Win Win: In audience with Tom McCarthy and rising star Alex Shaffer

Last night, at the close of the Philadelphia screening of the soon-to-be-released feature film, WIN WIN, writer/director Tom McCarthy and 17-year-old wrestler/terrific actor Alex Shaffer took questions from an audience that had clearly fallen in love with their film (I was right there with them: in love).  Alex plays a wayward kid who finds himself in the home (and on the wrestling team) of a good man who has done a bad thing.  Can I leave it at that?  Should I also add that the good but ethically compromised man is played (phenomenally) by Paul Giamatti, that Amy Ryan adds great emotional depth, that there are little girls in this film who will blow you away, and that a nerdy wrestler had us screaming for him when he finally took on Darth Vader at a match?

McCarthy, who wrote THE STATION AGENT, THE VISITOR, and UP, doesn't go for easy in his plots.  He has a surprising range of unexpected story lines (who puts croquet and wrestling in the same film?), an ability to dig out from moral tangles (why are we rooting so hard for Giamatti's character, when he has done such an unscrupulous thing?), an impeccable ear for real but original dialogue (there's a great bit here that arises from a certain JBJ tattoo (see the film, find out for yourself)), a dancer's rhythm (we need to laugh just when McCarthy gives us cause to laugh) and an outstanding eye for talent (seriously, this is some cast).  I have had the pleasure of meeting McCarthy's partner on this and other films, Mary Jane Skalski of Next Wednesday productions, and I felt her talent and presence as well—her ear, her eye, her maternal heart. 

Alex Shaffer had never, he told us last evening, acted beyond a stint in a middle school play before he responded to a call for theater-tempted New Jersey high school wrestlers.  Man, can this kid act—slaying the audience as much by what he won't say as by what he finally does.  Apparently Shaffer is also quite the wrestler, having won the state championship shortly after this film wrapped.  It was fun to watch him share this film last night with his four best friends and his cousin.    

Find out more about the film here, and go see it when it appears nationally in theaters in mid March.

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Win Win: A New Sundance Selection Film

Closing the books now, turning off email.  Off to see this long-awaited film, at a special Philadelphia screening.  Those of you who had the pleasure of seeing either "The Station Agent" or "The Visitor" (or the movie "Up") will have some sense for just how special this movie will likely be, for some of the same great minds and hearts (Tom McCarthy and Mary Jane Skalski) are the magic behind this one.  Check out the trailer.

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Human and Whole: Two Films

On this early Easter morning, I am thinking many things—gratitude for my son's few perfect days home, gratitude for family and friends, gratitude for the sun rising, gratitude for the pink blending yellow ripping through white.

I am thinking, too, about the two movies I watched this weekend—"The Visitor" and "The Station Agent." Both produced by Mary Jane Skalski, both written and directed by Tom McCarthy. Both entirely human and intensified by the space between words that are thought but never said.

"The Visitor" is the story of a professor living in the acute aftermath of his wife's passing—a man going through the motions until he discovers two illegal immigrants living in the Manhattan apartment he rarely frequents. He allows his life to be changed by them—allows his heart to be broken newly as he enters into their music, faith, and sudden terror. There are so many ways to snap a life in two. Here, in the detention center of illegal immigrants, in the world of deportation, in the dare of trying once again to live, we witness new fault lines; we, like the characters, are heartbroken.

"The Station Agent," a movie I'd seen before, at my mother's insistence, focuses on Fin, a four-foot-five man who takes up residence at an abandoned train depot and wants nothing more than his own company. Such quietude, though, is denied him—by the loquacious Cuban who parks his food truck by the empty depot; by the beautiful divorcee down the road, who grieves the loss of her son; by the librarian (early Michelle Williams) who slides into Fin's life, then out again; and by the young girl who insists that Fin come to her school for a talk about trains, something Fin knows down to the most excruciating detail. There is a lot of walking on tracks in "The Station Agent"—intoxicatingly filmed. A lot of outright beauty between people. It is one of the most distilled films you will ever see, and one you must see, if you haven't.

I have clipped the daffodils from the back yard (uncountable numbers now). I have placed them on the table. One more meal before we drive our son back to school. And then the aftermath of goodness.

Happy Easter.

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