Timothy Hutton stars as a workaholic dad who's too busy to understand there's something extraordinary going on with his children in New Line Cinema's sci-fi fantasy, The Last Mimzy.
The Inspiration for The Last Mimzy: The film’s based on the short story Mimsy Were the Borogroves and Hutton was familiar with the tale before signing up for The Last Mimzy. “I actually read it before a long time ago because my mother’s in the business of making miniature books,” explained Hutton. “She’s a book binder and all that sort of thing, and in the miniature book world there are a couple of things that sell particularly well. One is beautifully bound books that contain stamps, the collectors really love those. And then the other is anything having to do with Alice Through the Looking Glass or Alice in Wonderland or anything by Padgett, Carroll...
She did a Jabberwocky book and she gave me the Padgett story, Mimsy Were the Borogoves, and then we all read it again. I must say, as I was reading it I thought, ‘Okay, there’s this and there’s the script,’ but it has the same spirit.”
Identifying with His Character: Hutton’s a workaholic father in The Last Mimzy and the busy actor says he can definitely relate to some of the same issues his character faces. “Yeah, definitely. There were times when I was away doing a movie and my son was captain of the varsity basketball team. He still is a jazz drummer and he would have these concerts, so that’s sort of on the event side. And then there were times when he might have been going through something, I was away so I would try to work it out before the arrangements were even made to go do the film.
I learned as the years went on that the best way to handle this is to look at the schedule before committing to the film. Tell them that there’s a week that you need to go and do this, that there’s a tournament happening, or there’s a jazz concert happening there. And then, even more on a general level, just to be able to come back to New York and be with them and take them out to dinner and check in with them. So I was very concerned about it, probably because I didn’t have that so much with my dad who was an actor. We would come to the set once in a while, but rarely would he come to where we were, which was Boston. I think I – I don’t want to say overcompensated - but it certainly was on my mind.”
Hutton’s personal life helped inform his character. “Yeah, because I’d definitely experienced that with my son, Noah. I’d been away and his mom’s telling me that there’s something going on and that it would be good if I also got involved so that both of us could kind of figure it out together. I would say, ‘Oh, I’m sure he’s fine,’ that kind of thing, which I say in the film quite a bit. But again, it’s a different kind of thing. There wasn’t really anything extremely extraordinary that had to be dealt with, like there is in the movie.
I remember when I read the script I thought, ‘Oh God, I’m the last guy to know what’s going on here.’ The babysitter’s just seen the swirling things and I say, ‘Don’t you want to get paid?’ And then the very next scene is, I say, ‘I’ll call her in the morning. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’ And Joely [Richardson’s] freaked out and I say, ‘Look, we have two bright kids. I think we should be very lucky.’ So when I finally got to do the scene where I come home and I say, ‘I’ve taken a leave of absence,’ I was much more into playing that part of it, and not being so behind the curve.”
Working with Bob Shaye: So what’s it like to be directed by the boss of New Line Cinema? Hutton answered, “Well, the first thing you realize is it’s going to get released. You know that you’re going to be having a movie come out in a considerable amount of theatres, and that there’s going to be a very thoughtful ad campaign and certain monies will be spent for that. I don’t think any of us as time went on, after the first couple of days of rehearsal, it wasn’t ‘Bob Shaye, Head of New Line’ anymore. It was the director and he was really great about that. He would ask us questions about what we thought of this scene, or how we felt it was going, that kind of thing.”
