The Squid and the Whale
Short description
In 1986 Brooklyn, Bernard Berkman's writing career has stalled while his wife Joan's is taking off, and the tension between them ends their marriage. Their two sons, sixteen-year-old Walt and twelve-year-old Frank, are caught in the middle as the family splits in two. Bernard moves out and takes a student as a lodger, Joan begins seeing the younger boy's tennis coach, and the brothers find themselves shuttled between households while each tries to make sense of parents who now seem like strangers.
Noah Baumbach wrote and directed the film, his third feature after Mr. Jealousy, and drew on his own childhood in crafting it. Wes Anderson produced. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney play Bernard and Joan, with Jesse Eisenberg as Walt, Owen Kline as Frank, William Baldwin as Ivan and Halley Feiffer as Sophie Greenberg. The production had a modest budget of about two million dollars and returned roughly eleven million worldwide, a strong result for a film of its size.
Audience response has been solid without being unanimous: on IMDb it sits at 7.3 out of ten from around 95,000 votes, while on TMDB it holds 7 out of ten from a much smaller pool of about 1,100 votes. A film critics' rating of 8.1 out of ten, drawn from 150 reviews, places it noticeably higher among professional reviewers than among general viewers. The film runs eighty-one minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Due to budget constraints and for authenticity, Linney and Daniels wore Noah Baumbach's parents' clothes during filming.
- Noah Baumbach initially wanted Wes Anderson to direct, but Anderson persuaded Baumbach to direct it himself, as the film's subject matter was very personal to him.
- Laura Linney received the film's script from Eric Stoltz in 2000, while filming "Joyful Noise." After reading it, she immediately agreed to participate in the project.
- Bill Murray was originally slated to play the lead role in the film, but at the last minute he decided to take a break from filming "Broken Flowers." He was replaced by Jeff Daniels.
- The film's title refers to exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History. They feature taxidermied specimens of a giant squid and a whale battling each other. They appear at the end of the film.
- The film was shot in just 23 days.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
