Steep Uphill Climb: Speaking with Kimberly Reed, director of Prodigal Sons
by Michał Oleszczyk on July 20th, 2010 at 12:30 pm in Interviews
[Prodigal Sons is available on DVD from First Run Features. Click here for more information. This interview contains spoilers.]
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/07/steep-uphill-climb-speaking-with-kimberly-reed-director-of-prodigal-sons/Michał Oleszczyk: I'm struck by how beautifully structured your film is: especially given that its concept probably had to morph a lot as the incredible story of your brother Marc unfolded.
Kimberly Reed: In coming up with the structure for Prodigal Sons, we had to get back to cultural basics, which even shows in the title. [Laughs] If you have a very simple path leading to a very complicated terrain, it can become a good storytelling device. Not that I want to put myself in this company, but if you take a common-sense look at the Odyssey, it's a story about a man who wants to make it home. All his wild adventures along the way are built around that basic premise. To have such a clear narrative directive is very compelling, and we were aiming for that. My own story is surprising and unique. So is Marc's. It would be easy to get infatuated with one of these stories and tilt the balance of the whole movie, thus turning it into an exploitation of some kind; a small curiosity told on a cocktail-party-sensation level. I wanted to avoid that and tell the true story of how me and my brother tried to reconnect after years of being estranged.
