Screenwriter Nancy Oliver hit the jackpot with Lars and the Real Girl, her first screenplay. Not only was Lars embraced by critics, but Oliver's script received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Lars, portrayed by indie darling Ryan Gosling, is a man so introverted and alone that when he orders a life-like sex doll ( which he names Bianca ) off the Internet, he is convinced that she's real. Miraculously, the rest of the small town supports Lars' delusion with compassion and understanding. What sounds like a dirty joke instead becomes a sweet, off-the-wall comedy with—believe it or not—shades of It's a Wonderful Life. Lars and the Real Girl was recently released by MGM on DVD.
The soft-spoken, fiftysomething Oliver has waited a long time for the acclaim and was about to give up the writing game when her longtime friend, writer-director-producer Alan Ball, hired her to work on his HBO series 'Six Feet Under' in 2001. Oliver's script for Lars made the rounds for several years before finally getting made. Next, she'll work on HBO's new, highly anticipated vampire series 'True Blood,' which debuts this August.
Windy City Times: I have a great something to tell you that I think is going to make you happy.
Nancy Oliver: Oh, yes?
WCT: I missed Lars in the theaters and couldn't wait to watch the DVD screener. I went away with my partner for the weekend to visit my elderly, conservative parents and we watched it with them.
NO: [ Laughs ] Oh, boy …
WCT: So we had two liberal homosexuals and two conservative Republicans in their 70s watching Lars and the Real Girl and I have to tell you that we all loved it.
NO: How bizarre is that, huh?
WCT: Isn't it? I mean, how do you account for that? My mother was recommending this on the phone the next day to her friends; my dad did, too, and there I am telling my brother-in-law that it's a great movie for him to watch with his teenage daughter. And I was serious.
NO: I know, it's crazy. It's getting promoted on Christian Web sites and [ laughs ] I think it's hilarious.
WCT: I'm guessing you've been hearing stories like this since the moment it first opened. How do you account for this widespread appeal?
NO: I think because my goal … well, that's not true because I don't really have any goals [ laughs ] but what I was trying for was the basic human emotions—needs that really transcend all the Republican stuff, all the homosexual stuff. It's just about being human and I think that once people get over the fear that he's going to do something with the doll and you enter that world, that you connect with the humanity of it. I hope that's what happens, anyway.
WCT: Well, that's certainly what happened with us.
NO: That was quite a risk to take with your parents.
WCT: Well, they're used to my saying, 'Well, let's just try something a little different' and I am pleased to report that it worked like nothing's ever worked before—like 100 percent.
NO: That's really rewarding to me; I'm really grateful. I mean, because it's a movie about community, about people coming together—and if it happens even just watching the movie, that's pretty cool.
WCT: Lars is asked early on specifically if he's gay and he flatly denies it, but at the end of the movie I thought to myself, 'You know, his journey mirrors a coming-out process.' It was sort of like my own—everyone around me was ready to accept my sexuality before I was.
NO: [ Laughs ] I know how that happens when someone says, 'I'm gay' and everybody goes, 'Uh, yeah … '
WCT: 'Duh!' Do you mind if gay people have this interpretation? I mean we're used to projecting anyway. [ Laughs ]
NO: No, I don't mind at all because it's about rebirth. It's about resurrection and redemption and, no, I hope and always did, that people would connect to it on every level. It should resonate on many levels so I'm thrilled, and I can see where that happens. It wasn't in my mind [ that ] 'this is for gay people,' but to make that human connection certainly was. Everybody's got their own thing, and I hope that that's what Lars addresses.
WCT: Do you think his psychological condition would have been met with such support from everybody if he had been gay and had ordered a male doll?
NO: You know those never sold well. [ Both laugh. ] I think it would have been an entirely different film—one that I didn't feel capable of writing.
WCT: I think I knew the answer to that question before I asked it but there's always that wishful thinking I have like in the movie Big Eden: 'Oh, everyone will want him to meet some nice young man and settle down.'
NO: I know. It's true.
WCT: Your personal story is extremely inspiring to me—almost hanging it up as a writer and then being saved at the last minute. Does it finally feel like you're on the other side?
NO: You know what? I don't think I'll ever get over the other years. The 27 years when I didn't have anything except my friends, of course. I still go to the grocery store and I see that 'Help Wanted' sign in the window and I think to myself, 'I could do that.' So I'm not sure that I'll ever feel that I'm on the other side. The other part went on—do you know what I mean?
WCT: I'm still going through it, as so many people are. Yes, yes, I do.
NO: And the Oscar part is still not real to me. I mean, I went through it and everything and people talk about it but it seems like a dream or something that happened to somebody else. So I'm not sure that I'll ever feel safe or successful, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I think, 'Stay hungry.'
THEATER REVIEW
Omniscience
Playwright: Tim Carlson
At: Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield
Phone: 773-883-8830; $20-$25
Through: May 24
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
In case you haven't been paying attention to the persistent erosion of people's civil liberties and privacy, Canadian playwright Tim Carlson offers a stern lecture with his futuristic sci-fi drama Omniscience ( which is really more about what's happening in America and the world today ) .
And if you have been paying attention, you'll probably lose patience with Carlson's oh-so serious and pessimistic play, now having its U.S. premiere courtesy of Stage Left Theatre.
It's one thing to be preached at, but Carlson hasn't learned to inject any traces of humor to relieve his relentless predictions of doom and gloom to free thinkers in the future.
Omniscience switches back and forth in time in an imaginary futuristic land not unlike our own. Apparently, the actions of war documentary filmmaker Warren ( Cory Krebsbach ) and his recently returned-from-the-front military wife, Anna ( Cat Dean ) , has caught the attention of a controlling Big Brother-like government. As we slowly get the story to Warren and Anna's pained relationship ( and why she was forced to return early ) , we jump ahead in time to an interrogation with haughty governmental agent George ( Brian Plocharczyk ) quizzing a very defensive high-powered Channel One media executive named Beth ( Christine Gatto ) .
Carlson is able to maintain interest by slowly revealing what Anna witnessed in battle that has left her so shell-shocked. Like many of us, Carlson clearly has sympathy for soldiers who fight what is perceived to be an unjust war. But when Anna finally does say what happened, it somehow feels anticlimactic.
Carlson's ending theme of 'trust no one, especially your government' is wise advice, but takes far too long dramatically before we get that basic conclusion. Carlson's Omniscience serves its purpose as a warning to audiences, but as a play it needs more humanity and humor to make us really care about the characters.
Director Kevin Heckman and his design team don't help matters by offering up a very chilly and distancing production ( though if that's what they were aiming for to suit the play, they're really successful ) .
What is impressive is the extensive use of video footage and stills throughout the production by video designer Victor Holstein, which is a constant presence both physically and symbolically in set designer Adam Parboosingh's cold gray playing area.
The performances are generally good, though the gusto seen in Dean and Krebsbach's performances are largely missing from the cat-and-mouse badinage between Plocharczyk and Gatto ( more menace would have been nice ) .
Stage Left should be commended for reaching its 100th production and for the ideological bent to offer up a play like Carlson's Omniscience. Its issues are important, though a better emotional connection would have been appreciated.
