Eric interviews Alison Pill for ALL MY PUNY SORROWS

In the fall of 1994, I was in junior high school, while my older brother was in senior year. We lived in a rural area of ​​Southeast Texas, far removed from what most would call civilization. There were cows, but that's about as advanced as intelligent life has come. On a hot day in late September, I went to wake my brother up from what I assumed was an after-school nap before leaving for his night job at a nearby burger joint. When I didn't find him in his room, I looked outside. I found it in the garden. It was lying on the foundation of a house my father was building. At her feet was a bible, with an underlined verse (a psalm I can't remember) and a note pasted inside the pages. He had blown the back of his head off with a shotgun; blood was everywhere. I talked to her body for several minutes before my mother-in-law's voice behind me made me realize what I knew.

I have never been the same again.

ALL MY PUNY SORROWS is a startling comedy-drama adapted from Miriam Toews' best-selling novel by director Michael McGowan. It deals with multigenerational trauma in a Mennonite family in southern Canada. The two sisters at the heart of the film are both professional artists; one concert performer and the other a novelist. They speak, literally, in poetry.

Watch the trailer:

The film is a masterpiece; quiet, funny and poignant, featuring powerful performances across multiple generations of the Von Reisen family. Allison Pill (SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, HBO's "The Newsroom") is captivating as Yoli, Elfie's younger sister, played by Sarah Gadon ("11.22.63" from Amazon, "Castle Rock" from Hulu). The two actresses lend a weighty realism to opposing visions of survival in the face of crushing depression. Their anchor is their mother Lottie, played with devastating gravitas by Mare Winningham (TURNER & HOOCH, ST. ELMO'S FIRE). Amybeth McNulty ("Netflix's "Stranger Things") as Yoli's daughter Nora and Mimi Kuzyk ("Blue Murder," "The Chris Isaak Show") as feisty Aunt Tina round out the family with varying levels of snark and care. Each of these actresses delivers performances that make the poetry of their dialogue believable and unassuming, despite reading the script like an MFA thesis.

I got to talk about the film with writer/director Michael McGowan and actress Allison Pill. We discussed the conversations within the film as well as those it should hope to spark, as well as the dynamite Donal Logue (THE TAO OF STEVE, BLADE), the potential backlash of privilege and class that predominates in the film , and, to finish in style, the incomparable and timeless SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD.

Michael McGowan - writer/director

Michael McGowan - Hi, how are you, Eric?

Eric McClanahan - I'm fine, how are you?

MM - I'm fine, thank you.

EM - Fantastic! So we're talking about ALL MY PUNY SORROWS, which you adapted from the novel into a screenplay and directed. So, let's start at the beginning: what made you decide to adapt this novel into a screenplay? What spoke to you about this job?

MM - Well, I loved the novel and felt like it dealt with suicide in a way I had never seen before. I also thought because it was based on Miriam [Toews, the author of ALL MY PUNY SORROWS]'s own lived experience, even though it was a novel, it was essentially true in many ways; which gave him credibility. And also, there were three amazing roles she had written that I thought we could punch above our weight with the cast if we were lucky.

EM - I can see it, and you were really lucky. The performances of these main three are so amazing. Let's start with Sarah Gadon; how did you get it?

MM - Well, that's interesting. We're both Canadian and it's kind of a small community. I had also met her in Los Angeles a few years earlier to talk to her about it. She had read the draft and had good grades on it, which was fantastic. I had always thought of her as an Elfie and not a Yoli, so it wasn't like I could make her an offer right away because it would depend on Yoli's age to determine who the others would be. Then we had a great casting director, Heidi Levitt from Los Angeles, who really raised the profile of the script because we had a lot of great actors that we were looking for. Then when Allison [Pill] read it and loved it, it was an easy decision because I'm a huge fan of her work and she's so smart about things. She completely understood the character. So once we got her, and since Sarah was already kind of involved, we quickly went to see Sarah, and then we looked for the Lottie...