\n<\/p>\n
\n\tA film editor friend of mine makes the same complaint every time I see him: \u201cNo one makes movies about the way people live now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s not incorrect. The \u201cslice of life\u201d genre doesn\u2019t necessarily pack in cineplexes the way horror, superhero movies (for now) and video game adaptations do. That\u2019s why \u201cA Little Prayer\u201d came as a great relief \u2013 and a quiet revelation \u2013 at Sundance in January 2023.<\/p>\n
\n\tAngus MacLachlan delivered one of the most thoughtful and definitive indie movies that year (the same filmmaker whose screenplay \u201cJunebug\u201d helped catapult Amy Adams to household-name status twenty years ago). \u201cA Little Prayer\u201d is set in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where a humble patriarch (David Strathairn) contends with the serious shortcomings of his adult children (Will Pullen, Anna Camp). As his affable wife (Celia Weston) ticks away the days with her trusted daughter-in-law (Jane Levy), her husband contends with his son\u2019s mistress (Dascha Polanco) and the choices that lead him to an inevitable emotional reckoning.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film touches on a variety of topical issues \u2013 from abortion to veteran PTSD \u2013 yet feels timeless and honest in the way that the best indies can. Variety<\/em> caught up with the filmmaker and star as their film marks a second weekend in limited release.<\/p>\n \n\tHow did this premise come to you, Angus? <\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tAngus MacLachlan: <\/strong>\u00a0I started at nine years ago. I realize in retrospect that I started when my daughter was 15, and now she\u2019s 24. I am often conscious that I write very unconsciously. I find out after what it is that I was trying to get at. A lot of this was about my daughter growing up and becoming a human being. I still want to protect her and tell her what to do, and I can\u2019t anymore. This script has a lot of elements of other things I\u2019ve written. I don\u2019t sit and say, \u201cI\u2019m going to write about adult children living with their parents again,\u201d which is the same as in \u201cJunebug.\u201d Or about the loss of a child again. Even the \u201chot button\u201d political aspects of this film \u2013 like PTSD or a woman\u2019s right to choose \u2013 I never think I\u2019m going to write a movie about that. I\u2019m interested in people. That\u2019s my intention.<\/p>\n \n\tDavid Strathairn: <\/strong>I love qualifying this film as one about the way people live. I think it\u2019s essential in a culture where we\u2019re getting fractured and separated from our neighbors and communities. It\u2019s a time gone by, when people would get together and share what\u2019s going on. The post office, the grocery store, all these communalities that have been compromised by modern technology. This film, for me, was taking the roof off the top of a house down the road and saying, \u201cOh yeah, these people are going through the sort of the same things.\u201d People strive and try to do their best to move through life; there\u2019s a simple element of compassion in this film.<\/p>\n \n\tAngus, the film does feel very timely, given those issues you mentioned, like abortion and PTSD. How do you manage that element and still make this feel timeless?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tAM<\/strong>: These issues become very different when they come home to roost in one\u2019s own family. When you have to say this thing that maybe I object to or have difficulty with is happening to someone that I love. That\u2019s fascinating to me. I\u2019m old enough to remember that happening during the AIDS crisis, where people had strong opinions, and then someone they knew got sick, and that changed their idea of extrapolating it away from the human heart.<\/p>\n \n\tThis cast has an incredibly natural dynamic. Talk about putting them all together.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tAM<\/strong>: As someone who was an actor, I don\u2019t really like auditioning people. I work with a great casting director, Mark Bennett, who also cast \u201cJunebug\u201d and brought us Amy Adams. I had approached David about being in my earlier film, \u201cAbundant Acreage Available,\u201d and he couldn\u2019t do it. He was nice enough to stay in touch with me. I needed an actor that had great gravitas and honor. Celia Weston has been in two of my other films, and I love her. She\u2019s incredible in that, and she has this ability to have such emotional verisimilitude and then turn a line comedically on a dime.<\/p>\n \n\tMark brought me Will Pullen and Jane Levy. And with Jane, after I cast her, they sent me clips from her TV series \u201cZoe\u2019s Extraordinary Playlist.\u201d I saw she was so talented because she sings and dances and does physical comedy. Dascha Polanco, I knew of her and thought she would be great. The other one that\u2019s interesting is Ashley Shelton, who plays Bethany, and Anna Camp, who\u2019s been in two of my films, and I love.<\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019d love to break down arguably the most important scene of the film, which is an exchange between David and Jane Levy at the end of the film. David, you have such a special dynamic with Jane. Do you feel a fatherly instinct toward her, as happens in the film?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tDS<\/strong>: That scene hits me hard, still does when I think about it. It\u2019s a moment in my character\u2019s trajectory where he has to come out of his shell. He\u2019s not the most loquacious guy. There are mines in his family, and they\u2019ve all somehow navigated those minefields. But he\u2019s got to come clean and open up. The way Angus wrote and filmed this, it was gentle but incisive. I think of Jane with so much respect for her performance, I do have this kind of paternal \u2013 it\u2019s weird, because I\u2019m playing an old guy feeling for her. And I\u2019m an actor watching this actress whose skills and depth of emotion are on full display.<\/p>\n \n\tAM<\/strong>: I just want to add that we shot this scene on day 4 out of 19. Jane tells David that they are \u201ckindred spirits.\u201d My wonderful DP Scott Miller was kneeling in front of them. The camera starts on Jane, and then moves over to David, and then comes back to Jane. When I saw it in the monitor, I thought, \u201cIf I don\u2019t fuck up anything else, I\u2019ve got it.\u201d That scene is the confluence of everything.<\/p>\n \n\tDavid, you also have an incredible confrontation with Dascha\u2019s character. You discover she\u2019s keeping your son\u2019s baby, conceived in an affair he\u2019s been concealing from his wife, played by Jane.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tDS<\/strong>: It\u2019s quite something, the things my character says about his adult children. He probably didn\u2019t feel like that for most of his life, and boom, here comes an awareness which he is now reckoning with. I think that makes him somewhat of a brave guy to be able to voice it. On a universal scale, it\u2019s great to see a man speak his heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A film editor friend of mine makes the same complaint every time I see him: \u201cNo one makes movies about the way people live now.\u201d It\u2019s not incorrect. The \u201cslice of life\u201d genre doesn\u2019t necessarily pack in cineplexes the way horror, superhero movies (for now) and video game adaptations do. That\u2019s why \u201cA Little Prayer\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[12089,999,2107,12090,12091,12088],"class_list":{"0":"post-19696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-angus","9":"tag-david","10":"tag-director","11":"tag-maclachlan","12":"tag-prayer","13":"tag-strathairn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}