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• •

Director Tamara Jenkins and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman on the set of

readers

The Savages

ily] was mushy that way."
Jenkins offers this back-story
because we learn hardly anything
about Wendy's childhood, nor Jon's, in
the course of the movie. The viewer is
encouraged to imagine how the sib-
lings turned out to be so dissimilar.
"One of the things I was inter-
ested in," says Jenkins, "was these two
people who grew up in the exact same
circumstances, but the way that they
responded to their environment and
their adaptation to the world, they
have totally different techniques of
survival."
Jenkins, who lives in Manhattan's
East Village with her husband,
Sideways producer Jim Taylor, is the
proverbial live wire. She's vibrant,
boisterous and comes off maybe just a
touch neurotic.
She's also very clear about what she
was trying to achieve, in her screen-
play and onscreen.
"One of the things that was very
important to me with this movie is
that without providing exposition,
without giving the audience, 'OK, this
is what happened [when Jon and
Wendy were children] and this is how
they became who they are you intuit
it based on the behavior that is hap-
pening in the room. To me, that's a
goal as a writer. It's all between the
lines, it's all subtext and it's all hap-
pening live."
The heart of the movie consists of
Wendy and Jon's on-the-fly efforts to
care for their father, and the ways in
which his situation — he is sinking

into dementia and is homeless after
his girlfriend of 20 years dies —
threatens to derail their already messy
lives. They must find a suitable home
where he can be looked after, and
when they do, Wendy must handle the
task of transporting her father across
country from New York to Arizona.
(Jenkins had her own life to draw
on when penning the script. While she
was in her mid-30s, she had to help
care for both her father and grand-
mother during their final days in a
nursing home.)
"They're just doggie-paddling and
trying to figure it out as it's happening,
and that's what the story is," Jenkins
muses. "Usually, inside of these big
episodes there's so much human flail-
ing and so many comic errors and
enormous humor mushed in there."
By all means, let's not overlook all
the laughs strewn throughout The
Savages. To Jenkins, comedy and the
Jewish experience are inseparable.
"Humor comes from the underbelly
of suffering. It's the flip side of it. It has
to do with acknowledging imperfec-
tion."
So does she have any doubt
about which branch of her family
bequeathed her sense of humor?
"I think it's definitely on the Jewish
side she says with a laugh. "The great
comedians aren't Italian:' II

The Savages, rated R, is sched-
uled to open Tuesday, Dec. 25,
at the Landmark Maple Art
Theatre. (248) 263-2111.

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New S eou I Garden

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Phone (248) 827-1600

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27566 Northwestern Hwy.

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December 20 • 2007

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