. Jenkins' first feature film outing was 1998's SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS, which premiered as part of the Directors' Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival that year. Starring Alan Arkin, Natasha Lyonne and Marisa Tomei, the film was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards (Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay) and has since become a cult hit.
In addition to her feature film work, Jenkins' writing has been published in Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House Magazine, and most recently her essay, "Holy Innocents," appeared in the book Lisa Yuskavage: Small Paintings 1993-2004 published by Abrams. She has also directed theater at The New Group, worked with teens creating a sex education film for the non-profit organization Scenarios and directed a series of public service announcements for Amnesty International.
THE SAVAGES, Jenkins second directorial feature film which she also wrote, had its world premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney and Philip Bosco and will be released by Fox Searchlight in December 2007.

FINDING THE SAVAGES:
CASTING LAURA LINNEY, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN AND PHILIP BOSCO
"Casting a family is a lot like casting lovers because you have to have that same kind of ineffable chemistry," Jenkins notes. "I needed three actors who would each be completely different in their style and approach to the world -- yet who you would believe all came from the same DNA. In the end, I truly got lucky. These are absolutely amazing actors who are at the very top of their game - and as a director, their instincts were very exciting and creatively challenging. At first, no single actor alone seemed to quite make sense, but when I put these three together, they were beyond perfect. I could believe that they were a family."
As Wendy Savage, Laura Linney gets a chance to create another darkly funny and deeply poignant role on the heels of her Golden Globe®-nominated performance in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. A two-time Oscar nominee, Linney's range of recent performances, which range from the indie classic YOU CAN COUNT ON ME to the biopic KINSEY to the comedy LOVE ACTUALLY, have established her as one of the most talented and respected actresses working today.
She was attracted right away to THE SAVAGES because of Tamara Jenkins' fearless take on family relations. "Family's complicated - always has been and always will be," Linney laughs. "But this story takes on a family issue that really hasn't been dealt with. The death of a parent is one of the most significant things that can happen to anybody, but it's a frightening topic that is frequently avoided. It's one of those things in life you can't really prepare for. The only thing you can do is enjoy the relationships while you have them and not take them for granted--which can be difficult because family, especially this family, is so complicated."
Linney looked forward to the challenge not just of forging Wendy in all of her worries and neuroses but of creating a flesh-and-blood family, albeit a barely functioning family, on the screen. "You can do a certain amount of preparation on your own but when you start connecting with the other actors, that's when things start to grow," she says. "I was so thrilled to work with the two Phils. I admire them both so much."
As production began, the filmmakers watched in awe as Linney threw herself into Wendy Savage's harried world with complete abandon. "You think of Laura as such a professional and she's so often cast as someone who's very in control - so it was just so much fun to see her really embrace this role where she's flailing and struggling to make her way in the world," says Jim Taylor.
Adds Ted Hope: "Laura delivered an awe-inspiring performance. She brought such a great energy to the role. She has great comedic chops, she's sexy and she can hit every emotional high and low. There isn't a moment where it feels like just one thing's happening with her character. So much is going on all the time that she's just fascinating to watch."
For Tamara Jenkins, some of Linney's most wonderful scenes come with Tony-nominated actor Peter Friedman in the role of Wendy's illicit lover Larry. "She's just so good and her instincts are so right," says Jenkins. "I was amazed to see the way she took what I had written and made it her own."
To pair with Linney as her entirely opposite sibling Jon, Jenkins long had in the back of her mind Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the most consistently intriguing character actors working today. The actor received the coveted Best Actor statuette at the Oscars for his role as Truman Capote in CAPOTE just weeks before production of THE SAVAGES began.
The casting of Hoffman was a bona fide coup for the production. "I had the opportunity to work with Phil for the first time on a film I produced called HAPPINESS, and watching his career since then has been a joy," says Hope. "His performances are so rich you really believe his characters exist off the screen. Jon is a fairly subtle character, but Phil found depth in the smallest of moments and made him so heartfelt."
Like Linney, Hoffman couldn't resist the refreshingly raw humanity of the story. "This story has been told before but not like this," he observes. "It's about a family facing a death but it's unique because of who these people are and what their history is. They've been estranged from each other for a very long time and now they've been thrown together in a crisis. But how well do they really know each other? And what underlies their relationships?"
Hoffman knew that the challenge would be in making these flawed family members relatable--and even sympathetic--to the audience. "Empathy is earned in a lot of different ways," explains Hoffman of his approach to the task. "It doesn't mean that you have to portray the character in a positive light--it's more an understanding that life is tricky and difficult and creates people who are not always perfect, but they're still worthy of your empathy. Hopefully we'll succeed in that."
Rounding out the trio of Savages is the man who sets the entire story in motion, the family patriarch, Lenny Savage, whose cantankerous decline is played out by 75-year-old veteran stage and screen actor, Philip Bosco. Tamara Jenkins felt the Tony Award winner was the perfect addition to the cast - someone who could bring this difficult man to life in all his many shades of gray. "Philip Bosco is brilliant and fearless," she says. "He's a fantastic actor, yet people who aren't familiar with the New York stage might not recognize him and I loved that about casting him."
Bosco jokes that Lenny "was a dream kind of part for an actor--he's in pretty much half the film and he has very little to say!" - but he also knew that the role would demand a deft human touch. As with the rest of the cast, Bosco was drawn in by power of the screenplay. "The beauty of the script is that it's very straightforward and honest. It doesn't pull any punches and it lays everything out on the table, and lets you make up your mind about these characters," says Bosco, who has seven children of his own. "I also think it's a terribly important subject to talk about. Of course the reality is this man is dying, so it's a very moving piece. And the fact that Jon and Wendy are doing this for their old man, rather than consigning him to the dust bin, makes it ultimately uplifting."
Bosco was especially impressed by the insistent realism of THE SAVAGES. "In the old, Hollywood version of this story everything would be peaches-and-cream," he observes. "But the more honest we are, the better. It's only through communication, not denial and pretense, that things get better."
Although he had never worked with Linney or Hoffman before, Bosco found the experience intense and exciting. "They are both marvelous actors who are quite serious about their art," Bosco says. "It was a very collaborative process between all of us and the director and you've got to have that kind of give and take. That's where creativity starts."
The filmmakers found themselves constantly surprised by Bosco's performance. "Playing a dying man, and especially a man such as Lenny Savage, takes a huge amount of courage," notes Hope. "Philip had to find a way to bring out the human side of a person whose own children think he is a monster. As Lenny's health starts to fail and he loses touch with everyday life, he allows you to still see the humanity in him."
With little time to spare between casting and production, Tamara Jenkins invited the actors to her New York apartment for a quick series of coffee-klatch rehearsals and conversations about the Savages family life. "It was very casual but it was essential," she recalls. "I have a strong memory of the three of them sitting in my living room reading the scenes aloud for the first time and me thinking 'here are these characters suddenly completely alive in the very room they were created.' It was intense for me."
Sums up Jim Taylor: "The wonderful thing about all the actors in the film is that they all dig deep; they don't just skate along the surface of the character. For each of them, it's about finding that humanity."

READ MORE: THE SAVAGE WORLD:
ABOUT THE FILM'S DESIGN

THE ART OF ORIGINAL FILMMAKING

NEXT PAGE

HOME