The Skeleton Twins
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Skeleton Twins |
| Original title | The Skeleton Twins |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2014 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Craig Johnson |
| script | Craig Johnson Mark Heyman |
| production |
Stephanie Langhoff Jennifer Lee Jared Ian Goldman Jacob Pechenik |
| music | Nathan Larson |
| camera | Reed Morano |
| cut | Jennifer Lee |
| occupation | |
| |
The Skeleton Twins is a US tragicomedy from the year 2014 . The film premiered on January 18, 2014 at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was released in theaters in the United States on September 12 of the same year. The production was not shown in cinemas in Germany, but was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 30, 2015 . It is about two siblings at risk of suicide who meet again after many years and who are overtaken by their past or present.
action
The dentist Maggie Dean wants the just in her bathroom with an overdose of tablets take life when she gets a call: Your brother Milo, whom she has not seen for over ten years, is in the hospital after he left a suicide note and has cut the wrists . Maggie makes her way to Milo's hometown of Los Angeles and visits him at the clinic. She suggests that he stay with her in Nyack for a while , which he accepts after some hesitation. There Milo immediately made the acquaintance of Maggie's husband Lance, who was very friendly towards him. Lance tells him that he and Maggie are trying to have a baby, which Milo surprises because his sister has never expressed a desire to have children in the past. Milo gradually familiarizes himself with the city when he walks past a bookstore , he immediately notices a medieval man who works there and whom he watches for a long time. Meanwhile, Maggie takes diving lessons and starts an affair with her teacher, Billy.
After a spontaneous invitation from Milo, her mother Judy pays the siblings a visit. After she leaves, Maggie asks her brother if she would be a good mother. Milo denies this, as she would likely behave overprotective and uptight towards her child, to which Maggie reacts angrily. Some time later, Milo apologizes to her and jokes that he only said that because he was worried about her obesity . Maggie admits that she has been taking birth control pills for a long time because she doesn't really want a child from Lance, and she regularly enrolls in courses, with the leaders of which she then has sex. She expresses concerns about whether she is worthy of being married to Lance at all, but she is comforted and reassured by her brother.
A few days later, Milo meets with Rich, the bookstore employee. It turns out that Rich Milos was an English teacher in high school , at the age of 15 Milo had a homosexual relationship with him . Rich now has a partner and a 16-year-old son, but he's still happy to see his former lover. When he asks Milo about his everyday life, Milo lies and says that he works as a very successful actor , although he actually works as a waiter in a restaurant . He and Rich spend the night together, when Milo visits Rich the following day, who is upset because his son is at home and he is afraid that Milo will reveal their past together. After Milo gets kicked out by him, he gets drunk and throws away a piece of jewelry that Rich had given him years ago and kept all along.
When Milo arrives at Maggie's house, dejected, he tells her about a classmate who bullied him . His father had assured him at the time that high school would be the height of the bully and that he would have a terrible adult life. However, Milo's everyday life has turned negatively after high school, while the bully leads a happy, fulfilling life. Maggie asks her brother not to kill himself, he promises her to at least try. On Halloween , Milo and Maggie spend the holiday together, reminiscing about their late father. When Milo goes to the bathroom and leaves his cell phone in the living room, Maggie sees that Rich is calling. She blames Milo, and it was she who betrayed his affair at the time, causing Rich to lose his license as a teacher.
A little later, Lance tells Milo that he is afraid that he will be impotent . When Milo mentions that his sister is hiding cigarettes in the house , Lance comes up with the idea of looking for contraceptive pills. Meanwhile, Maggie's period is overdue, which is why she is considering buying a pregnancy test . On the way to the pharmacy, she meets a former classmate who has her naughty child with her, which increases Maggie's fear of motherhood, but she gets it shortly afterwards to her relief their period. She ends her connection with Billy and goes home. There she gets into an argument with Lance, who found the birth control pills, and admits her affairs to him during the confrontation. She then berates Milo and blames him for the failure of their marriage, when he replies that her relationship with Lance was not a real marriage, she tells him that he should not fail his next suicide attempt.
Maggie then goes to the swimming pool where she took her diving lessons. She leaves Milo a voice message that is an allusion to his suicide note, after which she tries to kill herself with weights in the water. When she notices that she is drowning, she panics and wants to get on, but this is not possible due to the weights. However, she is saved by Milo, who listened to the voice message in time. The film ends with the shot of the siblings looking at their newly acquired aquarium and goldfish in Maggie's house .
production
Craig Johnson and Mark Heyman had several ideas during the writing process, which were discarded, for example Milo was originally supposed to be a drag queen and the film in the road movie genre . The pair eventually opted for a "more modest" approach in the style of Hal Ashby and Alexander Payne . Johnson also chose the dramedy genre because he did not want to write a drama or a comedy, as both drama and comedy are present in everyday life. He described the subject of the film as "pretty dark shit treated with a sense of humor".
In a key scene in the film, the main characters Milo and Maggie sing playback to Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now the band Starship . Actually, the song Hold On by Wilson Phillips should be used in the sequence . Since this was already featured prominently in the comedy Bridal Alarm , Johnson, according to his own statement, listened to “ kitschy ballads from the 1980s” for a day and sang along with them while he looked at himself in the mirror. He eventually chose Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now because it is sung in a duet and therefore both main characters could be included.
The shooting began in November 2012 in Brooklyn . During the 22 days of shooting, many scenes were improvised at Johnson's suggestion, although a full script was available. According to Johnson, his favorite improvisation was a sequence where Milo and Maggie talk about Vibram shoes .
Awards
Craig Johnson was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and together with Mark Heyman received the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his screenplay. Bill Hader was for his performance at the Gotham Awards as Best Actor nomination. The National Board of Review named the production one of the ten best independent films of the year.
At the 2015 Critics' Choice Movie Awards , Kristen Wiig received a nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy . At the Zurich Film Festival , the film was awarded as the best international feature film. The main characters Hader and Wiig were at the 2015 MTV Movie Awards in the category Best Music Moment nominated.
synchronization
The synchronization of the film was done at Berliner Synchron based on a dialogue book by Andeas Hinz, directed by Klaus Bauschulte.
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Milo Dean | Bill Hader | Michael Baral |
| Maggie Dean | Kristen Wiig | Manja Doering |
| Lance | Luke Wilson | Markus Pfeiffer |
| Rich | Ty Burrell | Felix Spit |
| Billy | Boyd Holbrook | Vanya Gerick |
| Judy Dean | Joanna Gleason | Liane Rudolph |
| Dr. Linda Essex | Adriane Lenox | Nina Herting |
Web links
- The Skeleton Twins in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for The Skeleton Twins . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2014 (PDF).
- ↑ Sundance 2014: US Dramatic Competition. In: IndieWire. January 10, 2014, accessed August 30, 2019 .
- ↑ Zaki Hasan: Interview: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Craig Johnson on The Skeleton Twins. In: The Huffington Post . September 12, 2017, accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Prachi Gupta: "The Skeleton Twins" director Craig Johnson on comedy, tragedy and Bill Hader. In: Salon. January 21, 2014, accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ↑ Lindsey Bahr: Behind Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader's epic lip sync in 'Skeleton Twins'. In: Entertainment Weekly . July 15, 2014, accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ↑ Christine: Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader begin filming 'The Skeleton Twins' in NYC. In: OLV. November 27, 2012, accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ^ Nigel M. Smith: 'Whiplash' Owns the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Awards Netting Two Top Prizes. In: IndieWire. January 25, 2014, accessed August 30, 2019 .
- ^ Gordon Cox: Gotham Award Nominations: 'Boyhood' Scores Four (FULL LIST). In: Variety . October 23, 2014, accessed August 30, 2019 .
- ↑ Top 10 Independent Films. In: National Board of Review. Accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ↑ Sean O'Connell: The 2015 Critics Choice Nominations: Get The Complete List Here. In: CinemaBlend. December 15, 2014, accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ↑ The Skeleton Twins. In: Zurich Film Festival. Accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ↑ Kase Wickham: Here Are Your 2015 MTV Movie Awards Nominees. In: MTV . March 4, 2015, accessed August 31, 2019 .
- ↑ German synchronous index | Movies | The Skeleton Twins. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .