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You Can Count on Me
A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.
2000 · Directed by Kenneth Lonergan · 111 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 15 frames
Tagline
Family first. Love always.
Plot
Sammy and Terry Prescott lose their parents to a car crash. Years later, Sammy, a single mother and loan officer at a bank, still lives in her childhood home in a village in the Catskill Mountains of New York, while Terry has drifted around the country, scraping by and getting in and out of trouble.
After months of no communication with his sister, Terry and his girlfriend Sheila are desperate for money, so he comes to visit Sammy and her son Rudy, who are excited about reuniting with him. Despite the disappointment of learning that he cut off contact because he was in jail for three months, Sammy lends him the money, which he mails back to Sheila. After Sheila attempts suicide, he decides to extend his stay with Sammy, which she welcomes.
For a school writing assignment, Rudy imagines his father, who he has no memory of, as a fantastic hero. While Sammy has always given him vague yet negative descriptions of Rudy Sr., Terry is frank with him that Rudy Sr. is not a nice person – though Rudy naively believes his father has changed. Sammy rekindles a sexual relationship with Bob, an old boyfriend, but is surprised when he proposes to her after a short time so says she needs time to consider it.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Kenneth Lonergan
- Cinematography: Stephen Kazmierski
- Edited by: Anne McCabe
- Music: Lesley Barber
- Production design: Michael Shaw
- Produced by: John N. Hart, Jeffrey Sharp, Larry Meistrich, Barbara De Fina
Cast
- Laura Linney as Sammy
- Mark Ruffalo as Terry
- Matthew Broderick as Brian
- Jon Tenney as Bob
- Rory Culkin as Rudy
- J. Smith-Cameron as Mabel
- Josh Lucas as Rudy Sr.
- Gaby Hoffmann as Sheila
- Adam LeFevre as Sheriff Darryl
- Amy Ryan as Mrs. Prescott
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Crush Entertainment, Hart-Sharp Entertainment, Cappa Productions, The Shooting Gallery
- Box office: $11,200,000
- Themes: sibling relationship, drifter, single mother, new york state, uncle nephew relationship, catskills, bank employee, orphan siblings, brother sister relationship
More by Kenneth Lonergan
On this film
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