soul food movie script
From the beginning of his career as a child star, Josh Hutcherson has walked the fine line between independent film and Hollywood film. He has appeared in films as wide-ranging as American Splendor, The Polar Express, Kicking & Screaming, Zathura, RV, Bridge To Terabithia, and Journey To The Center Of The Earth.
Now, the 17 year-old comes of age with his latest role as Laser, a son of a lesbian couple who goes out to search for his parents’ sperm donor, in the independent comedy/drama role The Kids Are All Right. Hutcherson shared with us what drew him towards the film.
“The script was incredible,” Josh says, “It was unlike anything that I had read before. It was such a full adaptation of what a family means. I think that the characters are so well-written and the dialogue was so incredibly realistic that I knew that I wanted to be a part of it.”
“I met with Lisa Truludinko, the director,” he continues, “And I was a fan of hers for a while from Laurel Canyon, so I think she did an amazing job with writing it, directing it, and everything and just to be part of that was an honor and it was awesome.”
Josh says he noticed right away that the tight-knit aspect to Laser’s closeness to his family is very similar to his own upbringing.
“That’s actually a very similar dynamic to my family,” Hutcherson says, “My family and I are very, very close, not only as a family, but as friends. I practically am with my mom 24/7 because she’s been on set with me since I was nine years old and so, I’m around her a lot. I just feel like I have a good friendship with my family. I think that’s very important because Laser’s family has a very strong mutual respect for one another. So Laser definitely does things sometimes and needs some parenting.”
“He’s definitely being disrespectful when they are playing ping-pong when he’s saying, ‘Shit, calm down,’ or whatever,” he adds, “And Annette says, ‘Don’t tell me to calm down, mister.’ I’ve heard that a hundred times from my mom and dad, so while that, yeah, they’re really good friends and they have a mutual respect for one another, they’re still the parents and Laser understands that.”
One thing Hutcherson says he appreciated about the film was that it did not stereotypically have the son feel he lacked a male role model in his life with two mothers.
“I think from the get go, this story was about a family and that they are the same sex is kind of a second-hand thing,” he says, “It’s not really the main moral of the story or the main point of the story. It’s almost like a B or C storyline that they are actually the same sex and I think because of that, Laser has just grown up with it. I don’t think there’s ever a point where he thought anything differently.”
“Obviously, he had seen kids who have a “regular family”, I’m sure,” Josh continues, “And I’m sure he knows that he knows that his family is not the typical type and he knows there’s controversy a lot of times around them. But I think that he’s beyond comfortable with it and the reason why he goes to look for his dad, I think, is because he’s curious to know what he’s like. I don’t think it comes from him needing to have a fatherly figure.”
Josh also shares the different relationships Laser has between the sperm donor Paul, played by Mark Ruffalo, and Joni, played by Mia Wasikowska.
“Well, I think that when Laser met Paul, he had this idea of what Paul was going to be like in his head and he wasn’t that,” he believes, “I think that Laser was expecting him to be this cool, sports guy and he was definitely not like that at all. I think it’s interesting. I like how it changed because Laser was the instigator and when they met, Laser became a little more apprehensive and Joni was the one that came into him more.”
“I think that because Laser did have an expectation and Joni went into it with her expectations,” Hutcherson adds, “But I think that’s probably why I feel like Laser’s read was the most genuine of everyone’s, when he’s all into himself and that whole thing. I think he’s the one who saw a little bit through Paul’s BS, I think.”
We asked Hutcherson if Cholodenko or her co-writer Stuart Blumberg ever explained to him just why his character’s name happens to be laser.
“No, they didn’t,” Josh replies, “It’s weird. I asked. Apparently, sort of, I kind of know. Basically, Stuart and Lisa, the writer and director, they both mutually knew somebody named Laser, but they both didn’t know that they knew the same person. And so, it was like a coincidence, like, oh, let’s name him Laser. I was like, it’s a pretty epic name and I feel like an American Gladiator.”
Josh says he enjoyed playing ping-pong with her co-star Julianne Moore, who plays Laser’s mother Jules in the film.
“I play a lot of ping-pong,” he says, “I’m not going to declare myself as the champ, but my character’s name is Laser and I play ping-pong. That kind of makes me the champ, I guess, but no, Julianne actually was good. I was surprise because she was pretending like she didn’t know what she was doing, but you could actually tell that she had the little forehand/backhand maneuvers going on. I can tell.”
Hutcherson says the feedback he has received for The Kids Are All Right have come from rather surprising places.
“I haven’t heard any feedback from same sex families, but I’ve heard feedback from straight and gay people and also single parents families,” Josh claims, “And they all have been very gracious to see a film depicting a family that happens to be same sex marriage. So I’ve actually been really happy with the response we’ve been getting. It’s been very, very positive and supportive of it.”
Josh says the film’s nonchalant attitude toward the idea that the parents happen to be two moms is a credit to the strengths of the film.
“Totally,” Hutcherson says, “I’m so happy about that, really. In a movie like this, even though this doesn’t have a political agenda, there’s kind of another stepping stone in that sort of becoming more and more a normal part of society.”
“In a movie like this, it’s job is to depict real life,” Hutcherson continues, “And the fact that it’s not bringing about a whole lot of controversy, it’s sort of going through as a normal movie is very exciting because that is just real life and that’s now becoming more and more normal.”
Hutcherson notes, however, that he felt he did not have to research into the lives of same sex families to understand his role.
“I didn’t,” he claims, “I didn’t actually and a lot of that was in the script because Lisa Cholodenko and her partner have gotten a kid through an anonymous sperm donor. So I think that they put a lot of that heart and soul that they know so well into the story. So a lot of it was in the script for me.”
“I think also, too, as I was saying earlier, Laser isn’t affected any differently than your technically normally raised child would be,” Josh adds, “So, for me, I didn’t want to over-think it too much. I’m going to play him as a normal kid because that’s exactly what he was to me.”
One particularly standout aspect of The Kids Are All Right is that the film does not go down the stereotypical path of the son longing for the male role model absent from his life. We asked Josh if his scenes when he meets the sperm donor Paul had him coming off in his interaction with Ruffalo like he longed for a father figure.
“Not consciously,” Hutcherson replies, “I’m sure maybe subconsciously, it came through a little bit, I’m not sure. I know, Lisa and I, that was never a point we discussed really because I always thought Laser went to look for his dad out of curiosity, not for that need of having a father around. But I think when he meets Paul, he’s looking more so for a friend than a father, I think.”
Hutcherson says that what added to the authenticity of the scenes with Paul was how Ruffalo didn’t come in until later on during the film’s shooting.
“It’s funny because we had such a great family on set between me, Annette, and Julianne,” Josh says, “We were such a great little family. And then, Mark’s awesome. He comes into this and he’s just sort of a weird little wrench into the whole family dynamic and the script did a pretty good job of catching that.”
“I think because we had such a good little family, Mark came in,” he continues, “And it was like cool for us to kind of play off that family thing we had going and having a new member jump in. I think it worked out really well like that.”
Josh also shared with us how shooting this film was different from shooting a much bigger budget film like Journey To The Center Of The Earth.
“It’s very different,” he says, “One of the biggest differences is how many days you have to shoot it. Because Journey, I did in almost four months and this was a 23 day shoot, so this was less than a month and it was crazy. One of the biggest differences is energy on set because of that. I feel like when you don’t have time to shoot a movie, you kind of instabond with the crew and the cast and you’re kind of in this together to make this movie in 23 days.”
“And because you don’t have a whole lot of time to think, you’re kind of flying by the seat of your pants and a whole lot of natural stuff happens,” Hutcherson adds, “You’re not thinking about it, so it makes for a really real depiction of life because in life, it happens quick. And so that really did a good job of helping us in a way. I’ve sort of been in those situations before. I have had family dinners a billion times. I’ve played ping-pong with my family tons of times, so that environment was very familiar to me. For me to be comfortable and exist as the character was much easier because of that.”
Finally, Hutcherson revealed to us the next movie he will be appearing in.
“I shot Red Dawn right after I shot this and it was quite the contrast of a movie,” he reveals, “Very, very big action explosion type of a film and very exciting movie, but it was a really, really good time. They’re waiting to see when they’re going to release it and it’s a very, very awesome modernized update of the original. It was scheduled to come out this fall, but they wanted to move it so MGM could get all their ducks in a row and they didn’t want to just throw it out there, which is good. They obviously care about the movie, so they want to do the right kind of marketing campaign and everything. Dan Bradley [is the director].”
“He’s a second unit stunt director for all the Bourne movies and Casino Royale and all those crazy stunt movies,” Josh continues, “We did a lot of action, which was really cool. My character is Robert, who’s based on C. Thomas Howell’s character in the story, which is really almost like a tech nerd sort of, but he’s like cool at the same time, I like to think. And yes, this group of teens escapes into the woods and starts fighting back. The politics are different. The Chinese are now going to invade instead of the Russians. They tie it in with the economy and some kind of technological advancement and make it seem as real as possible, even though we all know that it’s not really possible. But it’s a movie.”
In my week of continuing If I Never anniversary celebrations, it would be remiss of me not to include a few thoughts from Gregg Fraley. Gregg is a thought leader in corporate ideation and the author of Jack’s Notebook – the first ever business fable about creative problem-solving. His original thoughts on If I Never were unique and immensely satisfying.
Over to you, Gregg!
When I read Gary Murning’s book If I Never last year, I had been in a self-imposed fast of not reading fiction. This from someone who has, on average, read a novel a week for my entire adult life. For about six months prior to my reading of Gary’s excellent gothic story, I’d been on a diet of business books. My thinking was “I need to get serious about my work.”
Like someone on a very restrictive diet, I was starving. Starving for the unique meal that only a truly good novel, a good story, can provide. So, I broke the fast to help out a fellow writer, and devoured “If I Never” reading it in several very big gulps. Two things about this:
One – many stories I read I immediately forget. For instance I love the novels of Elmore Leonard. They read like movie scripts they move so fast (in fact many have been made into films, notably Get Shorty). It’s like eating candy. Ask me two weeks later what was in the story and I’ll be darned if I can name a character or describe details of the plot outline. Not so with If I Never. The images, and the story, have haunted me, in a good way, ever since. These characters were made real to me in a way that is rare. The dilemma’s they faced felt like real life, complex, tinged with gray areas, regret, suspicion, and the messy psychology we are all burdened with. I still recall the image of the addled boy on the heath, and the disabled woman unable to protest her situation. I so look forward to reading Gary’s next book.
The second thing that happened for me after reading the book was that a long suppressed creative force was unleashed. Not only did I have some breakthrough ideas for my day job, I finally got off my ass and started serious work on my own novel. So, in a word, If I Never was inspirational to me in two profound ways.
My original review and blog post made the point that fiction is a great way to learn and to “incubate” – in essence a form of stimulus for personal brainstorming about things totally unrelated to the work itself. Why does it work this way? I’m not sure except to say that a good novel “feeds” your heart and soul. Thanks for the gourmet food Mr. Murning (who says the English can’t cook…). Congratulations on your success, one year on, and may it continue — accelerate.
Gregg Fraley
www.greggfraley.com/blog
Two sample chapters of If I Never can be read here.
To buy your copy of If I Never, please click here.
Also, UK Kindle users can now buy If I Never here. (US Kindle users here.)
© 2010 Gary William Murning and Gregg Fraley
