Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris

However, those who do not have to worry about protecting the innocence of young charges should enjoy the film. Broderick and Snow do wonderful jobs of showing that, yes, they can act against type. “It’s not a part that I get to play often, which was nice for me,” Broderick says of his role as Taylor Peters, a recovering drug and alcohol addict who spends a great deal of time indulging in his latest vice of gambling when he goes to Las Vegas to find his niece, the titular Amanda. “I always wanted to be an actor who was cast in parts where you just say [in a deep, gruff voice], ‘I’m goin’ out!’ … ‘Where is a farrier?’”

For Snow, the role of the aforementioned Amanda, who is working as a prostitute in Vegas, is a bit more familiar for her than one might think. “I’ve played a prostitute, now, three times. I know. It’s a stereotype. People look at me and they go, ‘Prostitute!’” she jokes. “I look twelve sometimes when I don’t wear makeup, and I look really young, and I look like I should be holding a lollipop and I’m all innocent… and I think [Tolan] wanted that sort of shocking quality of ‘this is the girl that you wouldn’t expect to be a prostitute’. And that’s what’s so sad and funny about it in some strange way.”

Lest all this talk of addiction and prostitution get you down, however, allow me to reassure you that the movie is surprisingly glib and amusing, and despite its subject matter, does not take itself too seriously, which is its saving grace. Although it deals with heavy topics, it is not a particularly heavy movie, which comes as a bit of a surprise given the fact that the film is very largely autobiographical for Tolan.

“My wife and I, one summer, years ago, got a call from a family friend who said they had a child who was in trouble in Las Vegas, and in trouble very similar to this,” Tolan explains. “There was some question of hooking and drug-taking, and because I had gambled quite a bit, and had spent quite a bit of time in Vegas, the person who was calling said, ‘Maybe Peter can go and find this person and bring this person to rehab.’ So all that stuff happened in real life. And when my wife said, ‘Maybe you’ll go,’ I thought in that instant, ‘Hey, great, I get to go to Vegas!’ That’s really what I thought! That’s the level of my sickness, and I’m willing to admit it. And in the next instant I thought, ‘That’s so bizarre and sick. That would make a great movie!’”

He adds quickly, “Obviously, everything from that point on is fiction, except some of the things in the relationship between the husband and wife. Those things also happened. Stealing the check from the middle of the checkbook? I did that. Look, I’m so proud to admit this to you all… and especially running to the bathroom at the racetrack when she calls, that’s what I would really do. And we shot it at Santa Anita and my wife was there. And she was just going, ‘[sighs] I don’t know. Why am I still in this thing?’”

But the pimp whom Taylor encounters in a less-than-ideal situation? “Yeah, none of that actually happened. And I have never paid for sex. I just want to clarify that for everybody. I never paid for sex. Not once. Not even with a coupon.”

Broderick says he did not model his portrayal of Taylor on any writers he knows (the character is a television writer for a sitcom repeatedly stressed to be god-awful) “except maybe a little bit Peter. He was right there and he did write it,” he says. “I have run into some of [his] friends who say, ‘A lot of that is Peter, you know. That’s exactly Peter.’ But I think that’s just from the script and from being around [him].”

Tolan, on his part, was just thrilled to have Broderick on board. “I knew Matthew’s work, of course. It’s fantastic. Election is one of my favorite movies. And if he would want to do it would be a big deal to me,” he says.

Why did Broderick choose the project? “I liked the writing. I thought it was very funny and a good story, an original story, and I just thought it was compelling. And it’s not a part that I get to play often, too, which was nice for me. It’s rare to read a script that you even want to keep reading. In this I really wanted to know what was going to happen. In a way, that’s the basic thing that scripts have to have and sometimes don’t.”

Tolan turns to Broderick. “Do you know why [Steve] Coogan did it?” he asks him. “I mentioned him to the casting person and she said, ‘You should ask him to be in the movie!’ I said, ‘Are you crazy!? First of all, he lives in the U.K.! It’s a small part; he’s not going to come over and do this indie thing!’ So she sent it to him anyway and he did it, and I was like, ‘Why? Why did you do this?’ And he said, ‘I did it because of this.’” Tolan makes a gesture Coogan’s character does often to Broderick’s character in the film and makes a motion with his flat palm between himself and an imaginary second person.

Snow became a contender the minute Tolan saw her face. “I do remember that he told me a story where my headshot came across his desk and he said to somebody, ‘I hope she can act because this should be Amanda,’” she says. “I auditioned and somehow got the part. So it worked out.”

But do things work out for Amanda?

“I think it’s open to interpretation to anybody, and I kind of like that it’s not wrapped up and tied with a bow because it’s not a storybook ending, nor is it a storybook movie, because it’s based in reality. All that needed to be done to change Amanda was just the seed needed to be planted, and something occurred in her where she did change and she had a realization,” Snow explains. “There’s something that’s instilled in her now.”

That same sentence could be said about any given audience of Finding Amanda.

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paolas  - interesting   |2008-07-14 13:08:57 this sounds like an interesting film. certainly something different for Broderick. nice article. Reply 0   0

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."