Curtis agreed with director Mark Waters that the story needed to be grounded in reality. “The movie is slapstick, a farce really,” says Curtis. “However, there is real friction between the mother and daughter. This is real stuff—the daughter being unhappy about the mother getting remarried; the mom not liking the daughter’s music.
“It’s not the kind of comedy where there’s actually a real discord between the mother and daughter,” Curtis continues. “They just don’t understand each other. Ultimately, the gift that the whole movie talks about is this gift of walking in each other’s shoes and seeing what is missing in your life. There’s actually something really beautiful that occurs in the midst of this comedy… that understanding that they find,” explains Curtis.
Director Waters agrees. “The two of them have no idea just how tough the other one has it,” he concludes. “The theme of the movie is that they both think that the other person’s life is a relative cake walk… until they spend a little time in the other’s body.”
It’s one of the ironies of the story that Tess, who is unable to connect with her own daughter, is a psychologist. “Since she thought she knew human behavior so incredibly well,” adds Hach, “I thought it would work really well comedically, that she had no idea what her daughter was going through. And that would be a really funny way to illustrate how out of touch she was.”
Curtis articulates some of the things that might be going through Tess’s head from a parent’s point of view—reasons why her relationship with Anna might be troubled. “From a parent’s standpoint, when your child is 15 or 16 years old, you think there are only two years to go until college and you start to see your kid’s future,” comments Curtis. “You’re nervous that today’s behavior will stay with them through adulthood, since they’re almost fully cooked and you realize you can’t change them now. All the parent’s worries surface and you ask, ‘did I do a good job?’ And at the same time, the child is much louder, bigger, and more articulate in defense of their positions.
“At the beginning of this story, we see Tess focusing on all the wrong stuff, from Anna’s point of view,” observes Curtis.
On the other hand, Anna has her own blind spots. “What Anna doesn’t see is any of the social or emotional things that parents go through… concerns about money and health and whether or not we’re going to be able to make the mortgage payments. And in this story, whether or not the children are going to be damaged by the death of their father, because we try to keep this ‘everything’sgoing- to-be-okay front,’” says Curtis.
Surprisingly, it was more difficult for Curtis to play Tess than to play Anna trapped in Tess’s body.
“I told Jamie from the get-go that the tougher character for her to play was going to be the psychologist,” says Waters. “Jamie actually has to subdue herself and carry herself with a little bit more of a stern demeanor in that role. When she gets to let loose and be the teenager, she is much more in her element.”
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