Two Weeks

Movie / Show Details

Product description

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Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 18-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD

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When it seems inevitable that Anita (Sally Field) will succumb to cancer, her grown children return home to help prepare her funeral arrangements in the dramedy Two Weeks. But as the film’s title implies, death isn’t as immediate as they had expected, and the four siblings are left to confront each other, as well as the memories of their childhood, as they watch (and wait for) their mother pass away. A bittersweet comedy based more on dialogue than action, Two Weeks is a wonderful showcase for the always reliable Field. When her character is comatose during the second half of the picture, the film loses some of its impact, since Field is the strongest and most compelling cast member. But Julianne Nicholson, who plays Anita’s daughter Emily, brings quiet strength to her role and outshines the male co-stars who play her brothers Keith (Ben Chaplin), Barry (Tom Cavanagh), and Matthew (Glenn Howerton). A gifted actress with an expressive face, Nicholson more than holds her own in scenes with Field and gets across the pain, sadness, and desperation of a daughter about to lose her mother. Some of the witty familial bantering between the brothers seems forced and clichéd, and the viewer is acutely aware that the actors are working hard to outdo each other. Still, Two Weeks gets across the conflicted emotions people feel when faced with the death of a loved one. –Jae-Ha Kim
Interview with Steve Stockman, director of Two Weeks
Tell us about your background and how it prepared you for the making of this film, how did “Two Weeks” come about?
I’ve been a commercial director and writer for most of my career so far. Two Weeks grew out of personal experience. It went like this: When my mother died at home in 1997, the whole family was there. The mortuary guy came to pick up her body in an unmarked white SUV. He had one of those rolling stretchers where you flip a lever and the wheels pop down. My mom lived in a suburban neighborhood. It was about 5 in the morning, the sun was just starting to brighten the sky. The guy wheels my mother’s body out of the house, and loads it into the truck. I’d just had this excruciating night-long ordeal with my family and I stood there, watching from the top of the driveway as the truck pulled away. Just then, a car came up the street, dropping newspapers one at a time in the driveways of the sleeping houses. And I thought, I wake up every morning on my own street, in my own neighborhood. And somewhere, this is going on. It happens all the time. This is part of everyday life. How come we don’t know what it’s like? Seven years later I had just finished a script and I couldn’t come up with a new idea to write. I kept looking at my list of brainstormed “high concepts,” hoping to find one that grabbed me: Mafia Nanny? No. Talking Dog Detective? No. Time Traveling Archeologist? No. Hooker Brain Surgeon? Way no. I had all these notes from when my mother died — I did a lot of writing while it was happening. I kept coming back to the notes, and remembering those moments — a lot of them were really funny. Of course the rational, I’ve-been-in-the-entertainment-industry-since-I-was-18 side of me was thinking, “Great. A dying mother comedy. They’ll line up for that.” But I couldn’t leave it alone. So I took a deep breath, and wrote it. I started the script in a writers’ workshop, and I was really surprised by the reactions — the funny parts were funny. The sad parts were sad. And better still, everybody could relate. They’d all been through it, or knew someone who had. Which was great, because I got a lot of suggestions from other people’s experiences that were terrific, that I immediately “borrowed” and which I can now say were entirely my idea, every one of them. The end result isn’t just a comedy (though many parts are really funny), and it’s not just a tragedy. We’ve tried to make it about truth. About a family trying to figure things out when the one person who really holds them together can’t hold on anymore.
What about the DVD: Will the final cut be the same as the theatrical, and will there be any extras that you can tell us about?
The DVD cut is the same as the theatrical. There are two very cool extras: – My favorite: Since nobody ever listens to the director’s track (and it’s my first movie…it’s not like I’m Francis Coppola) I invited Dr. Ira Byock, an end of life expert and director of palliative care at Dartmouth, to comment with me on the film. I talked about what went on with the making of the movie, and Ira gave his perspective for people who are facing, or have faced, the same situation. Having someone else with a different perspective was great, and hopefully there’s a lot of information that’s fun, and useful for people. BTW, After this successful experience, Ira and I are now available for to do commentary tracks for other films, weddings, an