Nick Cassavetes My Sister's Keeper Press Conference
Would a studio exec greenlight this movie today?Nick Cassavetes: "Who cares what executives think? I mean, I don't know. I really don’t know. To be quite honest with you, it’s hard to get any movie made these days. We’re in difficult economic times and movies cost money. People like to bet on sure things. They don’t like to bet on things that aren’t sure things. It always is an absurd process of trying to get a movie made. The ones that should get made never do, and the ones that shouldn’t get made always do. It’s mind boggling."
"I don't think you can take dramas out. You know why? Because girls go to the movies and girls like to see things that are interesting rather than exciting. Young guys like to see things that are exciting. Me, I like to see everything. Every single movie that’s out I like to go see because I love movies. But would this movie get made now? I don't know. I think it would. I think that what happens is, strictly from a business level, that... I know, I know, I’m putting my foot in it. But the book is a very successful book and it gives the people who put the money up confidence that a lot of people will go see the movie. Whether that’s true or not, who knows?"
SPOILER ALERT - The following is a discussion comparing the film's ending to the book's
This has a very different ending than the book has. Why did you chose to make the change?Nick Cassavetes: "I would say this. When I read Jodi’s book, when I got to the ending, that was one of my favorite parts of the book. I loved it. But that being said, I would say that movies are different than books and when you do a movie, you have to do a lot of research to do a movie because people are asking you questions and you don’t know what you’re talking about. So, what you do is you go and visit sick kids in hospitals. I’ve had a lot of experience going to pediatric hospitals, in my own experience, going to cancer hospitals and talking to kids and talking to doctors and finding out what this and that and the other means. Really, when Jeremy [Leven] explained to me that at the end of the day, 'Stop thinking about the book. What would you do if you were her? Don’t think of it as a topical kind of story. Don’t think of it as a legal type of story. This thing is actually happening to a family. There’s a mother, there’s a father, and they have a sick kid and they’ve got problems.' And so when I thought about that, it seemed to simplify this story for me. Then, going and visiting people in the hospital, this story repeated over and over and over again, and, in reality, none of these stories ended like the book did."
"Here’s another thing, you have to do all this crazy research. How do you sell that a girl at 16 says it’s okay to let go of her own life? It’s really hard. Now you go and you ask these kids, you say, 'Do you ever think about dying? Do you ever thing about just letting go?' And they, to a T, to a person, they say, 'Yeah.' They do. They think about it. Sometimes it gets too painful and that’s just mind blowing for me, first of all. But, people’s love of life, you have to say that Sofia’s character in here, if she really was okay and a kidney would really save her, why would she let go of her life? Why wouldn’t she just say, 'Go ahead,' because she’s just inconvenienced by all of the procedures? She’s really sick. She’s really going to go and so when Jeremy proposed this ending to me, it made a lot of sense. Certainly it’s not done against the readers of the book. I think the book is awesome and I think the movie is awesome and I think that because they’re different, it actually adds to the value of both. I didn’t change the book’s ending. We changed the movie’s ending and the reason why we did it is I think it’s a superior ending for the movie."
