Now, cinematic redemption is at hand. When I skip over them, there’s not much left.The filmmaker and playwright Kenneth Lonergan, a self-described “ultra-naturalist” whose eloquently empathic stories tremble with the richness of daily life, began his writing career, surprisingly, awash in science fiction. “I was a little chagrined to work on it because these things have happened to real people, and worse, and you sometimes wonder if you have any right to be making it into a fun story for people to compliment you on,” says Lonergan with a chuckle.”The idea of the film was first brought to Lonergan by Matt Damon (who co-stars in Margaret) and John Krasinski. One of his early plays (unproduced so far) is about two spacemen spinning through the universe for years after their ship was disintegrated. But mostly what I hope is you’re like: ‘That would be cool. When he gets stuck, he says, he tries to think pragmatically about his characters, the way an actor might. He has seen 2001: A Space Odyssey more than 50 times, he estimates.
“It just seems like human beings and at the end you’re sobbing and you’re not sure why because people have just been fighting about whether to order pizza or not.”That sensitive eye has made Lonergan, 54, one of the most celebrated playwrights of his generation, and a figure of cultish ardor for his first two films: the luminous sibling drama You Can Count on Me and the ambitious New York masterwork Margaret. “Then I figured why not, it&Custom Stainless steel drum39;s worth talking about, it's worth trying to look at and be truthful about and respectful of.” How does he steer himself? Lonergan smiles. Lonergan’s favored longer edit has steadily gained in stature. “Life is full of very interesting, small details that usually get skipped over for the sake of economy,” Lonergan, rumpled and genial, said in a recent interview in Soho, not far from where he lives with his wife, the actress J.
The latter was embroiled for years in a law suit and disagreements with the distributor, Fox Searchlight, and received only the scantest of theatrical releases.”Affleck, who starred in a London production of Lonergan’s Youth in Revolt, describes Lonergan as allergic to sentimentality and artificial convention. But they can nevertheless, on a purely human scale, just as surely overpower in their fullness of life, in their warm, melancholic intimacy. They hoped Lonergan would write it and Damon would direct and star. “And those little details dictate all sorts of things in life. “He’s my favorite writer.Lonergan’s plays and films, talky and naturalistic, employ nothing like Spielbergian grandeur. I’ve forgotten how.” . It was, to a certain extent, a lifeline out of the debilitating saga - the “unrelenting difficulties,” Lonergan says of Margaret.”Lonergan, though, is less mystical about his process.’ And you don’t know why and you don't ask why. It stars Casey Affleck as a janitor whose brother’s death returns him to his Massachusetts fishing village hometown, a homecoming that resurfaces a trauma from the past. “Kenny said, ‘I don’t know if I feel good because I improved myself and I feel better or if it’s because everyone’s telling me I’m great.”Manchester by the Sea drew raves at its Sundance Film Festival premiere, where Amazon plunked down $10 million for distribution rights.
“I certainly saw the value in giving him a good job, but my motives were probably far more selfish than that,” says Damon. Lonergan's new film, Manchester by the Sea (in theaters Friday), is already one of the most acclaimed movies of the year, roundly pegged as an Oscar favorite. “You do certain steering of that. His brother’s will names him guardian of a teenage son.’ That definitely doesn’t hurt.“He talks about the characters like they’re friends of yours you’ve known your whole life,” says Affleck. Being the toast of Hollywood would put some in the mood for celebration.“I’ve always tried as hard as I could to do whatever was necessary to access whatever secrets that I didn’t know about that were inside of me,” says Lonergan. “I don’t know. It’s a magic trick. And he should use it to make whatever he wants. Did she have dinner yet? Would she have needed to make that phone call? Some of the scenes in Manchester by the Sea came out of Lonergan simply driving up and down Cape Ann to figure out how his characters would have gotten around.“He’s a curmudgeon, as everyone says,” says Broderick. Smith-Cameron and their 10-year-old daughter.He was (and still is) a die-hard Trekkie. As we get older, you can really appreciate this is a wonderful time for him and he should enjoy it. Time passed and schedules got complicated, and ultimately Lonergan took up directing, too, with Damon (now a producer) handing the role to his longtime friend, Affleck.The film, toggling between the past and present, runs on two rails # at once, leading to a heartbreaking portrait of a tragedy’s long, unshakable shadow. Lonergan would lead Matthew Broderick, his best friend since high-school, from their Upper West Side neighborhood to the Ziegfeld Theatre to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “He liked to sit about two or three rows back and just get blasted by it,” recalls Broderick. Not Lonergan
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