The Chumscrubber

The Chumscrubber
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Arie Posin
Produced by	Lawrence Bender Bonnie Curtis
Screenplay by	Zac Stanford
Story by	Arie Posin Zac Stanford
Starring	See cast
Music by	James Horner
Editing by	Arthur Schmidt
Distributed by	Go Fish Pictures
Release date(s)	August 26, 2005 (2005-08-26)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	United States Germany
Language	English
Budget	US$10 million[1]
Box office	$351,401[2]

The Chumscrubber is a 2005 dark comedy film directed by Arie Posin and written by Posin and Zac Stanford, starring an ensemble cast. The film focuses on the lack of communication between teenagers and their parents, and the prevalence of prescription drugs in American society. The title of the film refers to a character that helps his friends to survive in a superficial world by keeping things authentic and is portrayed in form of a video game omnipresent in the teenagers' lives, in which a post-apocalyptic hero carries his severed head in his hand as he fights the forces of evil.

Plot

One day in the fictional town Hillside in Southern California, the supplier of prescription medication to the students at the local high school, Troy Johnson (Josh Janowicz), commits suicide. Troy's best friend Dean Stiffle (Jamie Bell), who found the body, is prescribed more antidepressants by his psychiatrist father Bill (William Fichtner). When Dean returns to school, he is antagonized by drug dealers Billy (Justin Chatwin) and Lee (Lou Taylor Pucci), who were supplied by Troy. Their friend, Crystal Falls (Camilla Belle), flirts with Dean, but he soon realizes that her true intentions are for Dean to retrieve the remaining drugs in Troy's home and give them to her, Billy and Lee, and he refuses to cooperate. To force Dean to procure the drugs, Billy and Lee plan to kidnap Dean's brother, Charlie (Rory Culkin), as a ransom, but they end up kidnapping Charlie Bratley (Thomas Curtis) instead of Charlie Stiffle.

The kidnappers hold Charlie Bratley – whose parents are still unaware that he is missing – overnight at Crystal's home, and Dean eventually agrees to go to Troy's home to find the drugs. As Dean delivers the drugs, though, Billy discovers that the bag doesn't contain drugs at all. An angry Billy starts a fight with Dean, and Dean is arrested. While trying to explain everything to Officer Lou Bratley (John Heard), who happens to be Charlie Bratley's father, Dean reveals that his brother Charlie replaced the drugs with a bag of the vitamins that their mother Allie (Allison Janney) sells. Neither Officer Bratley nor Dean's father believes Dean's story, but he is released, whereupon his father increases the dosage of the antidepressants that Dean is taking. Later, a flashback will reveal that Charlie Stiffle crushed the real drugs and put them into a casserole that his mother was making for Troy's memorial.

The next day is Troy's memorial service and the wedding of Mayor Michael Ebbs (Ralph Fiennes) to Charlie Bratley's mother Terri (Rita Wilson). Lou finally realized that his son actually had been kidnapped and headed out to look for him. Now at Lee's house, Crystal asks Lee to help stop the kidnapping scheme, but he does not comply. Crystal goes to Dean's house for help, where she finds him hallucinating about Troy's death and finally expressing his grief. Meanwhile, a paranoid Lee tries to stab and kill Charlie Bratley to avoid being caught, but Charlie fights back and slices the knife through Billy's eye. Billy runs out into the street, screaming in pain, and is hit by Lou's police car.

Dean goes into Troy's memorial, where all of the visitors are intoxicated by the drugs that Charlie Stiffle put into the casserole that his mother made. Troy's mother, Carrie (Glenn Close), discloses to Dean that she never knew her own son. Dean tells her about Troy, and she thanks him. Billy is later sent to prison, while Lee gets acquitted. A closing voice over explains that Dean and Crystal "escape together", and they are shown kissing.

Cast

• Jamie Bell as Dean Stiffle, a teenage outsider and the film's protagonist. He refuses to face his grief over his best friend's suicide, instead choosing to numb his feelings with drugs.
• Camilla Belle as Crystal Falls, Dean's rebellious classmate. Unlike her friends, she feels sympathy for Dean and is reluctant to partake in the plans to kidnap his brother.
• Justin Chatwin as Billy, a drug dealer at Dean's high school who was formerly supplied by Troy. He dreams to join the air force after graduation, but his fight with Charlie Bratley leaves him with impaired vision.
• Glenn Close as Carrie Johnson, Troy's devastated mother. She tries to mask her grief with a cheerful persona, and continually guilts her neighbors by telling them bluntly that she does not blame them for Troy's death.
• Rory Culkin as Charlie Stiffle, Dean's younger brother. He spends most of his time on the family couch playing video games.
• Thomas Curtis as Charlie Bratley, the 13-year-old son of Officer Lou Bratley and his ex-wife Terri. Having been largely ignored by his negligent mother, at the end of the film he is sent to live with Lou.
• William Fichtner as Bill Stiffle, Dean's psychiatrist father who uses Dean as the subject of his books. Though he makes life's decisions always looking for potential new material, his book sales turn out to be disappointing.
• Ralph Fiennes as Michael Ebbs, the mayor of Hillside and Terri Bratley's fiancé. After spilling paint in the shape of a dolphin, he becomes infatuated with dolphins and paints them all over his house; at the end of the film, he resigns from politics and becomes an artist.
• John Heard as Lou Bratley, a police officer and Charlie Bratley's father. He cannot let go of his previous marriage with Terri, and finds satisfaction in giving her copious parking tickets.
• Allison Janney as Allie Stiffle, Dean's overworked mother. She initially struggles to sell her VeggiForce vitamins, but by the end of the film, she has found success and VeggiForce has become something of a cult.
• Josh Janowicz as Troy Johnson, Dean's best friend and the supplier of prescription drugs to the student body at his high school. After his suicide, he appears frequently in Dean's hallucinations.
• Carrie-Anne Moss as Jerri Falls, Crystal's laidback mother. She is obsessed with Terri Bratley's interior design work, but cannot catch her attention until she tells Terri that her son was at her house.
• Lou Taylor Pucci as Lee Parker, Billy's smart but timid friend who often succumbs to peer pressure. His conservative parents pressure him about his schoolwork, hoping for him to get into a good college.
• Rita Wilson as Terri Bratley, a successful interior designer and Charlie's mother. She grows increasing frustrated and demanding as her wedding to Michael approaches, and by the end of the film her design efforts have become less fruitful.

Themes

The title of the film refers to a video game character, "The Chumscrubber", who helps his friends to survive in a superficial world by keeping things authentic, and is portrayed as a post-apocalyptic hero, carrying his severed head in his hand as he fights the forces of evil. The Chumscrubber's world was intended to be a reflection of the Hillside community, shown by the repetition of characters' lines in the video game; a voice in the game yells "Kill him! Stab him! Get him again!", the exact line said by Billy to Lee at the end of the film, urging him to stab Charlie Bratley.^[3] Producer Bonnie Curtis described the character as "this sub-human monster the kids feel they are becoming".^[4] Posin commented that "the Chumscrubber is everything that that community has suppressed or denied or tried to ignore, and [...] the idea that the collective denial of the community as a whole finally gives birth to a character that will not be ignored".^[5]

Posin stated that one theme of the film is that "the adults in this world tend to be immature or childish and the kids tend to be very mature and adult and sophisticated for their age".^[3] He shot the teenage characters slightly below eye level to create the impression of looking up at an adult, and shot the adults slightly above eye level as if the viewer were looking down at a child.^[3] He said that hypocrisy was "at the top of the list" of the themes he wanted to explore in the story.^[6] While all of the adults in the film are attempting to live perfect lives, they cannot see that their children are driven to suicide, antidepressant addiction and kidnapping – for instance, Terri is so obsessed with her upcoming wedding that she does not realize her son is missing.^[6]

The film features dolphins as a recurring motif. Michael forms an obsession with dolphins and paints them all over his house, the street plan of Hillside is shown to form the shape of a dolphin at the end of the film. Nathan Baran of Hybrid Magazine was frustrated by the lack of explanation of the motif, saying: "Never are dolphins discussed by anyone else to have any meaning whatsoever. [...] What is the significance of the dolphin as an image? [...] it is a completely arbitrary image awkwardly stuffed with forced meaning".^[7] Posin saw Hillside's formation of a dolphin shape as "beauty and order to the chaos", illustrating Michael's belief in deep beauty where everybody else finds chaos.^[5]

Production

While working at a Hollywood talent agency, for ten years Arie Posin had been writing scripts "trying to break in[to]" the film industry when he decided that he would rather be a director than a screenwriter.^[3] Posin asked writer Zac Stanford to write the screenplay for The Chumscrubber based on his idea.^[3] Because they collaborated on the story, Posin later described the film as "rooted somewhere between" his own memories of growing up in suburban Irvine, CA and Stanford's upbringing in a small town in the Pacific Northwest.^[8] Posin and Stanford had originally planned to shoot the film with their own money. Posin's girlfriend suggested that he send the script to five producers; one, Lawrence Bender, responded and passed the script on to his partner Bonnie Curtis.^[3] Posin and the producers brought the project to around sixty uninterested production companies before sufficient funds for the US$10 million budget^[1] were raised and production began.^[3]

Posin considered numerous other actors for the lead role of Dean before he decided to cast Jamie Bell. Auditions for the role spanned over a year, and Posin said that he met "probably every young actor in Hollywood between a certain age".^[9] For the role of Crystal, Posin sought a beautiful but fragile actress. He chose Camilla Belle after she auditioned, and according to him, "She just was the character".^[5] Posin wanted an actor similar to Ralph Fiennes to play Michael, but was surprised when Fiennes himself agreed to be in the film.^[3] Justin Chatwin, a Billy Wilder fan, was drawn to the script after hearing that Posin had trained with Wilder.^[10] Ben Kingsley and Robin Williams were set to star in the film at different points in pre-production.^[1]

Principal photography of The Chumscrubber began in April 2004 and lasted for 30 days.^[6][11] Filming locations included Valencia, Los Angeles, and Santa Clarita of California,^[12] as well as two soundstages.^[6]

Release

The Chumscrubber premiered on January 25, 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival.^[13] It went on to be shown at the Moscow International Film Festival in June 2005, where it won the Audience Award.^[14] The film was released theatrically in the United States on August 5, 2005, playing in 28 theaters. It earned US$28,548 on its opening weekend, ranking 59th at the box office. It closed after two weeks in release with a total domestic gross of $52,597.^[15] The film's highest-grossing overseas releases were in Australia with $96,696, Germany with $81,323, and Greece with $71,100.^[16] It earned only £36 from its single-weekend release in the United Kingdom, meaning that only six people paid for a ticket to see the film.^[17] With a total foreign gross of $298,804, the film's total worldwide gross was $351,401.^[15]

The film was released on DVD in Region 1 on January 10, 2006. The special features included on the disc are an audio commentary from Arie Posin, a 12-minute "making-of" featurette, and 10 deleted and extended scenes.^[18]

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 34% based on 58 reviews.^[19] The consensus is: "This derivative poke at suburbia falls short of delivering a scathing indictment of upper middle-class disconnect." Metacritic gave the film a rating of 43% based on the reviews of 12 critics.^[20]

Richard Roeper described it as "part Donnie Darko part American Beauty ... there's even a little Desperate Housewives in there" and he praised the film for "good performances and strong writing" while noting it was strongly influenced by other sources and told in a surreal way.^[21] Carina Chocano of the LA Times similarly described it saying the film "could be mistaken for the secret love child of Donnie Darko and Desperate Housewives" ^[22]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine was unapologetic and describing the film as "an appallingly clumsy and stupid take on drugs, kidnapping and suicide in suburbia".^[23]

Soundtrack

The Chumscrubber: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack album by Various Artists
Released	October 18, 2005 (2005-10-18)
Length	55:16
Label	Lakeshore Records
Producer	Chris Douridas

The film's original score was composed by James Horner. Though Horner's previous work comprised mostly high-budget studio films – including Titanic (1997), Braveheart (1995), The Mask of Zorro (1998), and Apollo 13 (1995) – producer Bonnie Curtis approached him to score The Chumscrubber because "You never know until you ask." Horner agreed after seeing an early cut of the film. He and Posin spent five days on a soundstage, experimenting with different musical arrangements. Posin described the final product as "dramatic with a wink and a smile to it".^[4] There is an uncredited song that plays in the opening scene where Dean finds Troy. This song is an unreleased version of Rooney's "Sleep Song".

1. "Our House" – Phantom Planet
2. "Bridge to Nowhere" – The Like
3. "Run" – Snow Patrol
4. "Pure Morning" – Placebo
5. "Oblivion" – Annetenna
6. "Spreading Happiness All Around" – James Horner
7. "Kidnapping the Wrong Charlie" – James Horner
8. "Dolphins" – James Horner
9. "Pot Casserole" – James Horner
10. "Digging Montage" – James Horner
11. "Parental Rift/The Chumscrubber" – James Horner
12. "Not Fun Anymore..." – James Horner
13. "A Confluence of Families" – James Horner
14. "The End" – James Horner

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Fetters, Sara M. (August 5, 2005). "The Chumscrubber Interview (Part 2)". MovieFreak.com. http://www.moviefreak.com/artman/publish/int_chumscrubber2.shtml. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
2. ^ The Chumscrubber at Box Office Mojo
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} "CHUMSCRUBBER duo Arie Posin and Bonnie Curtis chat up Quint". Ain't It Cool News. August 18, 2005. http://www.aintitcool.com/?q=node/21039. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
4. ^ ^{a b} "The Chumscrubber". WritingStudio.co.za. http://www.writingstudio.co.za/page1049.html. Retrieved January 2, 2010. 
5. ^ ^{a b c} Baran, Nathan (August 2005). "The Chumscrubber—Nathan Baran interviews director Arie Posin". Hybrid Magazine. http://www.hybridmagazine.com/films/0805/chumscrubber-interview.shtml. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
6. ^ ^{a b c d} "The art of writing and making films: The Chumscrubber". WritingStudio.co.za. http://www.writingstudio.co.za/page1048.html. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
7. ^ Baran, Nathan (August 2005). "The Chumscrubber". Hybrid Magazine. http://www.hybridmagazine.com/films/0805/chumscrubber.shtml. Retrieved January 2, 2010. 
8. ^ Riggins, Marleigh (November 15, 2005). "LAist Interview: Arie Posin". LAist. http://laist.com/2005/11/15/laist_interview_arie_posin.php. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
9. ^ Gilchrist, Todd (January 12, 2006). "Chafed About The Chumscrubber". FilmStew.com. http://www.filmstew.com/showArticle.aspx?ContentID=13122. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
10. ^ Pucci, Lou Taylor (August 2005). "Justin Chatwin: he may not have been a whiz in chemistry class, but he sure knows how to get reactions". Interview. ^{[dead link]}
11. ^ Laporte, Nicole (April 18, 2004). "Thesps bound for El Camino". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117903474.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
12. ^ "The Chumscrubber (2005)". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/307584/The-Chumscrubber/details. Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
13. ^ Foundas, Scott (March 2, 2005). "The Chumscrubber". Variety. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117926411/. Retrieved September 28, 2011. 
14. ^ Henderson, Craig (2007). "Knockout Belle". Factory: The Film Industry Magazine. http://www.factory-publishing.com/Resources/cb-factory-07.pdf. Retrieved September 28, 2011. 
15. ^ ^{a b} "The Chumscrubber: Summary". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=chumscrubber.htm. Retrieved January 2, 2010. 
16. ^ "The Chumscrubber: Foreign Box Office". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=intl&id=chumscrubber.htm. Retrieved January 2, 2010. 
17. ^ Gritten, David (November 25, 2007). "Sadly forgotten films thriving in the afterlife". The Daily Telegraph. 
18. ^ Brent Simon (February 6, 2006). "The Chumscrubber". IGN. http://dvd.ign.com/articles/686/686106p1.html. Retrieved January 2, 2010. 
19. ^ The Chumscrubber at Rotten Tomatoes Accessed September 2009
20. ^ http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/chumscrubber
21. ^ "050808-chumscrubber.mp3" (mp3). http://tvplex.go.com/buenavista/ebertandroeper/mp3/050808-chumscrubber.mp3. 
22. ^ http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/chocano/cl-et-chumscrubber11nov11,0,606226.story
23. ^ Peter Travers (September 8, 2005). "Chumscrubber: Review". http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/6822022/review/7605211/chumscrubber. Retrieved 2009-10-31. 

External links

• The Chumscrubber at the Internet Movie Database
• The Chumscrubber at AllRovi
• The Chumscrubber at Box Office Mojo
• The Chumscrubber at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Chumscrubber at Metacritic