Tamara Jenkins Turns Savage!
By Ariel Vered
In 1998, director Tamara Jenkins overtook indie audiences with Slums of Beverly Hills, her semi-autobiographical inculcation into the world of breasts. The relative unknown became an overnight auteur, winning accolades and awards for her first major film. And then, for a decade, she all but vanished.
This month, Jenkins is ready to tackle the dreaded sophomore slump with The Savages, the much-touted dramedy starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It begins in the absurd and hyper-stylized retirement community of Sun City, Arizona, where old men drive golf carts and old women parade around in leotards. The Savages don’t fit in.
As siblings Wendy and Jon, Linney and Hoffman bicker like they’ve been doing it their whole lives. It’s a testament to Jenkins’s writing that the characters, flawed yet proud, breathe with such tenacity and heart. The Savages is an understated beauty about debilitating illness, a refreshingly honest, blunt look at the ties that bind. Below, the director discusses Greek tragedy, her ten-year hiatus, and never wanting to grow up.
Jenkins, above, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney.
BLACKBOOK: Which do you prefer, writing or directing?
TAMARA JENKINS: They’re really integrated. I write with the intention to direct, and so I spend a lot of time in the writing stage almost directing the script on the page.
BB: Does that slow your process down? Does it have anything to do—
TJ: —with why it’s taken me 10 years to make a second movie? There were other projects, things that fell apart. When this movie came around, I was so fueled by professional disappointment that nothing could stop me. I became kind of a maniac.
BB: Why deal with such heavy issues?
TJ: I had two personal experiences with elder care, to use a generic term. My grandmother and father, at the end of their lives, both had dementia, and were both in nursing homes. It’s not a strict retelling of my own experience, but the emotional core of it is something I really know about firsthand.
BB: It’s not a sexy subject.
TJ: It’s the opposite of sex—it’s death. The tone of the movie and maintaining a sort of blunt irreverence was very important. You don’t expect humor in that environment, but if you’ve ever spent time in it in real life, you know it’s going on quietly behind the curtains.
BB: The characters are named Jon and Wendy. Is that a Peter Pan allusion?
TJ: Well, it was kind of an accident. I think Wendy happened first and then I stumbled upon Jon. In the process, I realized, “Oh my god, that’s the name of the Darlings!” I thought it was an interesting coincidence and I just kept it because it seemed applicable in a way.
BB: Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman have such great sibling chemistry in the movie.
TJ: It’s kind of like they’ve been through the trenches together. There’s this kind of gallows humor that exists between siblings. But they’re really combative, there’s this rivalry happening also.
BB: But it’s not so much what was said, but what wasn’t said that matters. The viewer has to discern their histories as kids.
TJ: Sometimes people say, “There’s very little exposition about the family in the movie.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s because exposition is a bad word.” You don’t really want to have to expose history in some kind of cheap speech or weak flashback.
BB: The audience isn’t waiting for the “Well, when Dad used to hit me…” histrionics.
TJ: I always liken it to going to somebody’s house for dinner when you don’t know anything about the history of the family. Just based on how they handle the meal—the mother pouring the orange juice, the father slamming the refrigerator, passing the peas, carving the meat—you can really learn a lot based on the way they behave. The past becomes apparent based on behavior in the present.
BB: What intrigues you so much about family dynamics?
TJ: Well, it’s a pretty famous subject matter for many dramatists, like the Greeks for instance. I’m sort of joking, because at film festivals, people are like, “What is it about independent filmmakers and family? What about that is new?” One time I said, “It’s not that new. Look at the House of Atreus. Look at Oedipus. It started a long time ago.” But I do think it’s a very fertile terrain for drama. At its most basic level, it’s a bunch of people who are stuck together and they have to deal with each other so there’s a kind of forced proximity. In terms of personal interest, my family was pretty fractured.
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