{"id":1501,"date":"2007-11-29T08:30:48","date_gmt":"2007-11-29T08:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/linney-on-nursing-homes-the-sa.html"},"modified":"2007-11-29T08:30:48","modified_gmt":"2007-11-29T08:30:48","slug":"linney-on-nursing-homes-the-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/linney-on-nursing-homes-the-sa.html","title":{"rendered":"Linney on Nursing Homes: &#8220;The Savages&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Savages.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/Savages.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"240\" style=\"float:right;margin:5px\">When I ask Laura Linney if getting the green light for a movie set extensively in nursing homes was easy, she leans forward and lets out a loud, disbelieving \u201cGod no!\u201d She\u2019s meeting with journalists at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Boston, and she follows with a qualifier. \u201cIt\u2019s the dreaded topic,\u201d the actress says. \u201cIt instills dread in almost anyone. Thinking about it, having to face it, putting someone there, being in there. But guess what? If it\u2019s a good place? I want to go.\u201d<br \/>\nShe does, in Tamara Jenkins\u2019 new comic drama, \u201cThe Savages,\u201d starring with Philip Seymour Hoffman as half of a brother-sister duo coping with putting their father Lenny (Philip Bosco) in a nursing home. The film is one of the first movies released by a major studio (Fox Searchlight) that deals with the topic \u2013 &#8220;Away from Her,&#8221; Sarah Polley\u2019s adaptation of Alice Munro\u2019s story \u201cThe Bear Came Over the Mountain,\u201d treaded similar territory. While that film focused on a man losing his wife to Alzheimer\u2019s, the ailing Lenny Savage suffers from dementia. Both deal with the culture of elder care, portrayed as foreign and tragic to grown children and spouses faced with the prospect of turning their loved one over to a slew of anonymous nurses.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n\u201cIt\u2019s just an emotionally devastating thing to do,\u201d Linney says. \u201cYou feel like you\u2019re failing someone. It brings up all sorts of fear.\u201d<br \/>\nIn \u201cThe Savages,\u201d much of her on-screen sparring with Hoffman is over the level of care Lenny\u2019s getting, as Hoffman\u2019s Jon \u2013 a realist \u2013 is content to keep their father in the nursing home near his Buffalo house and Linney\u2019s child-like, guilt-ridden Wendy pushes to move him to posher facilities that require interviews and tests. Though Linney says she didn\u2019t intentionally draw from personal experience (her own grandmother was in a nursing home), it seems as though working on the film pushed her to have a difficult, yet essential, conversation with her own older relatives.<br \/>\n\u201cThe one thing I did was I sat down with the relatives who hopefully, if I outlive them, I will see them through the end of their lives, and I\u2019m privileged to have that responsibility,\u201d she says, adding that, \u201cI know that when that time comes I\u2019m going to be a mess. I\u2019m not going to see straight. I\u2019m not going to be able to make decisions. I\u2019m going to be in the depths of fear and grief. But when I sat down, I (said) \u2018You have to help me, now. I want to know what you want. Let\u2019s do this now so that we can do it while I can laugh about it and you can laugh about it. We can make jokes about it, and then I\u2019ll know what to do. Because I\u2019m going to be all alone and I\u2019m not going to be able to function. Help me now so I can do the right thing when the time comes.\u2019\u201d<br \/>\n<em>-written by Jenny Halper<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I ask Laura Linney if getting the green light for a movie set extensively in nursing homes was easy, she leans forward and lets out a loud, disbelieving \u201cGod no!\u201d She\u2019s meeting with journalists at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Boston, and she follows with a qualifier. \u201cIt\u2019s the dreaded topic,\u201d the actress says.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Linney on 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