Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman star as siblings who have to deal with placing their elderly, ailing father in a rest home in the dramatic film, The Savages. Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills), The Savages focuses on the decision process and how taking that drastic but necessary step affects all those involved in the process.
The Script’s the Key: Linney agrees with her co-star Hoffman that the script for The Savages was too interesting to pass up. “You hear that over and over again, but when a script is undeniably good, you pay attention,” said Linney. “It becomes clear to me there’s something, to me, that something’s going on when I read the script through for the first time and I start working on it before I finish reading it. Your actor brain just turns on. I can’t help it. All of a sudden, ideas start coming and you start hearing the rhythm of things. For a script to be that evolved that early is very rare. It’s happened a few times luckily for me. But it’s not typical.”
Analyzing Her Character: ‘Wendy’ is an interesting, troubled woman and one whose problems stem from, according to Linney, going after the wrong people. “There are reasons for that. Jon and Wendy’s lives are so formed by whatever relationship they had with Phil’s character, the other Phil [Bosco, who plays the dad]. Their childhood is so much with them and they’re in different stages of arrested development. But while Phil’s character’s is coming off that sense of abuse, she was just ignored. There was just neglect and you can see that in how they respond to the situation - the crisis of having to take care of their father. My character has this romanticized vision of what their relationship is and what has to be done. ‘I’m going to decorate the room.’ And there’s this sense of still desperately trying to have a relationship with [her dad] in a very sort of childish way. And Phil’s character has sort of like stopped that long ago. But both are going to be better people than their parent was. What do you do when you have to take care of a parent that didn’t love you? And how do you accept the fact this parent didn’t love you?”
Playing the Younger Sibling: Part of Wendy’s problem and why she seems to regress in front of her brother stems from the fact she’s the younger sister. “That’s what so fun about looking at people and how they behave differently around different people; how you hang around a parent as opposed to your child or an old childhood friend or what you slip back into,” said Linney about her character’s personality shifts. “And I loved those moments where she would fight him like she was [11] with the intensity of an 11-year-old, pushing him as far as she could… It was self-righteous. I mean, it was fun. It was really fun.”
Working with Philip Seymour Hoffman: The two knew of each other before working on The Savages, but didn’t really know each other before tackling the film. “I’ve always loved his work. We knew each other as acquaintances and would run into each other backstage,” explained Linney. “I’d see him in New York every once in a while but nothing more than, ‘Hi, how are you? How’s it going?’ As actors sort of do.
What my expectations were of him and how he would work was pretty accurate, and you can see it in his work. It’s so good and so generous. You can see…what kinds of decisions he makes and [his] priorities are right where they should be. We are somewhat likeminded, so it was very easy. When the material is good and the actors are good, it’s pretty easy. It’s when the material’s bad and the actor’s difficult - that’s when the work gets hard. It’s exciting when there is good stuff and a great actor. It’s why we do what we do.”
Life on the Set with Writer/Director Tamara Jenkins: Linney says Jenkins was always willing to answer questions about the story and her character. “These films are made very quickly and it often feels like one long day,” said Linney. “You become so sleep-deprived when you do these marathon 30 day shoots because you have to get all the material in, so you’re working very strange hours. Phil put it very well. He said she was like the third sibling, which I thought was pretty accurate. (Laughing) We were talking all the time.”
Relating to the Situation: Linney shared her own experiences dealing with placing elderly relatives in a rest home. “I remember when my grandfather went into a nursing home and we would go visit him there, and then my grandmother went into the same nursing home much later. I helped move her in there and that was brutal,” recalled Linney. “That is hard. She was 98 and she had lived alone until she was 98 years old! She got in there and she was, you know, the mayor.
Fortunately, I know that she had a nice last few years there. She was cheery and happy and all that. So there was that situation, and then my stepfather when he died, there was a period of decline there that was hard to watch. The dementia can be so funny. It can be just hysterical. I remember my stepfather was in intensive care and he thought he was in Paris. And it was fantastic. I was so happy that he thought it was in Paris. (Laughing) He was talking about it. And then he thought I had spots all over my face and he was trying to move the spots around. There was something about it that made me feel better that he was in some sort of place that was not painful. It wasn’t in my reality, but at least it was in a reality in which he wasn’t in pain and that made me happy.”
