Looking Over Peter Hedges
My writing partner, Pamela Jo, went to see DAN IN REAL LIFE with the family this weekend. She said it was a tremendously fun film; she had several belly-laughs. I've been looking forward to seeing the film. 
It looked like a funny, poignant, perhaps bittersweet love story. Unlike the brutal family dynamics typically mined by Noah Baumbach, DAN looked like a more good-natured family film. It still looked like it would explore the traumatic ties of family but with a lighter touch.
So, I started looking into the details on the film and discovered the screenwriter and director of DAN IN REAL LIFE is the same writer of one of my very favorite films. Anyone who knows me, knows that I always say, "If I could create a film like WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, I'd die happy." I just adore that film. It turns out that I'm a big Peter Hedges fan and I didn't even know it. Hedges also wrote ABOUT A BOY and was the writer/director of PIECES OF APRIL. Hedges was at Sundance in 2003 with Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Katie Holmes and Alison Pill. Had I known about the Gilbert Grape connection, I'd have made more of an effort to hunt him down. Dang skippy.
Hedges is currently working on the screenplay EVERYTHING CHANGES from the novel by Jonathan Tropper. A family-centered drama about an engaged man who finds himself attracting to his friend's widow while dealing with his estranged father's sudden appearance in his life. The rumor mill has it that Tobey Maguire will star.
Earlier today, I consulted the iChing and was given the hexagram Chia Jen (The Clan). There was a line that kept resonating all day, a line that speaks to the importance of family connections and the films that explore those stories. The family is society in the embryo; it is the native soil on which performance of moral duty is made early through natural affection, so that within a small circle a basis of moral practice is created, and this is later widened to include human relationships in general.
The relationships of family are the microcosm of one's participation in society at large. This is, of course, one of the things that I love about Sundance. It's such a mecca for creative, independent filmmakers who want to explore the ties that bind and unwind us all.
Quote for Today
“To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
