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The Treatment

Kenneth Lonergan: Manchester by the Sea

The Treatment

KCRW

Arts

4.6639 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan join Elvis Mitchell to discuss creating believable on-screen human interaction in Manchester by the Sea.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:14.3

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. I am honored to have sitting across from me,

0:18.6

a man who has found, I think, something funny and

0:22.0

dramatic and bringing trauma into his movie scripts from Analyze. This to Waltz-Newstville,

0:28.6

of course, is Manchester by the CBO. Of course, we also know him from Margaret. And you can

0:32.2

count on me, the writer-director, Kenneth Lonergan, who we also know from a stage worker as well.

0:36.1

First of all, Kenny, pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Thanks. It's great to be here. But also, too, you know, for you, I mean, because that idea of like, I mentioned this to you when we saw each other a few nights ago, family's destiny is really kind of almost a throughline in your work. I guess I don't, you know, it's hard for me.

0:57.1

I don't want to be contradictory, but I don't think, I just don't think.

1:01.2

Oh, man, I want to be so contradictory. Now you're going to apologize for, I don't want to be contradictory.

1:03.2

No, I'm going to just retract it.

1:06.7

I don't think in those terms.

1:09.6

I don't think when I'm starting out in big sweeping terms like family is destiny.

1:14.1

I don't mind people.

1:14.9

I actually admire people who can and do function at that macro level.

1:19.5

But I'm more thinking about there's a guy in Manchester,

1:23.2

there's a guy in Quincy, Massachusetts, who's a janitor,

1:25.6

and he acts very strangely, and he's cut off from people, and he doesn't relate to them normally and what's up with him, and then moving forward specific by specific. And I'll have a, I might have an overview in mind, but I try to keep it as much in the background of my own consciousness as possible when I'm working,'t it doesn't help me all that much.

1:46.8

You don't think about family because family's been involved in those everything.

1:49.4

I go back to this is your youth or Waverly Gallery or lobby you or those are the family's kind of key to all those pieces.

1:57.8

That's absolutely true but I never think of it that way. I never think like family with a capital F. I'm just thinking about, this is our youth, I'm thinking about

2:05.7

three kids in 1982 on the Upper West Side and in a room and a lobby here. I'm thinking about

2:12.1

the security guards and the lobby and the police officers and then Waverly Gallery. I was thinking about my family and my

...

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