Sony Pictures Classics Film ‘Smashed’
October 8, 2012 by Dana Feldman
by Dana Feldman
At the Los Angeles press day at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for the new film “Smashed,” director James Ponsoldt along with co-writer Susan Burke, spoke of their new film about alcoholism. Ponsoldt explains that films about people with problems attempting to change their lives, even if they’re unsuccessful or perhaps delusional, are some of his favorite stories. “I love watching people try and fail. And try again. And fail worse. There’s something special and heroic and so, so human about seeing someone attempt to conquer her demons and fix her life, even if she isn’t necessarily imbued with the wisdom or common sense to have any clue how her life should be fixed.”
Per Burke, “This isn’t an issue movie, we’re not trying to teach anyone a lesson.” Of her personal experiences with addiction, she explains why this was an important film to her. “I lost my father to this disease. I got sober at twenty-four.” She had to, at one point in time, ask herself if she really had a problem. “For some people it really is just a phase, for others it isn’t. This isn’t my story though there are aspects and elements of my life in the film.” Admitting that though things can look good from the outside, for people fighting addition things on the inside are anything but. “I hit an emotional rock bottom before getting sober.”
Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Megan Mullally, Octavia Spencer, Aaron Paul, Nick Offerman, Mackenzie Davis and Bree Turner, the film follows the story of a young married couple with a mutual love of drinking until that bond is broken when Winstead’s character, Kate, decides to become sober with the help of AA. With her new lifestyle an obstacle as much as a saving grace, she’s forced to face her childhood and relationship with her mother as well as her job loss as a teacher and the crumbling of her marriage. Per Winstead, “This is more of a coming-of-age story than a cautionary tale.” Of the fact that her character figures out just how grave an issue drinking has become for her at such a young stage in her life, Winstead feels that it was good that this film picks up where it does. “If you have a problem, you have a problem whatever your age.”
To prepare for her role she attended several open AA meetings with Burke, who’s in recovery. “To get the full spectrum, I attended meetings all over Los Angeles. I didn’t claim to be an addict, I just said that I was there to learn about AA.” Quickly realizing that there isn’t just one face of alcoholism, that this disease afflicts people of all backgrounds, Winstead concluded that this is a universal struggle of being a human being. “The film is about living your life honestly, accepting yourself and your flaws.”
“Propaganda is really boring to me and I don’t know where the entertainment is in that,” Ponsoldt says of the film that he and Burke wrote which was inspired by a conversation. It was Burke’s disturbing and at the same time hysterical stories about her misadventures while drinking that became the seed for the script. Now sober, Burke’s stories didn’t just lead to a film about alcoholism but a story of what it means to be fully committed and to love another as well as the very pertinent need to change your life even when your partner isn’t capable of such change. “We’re all profoundly flawed and it’s much more interesting to watch a person on a journey of trying to change themselves and their life.”
Watch the Smashed movie trailer
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