Frank Goode (Academy Award-winner Robert De Niro) has spent his adult life working in a local wire factory earning every dollar he can to support his family. Recently retired, he realizes that over the years he has spent too little time with his four children and that it's time to reconnect.
Frank's late wife was always his main point of contact with his kids but he decides that it's now his responsibility to keep an eye on them. He is inspired to invite the whole extended family for a barbeque weekend. Preparations go well until one by one, such is modern life, they all have good reason to cancel.
Despite a strict warning from his doctor, Frank takes matters into his own hands and packs a bag before setting out on a journey across the US with the intention of surprising each of his children and wallowing in their success and happiness.
Frank travels to see his son David 'the artist' in New York, his daughter who is 'high up in advertising' in Chicago, his son Robert 'the orchestral conductor' in Denver and finally Rosie his youngest who is a 'dancer in a Vegas show' but before long it becomes clear to Frank that his children are not quite as happy or successful as his wife had always reported.
Returning home from a journey that ends with the revelation of a family tragedy, Frank has the insight and confidence to report to his wife that despite everything "everybody's fine."
A heartfelt dramatic comedy "Everybody's Fine" presents a family picture that is all too common in our modern world. Parents and siblings living hundreds of miles apart, too distracted with the stress of modern life to find time to call each other and too preoccupied with their own family and friends to find time to visit home.
Based on 'Stanno Tutti Bene' originally written and directed in the Italian language by Academy Award winner Giuseppe Tornatore in 1990, "the film was written and directed by Kirk Jones ("Waking Ned Devine," "Nanny McPhee") based on the original film and is produced by Gianni Nunnari, Ted Field, Vittorio Cecchi Gori and Glynis Murray. 

ABOUT THE FILM

"I don't know what it is with you kids.  You always told your mother everything, and you don't tell me anything." 

Frank Goode

No family is perfect. The more a family appears to be perfect the more likely there are  secrets hiding within, and the Goode family is no different. Frank Goode worked every hour that he could to support his family and help them achieve their potential and not surprisingly at 60, he now feels as though time has passed him by and that he has missed his children growing up. Such is Frank's enthusiasm to turn back time and reconnect with his children that he embarks on a spontaneous, transcontinental journey but soon realizes that when his wife kept him updated on his children's progress, she protected him from the bad news and exaggerated the good.
It is no surprise that a film about family originated in a country renowned for preaching the importance of family values - Italy. The original film was written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore in 1990 and was his follow up project to the Oscar ® winning classic "Cinema Paradiso."
Ever since he first read the original script in the Italian language almost two decades ago, producer Gianni Nunnari ("The Departed," "300," "Shutter Island") imagined what that same father and family, so consummately Italian in Tornatore's vision, might be like translated to the vast landscape of the United States and the broader style of an American dramatic comedy.  He purchased the rights to the film, hoping, one day to revisit the story from a different cultural sensibility.
In another twist, it would take an Englishman to make that happen.  When Nunnari saw the critically acclaimed, sleeper comedy hit "Waking Ned Devine," he sensed that writer-director Kirk Jones, with his distinctly British style of comedy, had just the right mix of light touch and deep emotions to tackle a brand new adaptation of "Stanno Tutti Bene" and sent him a copy of Tornatore's film.
Since writing and directing "Waking Ned Devine" and watching it become the second highest grossing film (proportionate to budget) in the world that year, Jones had directed "Nanny McPhee" for Universal and Working Title films which was written by and starred Emma Thompson.  But, by 2007 he was looking for his next project.
Jones admits to being a fan of Tornatore and recalls that it was unusual for him to receive a DVD of a film that had already been made in a foreign language, as opposed to a script, but he responded to it immediately.
"I had been looking for my first US-based project for some time but was keen to write and direct as I had done before. This would mean that I would arrive in the States with a project that I was inherently connected to, instead of attaching myself to a studio developed movie that had already passed through the hands of a dozen writers. I wanted to keep things simple and write the script alone as I had done with 'Waking Ned Devine.'"
"Finding the right project is like buying a house, you instinctively know that it's right for you from the start and within minutes of watching the original Italian version I had really connected with it, it intrigued me, moved me emotionally and it made me laugh.  It's such a simple, passionate story," says Jones.
Nunnari recalls, "Suddenly, I heard from Kirk and he said he really wanted to do EVERYBODY'S FINE and not only that, he wanted to do it from scratch, diving in with his own creativity and writing a new screenplay using the idea of the original movie as a starting point.  He wrote a screenplay that wasn't just a small dramedy of quirky characters but a big American journey.  The way Kirk expresses himself is so fantastic - he writes full of human feeling." 
Says Jones, "I only watched the original film three times.  I didn't want to simply translate it, or make the same version in a different language, I didn't want that and I know Tornatore wouldn't expect it of me, I needed to make it my own. What interested me was the theme of family which is of course as universal a subject as you can hope to encounter."
But Jones was very aware that he faced a challenge writing an American road movie as an Englishman. "I didn't want to start work without being prepared. I took a flight to New York and then worked my way across the US very much as Frank did in the movie, staying in the cheapest motels, traveling on Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains and talking to people on the way. Traveling alone is the best way to get under the skin of a country and the best way to meet it's people and connect with them. I took nearly 2000 photographs and recorded 100 interviews with anyone who would talk to me from cab drivers to hotel receptionists to eccentric characters on buses. It's where many of the ideas in the movie came from; the telephone wires, the eccentric characters and real people, the bag with wheels, I saw it all for real on the road and recorded it."
Perhaps it was Jones' view as an outsider peering in upon the American family that made his screenplay so distinctive.  Muses executive producer Callum Greene: "As an Englishman, Kirk brings a different perspective and a different viewpoint onto many things that perhaps, as Americans, we take for granted.  He finds things of beauty in the every day working of family life that we might miss."

Family as a Universal theme
As a father of three, Jones connected only too well with the story of a father who wants nothing more than to do his best for his children but he also knows that parenthood can be very emotionally complex.
Says Jones, "Any father can relate to the conflicting instincts that are experienced by Frank in this story; realizing he has spent too little time with his children and family because it was necessary for him to work long hours to provide security for them. It is interesting to note that with all of the technological developments in recent years, balancing work and family remains one of the most challenging dilemmas facing modern parents. Frank worked double shifts at the wire factory, leaving for work before his kids got up and returning after they went to bed. Nothing has changed, the addition of computers and email and texts and cell phones has simply promoted the idea that we are always contactable, always working, covering different time zones, never completely relaxed or focused on the importance of home and family."
Jones was also moved by Frank's awakening to the reality that maybe his children didn't turn out so perfectly.
"Children aren't meant to be perfect, families aren't meant to be perfect. It's about learning and growing and becoming more tolerant and it's as important a journey for the parents as it is for the children, but expectations of children are too extreme in a modern world. Parents are pushing their children to read and write and play musical instruments at an early age, the increase in exams at school for young children, of deadlines and targets leaves no time in the day allocated for children to rest or listen to stories or take a nap. I discussed the state of the American Dream in the modern world with people on my journey, the idea that you can achieve whatever you want to achieve if you work hard, I questioned whether children have unrealistic expectations of what they might achieve."
"I started to examine Frank's aspirations for his children. He loved his children and wanted the very best for them, he wanted to see them fulfill their potential but he wanted it so much that his children felt a pressure to succeed and to exaggerate their success to make him proud."
"I think it's very common for parents expectations to be much higher than reality allows. Frank is only guilty of wanting the best for his children.  He wanted to inspire them, he wanted them to reach the top but unfortunately the result is that they now feel they haven't really measured up in his eyes."

Meeting De Niro…
Robert De Niro was Jones' only choice for the role of Frank Goode. Jones traveled to New York with his producer Glynis Murray to pitch it to him for the first time in 2007.
Recalls Jones, "I was a little nervous because I was meeting arguably one of the greatest actors to have lived but more importantly I was very aware that I would only get one shot at the pitch. Within minutes I was completely relaxed in Bob's presence. I looked at him and knew without a doubt that he was Frank Goode, I just hoped that he realized it too."
"Bob was particularly interested in the idea of using real people and improvising scenes with non-actors. Above all he is a Dad, he got the project on all levels, he could immediately tap into the emotional tone and the universal theme of fatherhood," Jones says.
Jones trusted producer Glynis Murray, who also made "Waking Ned Devine" and "Nanny McPhee," to make the film with him and she was thrilled with the way in which the script developed. "Kirk used this opportunity to take the feeling of Tornatore's movie and reset it in the much vaster landscape of America," she says.  "But I think he also brings out the completely universal topic of parents and children, which hits home whether you are British, American, Italian, Indian or whatever.  A powerful theme of the film is misguided love.  Frank is misguided in his expectations of his children and they're misguided in keeping things from him, yet you can see there is real love there. It's powerful stuff and I think an awful lot of people will see their own families reflected." 
The emotion and power of the script first came to light at a read-through with De Niro and actor friends in New York. Jones recalls, "It was a very special occasion the likes of which I will probably never experience again. I can't really say too much about it because it was a private read-through and should remain private but those who were there recall it as being an extraordinarily emotional experience."

Meeting Jones
"I liked Kirk a lot," De Niro recalls.  "When he showed me this whole presentation of photographs, I could tell there was something special about him and that this would be a special project from the standpoint of working with him, no matter how it turned out.  Then I watched 'Waking Ned Devine' and that was it.  From there, we simply figured out when we could start." 
De Niro also watched the original Tornatore version of the movie but he quickly saw that what Jones was going for was so different that it would have little application to his own performance.  "I liked it, but it's a whole different style of movie.  It's more heightened and stylized, and Mastroianni is doing a whole different thing, so I see them as two different beings, if you will," he explains.
More influential on De Niro's work in the film was his own deeply personal experience as a father.  "I can identify with this stuff, to say the least," De Niro remarks.  "I can understand what Frank is going through with his kids and that's what was so interesting to me." 
The tiniest details in De Niro's performance brought out Frank's underlying need and hunger for his children's affection. Notes Glynis Murray:  "When you watch De Niro in the supermarket walking along with his bag or taking his photographs and then carefully putting his camera back into the right place in his little bag, a lot of people instantly feel, 'that's my dad!' He has that massive relatability." 
Also intriguing to De Niro was Jones' approach.  "It's a very real story but there's a certain kind of surreal, expressionist quality to what Kirk wanted to do with Frank stylistically and all the things he has in his head," he notes. 
While Frank's offspring may all be modern professionals, Frank himself hails from blue collar roots, having worked for years in a telecommunications factory, coating the strings of telephone wire that crisscross the country carrying conversations - which makes it all the more poignant and ironic when his phone barely rings anymore.  De Niro sees this basic foundation of Frank - his pride in the work of being the traditional breadwinner and his hope that this role is seen as a form of love - as the very core of his character. 
"Frank sees all the wire he has coated as being the thing that made his kids what they are today," says De Niro, adding:  "For Frank, it's everything; it's the measure of his life." 
The universal themes in the movie also effected the cast and crew, many of whom related their own experiences of family and of expectations directly to the story of  EVERYBODY'S FINE.
Jones recalls the casting and interview process: "I have never had anyone cry in a professional interview situation before but I would estimate that every fourth technician or actor who I met would start talking about their own family, their parents, their children and the script and then start to well up with tears. It was so consistent that it became quite comical and I found myself joining Glynis my producer in comforting people and reassuring them that this was very common. Although rarely explored I began to realize just how powerful the theme of family is to people. I was asked early on who I thought would go see the film and I said that I didn't think anyone would want to see it…unless they have parents or brothers or sisters or children."
Drew Barrymore, who plays Frank's daughter Rosie, sums it up: "Clearly everybody's not all that fine in the Goode family but that's what modern families do, they put on a front - and that's the heart of this story.  The Goodes finally realize that it's not supposed to be 'everybody's fine,' it's supposed to be 'everybody's experiencing what they're really experiencing.' Family is about loving each other even when things are tough, when heartache is happening, as well as when there's great happiness and celebration.  The greatest moments of family redemption are when there's honesty in the air." 

Casting the family
With De Niro on board Jones had to start to piece together the rest of the family.  "Casting families can be a real challenge, there are basic physical requirements as well as the need to respect the chemistry between siblings. I wasn't trying to cast a perfect family, I was casting a real family so I wanted the eldest sister to be bossy, for the youngest one to be vulnerable, etc," Read more

The Journey
When Frank Goode sets out to see his four adult children he finds something that he never realized he'd lost: his family.  Frank quickly realizes that his wife's love for him was so great that she felt a need to protect him from worrying about the details of his family's lives, the things that she knew he would only worry about. On his journey, with time to reflect and strangers to expose him to broader conversations, Frank starts to realize that if his children are to be more honest with him, if they are to start talking to him more often and sharing the bad news as well as the good, then he has to start changing himself. Read more

The Music: Dario Marianelli and Sir Paul McCartney
When it came to the film's music, Kirk Jones was thrilled to be able to bring to the proceedings both an Oscar winning composer and a legendary pop star:  Dario Marianelli ("Atonement," "The Soloist") wrote the film's emotionally rich original score, and Sir Paul McCartney wrote the original song "(I Want To) Come Home" for the film, orchestrated in collaboration with Marianelli.
Read more

ABOUT THE  FILMMAKERS

KIRK JONES (Director, writer) After winning a National student film award Kirk graduated from film school in the UK and in 1998 wrote and directed his debut feature Waking Ned Devine for a total budget of $3m. The film charmed and entertained audiences around the world and proportionate to budget became the second highest grossing film in the world that year receiving critical praise and winning awards in the US and Europe as well as earning Kirk a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer.
After his debut feature Kirk continued to write and develop his own projects but also to directed TV commercials for which he has won numerous awards over the past 15 years including The Silver Lion at Cannes.
In 2004 he directed his second movie Nanny McPhee for Working Title/Universal, written by and starring Emma Thompson with Colin Firth, Kelly MacDonald, Angela Lansbury, Derek Jacobi and Imelda Staunton. Described as the new 'Mary Poppins' the film grossed $ 140m worldwide and was a top ten UK hit that year and prompted a sequel.
After setting up Story Pictures to develop his own material, Kirk is continuing to write his own scripts and is currently developing a project for De Niro who he hopes to work with again in the near future. He is also reading submitted scripts to direct both in the US and UK.
His work continues to charm, entertain and engage audiences emotionally on a level that is always perceived to be reserved and for that reason more effective. He considers himself to be a commercial film maker who respects and embraces all elements and departments involved in film production but maintains that everyone, including himself should work towards a priority of serving the 'story'.
EVERYBODY's FINE is his third feature film.

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