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spanglish
AMERICA HAS ALWAYS PRIDED ITSELF ON
BEING A MELTING-POT CULTURE. BUT
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A MEXICAN
HOUSEKEEPER AND HER DAUGHTER
MOVE IN WITH THE CLASKY FAMILY
OPENS UP A WHOLE NEW WORLD OF
CONFUSION, EMOTION AND COMEDY. HAL
HAYES REPORTS ON JAMES L BROOKS’
NEW COMEDY/DRAMA, SPANGLISH.
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James L Brooks doesn’t like to rush things. The triple Oscar-winner is noted for the meticulous preparation of his films, which have included Terms of Endearment (winner of Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay in 1983), Broadcast News (two Oscar nominations) and As Good As It Gets (seven Academy nominations, with wins for Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt as Best Actor and Best Actress respectively). But even by Brooks’ standards, the preparations for Spanglish were lengthy.
The New Jersey-born writer, director, producer (and occasional actor) doesn’t recall when he first had the idea for the film, which looks at the clash between Anglo and Latino culture (and a good few other themes besides) when a busy professional Los Angeles family hire a Mexican housekeeper. And not just any housekeeper, either: Flor is played by Paz Vega, whose performances in Sex and Lucia and Carmen haven’t exactly been low-key.
What Brooks does remember is writing a 10-page draft loosely concerned with the things that parents do for their children, then putting it away in a drawer until he found a story to go with it. That began to happen in the late nineties, when the film-maker realised that he needed to do a lot more research on how the parent in question - a young single mother from Mexico City who moves to Los Angeles with her daughter - would behave and respond when thrust into contact with what eventually became the Clasky family: father John (Adam Sandler), a successful chef and restaurant owner; mother Deborah (Téa Leoni), a former commercial artist with too much time and nervous energy on her hands to be a successful mother; and their kids Bernice (Sarah Steele) and Georgie (Ian Hyland).
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