Based on journalist Simon Carr's memoir,
The Boys are Back didn’t break any records during its limited theatrical run last year. But it deserved better. Clive Owen gives a great performance as Joe Warr, a guy who finds himself thrust into parenting mode after his wife suddenly dies. Unable to discipline his two sons, he practically lets them run wild, even leaving them at home to fend for themselves one weekend when he has go out of town to cover the Australian Open. With plenty of bonus material (including an interview with director Scott Hicks), the film makes its way onto DVD tomorrow. Its producer Greg Brenman phoned in from Los Angeles to talk about the movie’s long gestation period (it was seven years in the making).
How did you end up getting involved in this project?
We were approached by Simon Carr, who wrote the original memoir, about seven years ago. He was a great friend of the chairman of our company and at the time, we didn’t know about his book. He told us he’d written a book and needed some advice because a group of people wanted to option it as a movie. I read the book and told him he should let us make it. That’s how we got involved. The book is a series of anecdotes and memoirs about bringing up two boys from two different marriages when his second wife tragically dies from cancer. Once we had the rights, it was the usual process of finding the right writer and director and star.
