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Movies & TV

The Meddler’s Susan Sarandon explains pot potency

THE MEDDLER written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, with Susan Sarandon, Rose Byrne and J.K. Simmons. 100 minutes. A Mongrel release. Opens Friday (May 6). See listing.


Lorene Scafaria’s second feature, The Meddler, is about a mother who simply cannot leave her daughter alone. At a screening at TIFF last year, Scafaria introduced her own mother as the inspiration for the movie.

Plainly, there’s love there, which explains why, in spite of its put-down of a title, the film never stoops to cruelty.

“I realized I was taking a risk by calling it The Meddler, but I knew I didn’t want to be mean,” she says in a later interview alongside star Susan Sarandon.

“Even though Marnie was showing up uninvited, the thing that works about the relationship is that they’re mother and daughter but also best friends.”

Sarandon plays the grief-stricken mother mourning the death of her husband and filling her life with over-the-top concern for her daughter, her daughter’s friends and several other people she barely knows.

J.K. Simmons appears as a possible love interest. Those of us who know Simmons from his devastating work as the brutal white supremacist in the TV series Oz or the sadistic music teacher in Whiplash may find his casting here weird, but Scafaria was familiar with his other side.

“I actually knew him from some of his kinder roles, like the dad in Juno,” she recalls, and adds with a laugh, “Then I realized after I saw Whiplash  that only someone with daddy issues would find someone like him sexy.”

For her part, Sarandon could easily see the attraction, in spite of the honkin’ moustache Simmons was rocking.

“I looked at the moustache and I wasn’t sure, but the way he looks at her with those eyes that go right through you, I could really see it.”

Before ending the interview, I can’t help but ask about a scene where  characters chow down on a whack of raw weed but appear to be unaffected. When I complain about this, Sarandon practically leaps out of her chair.

“No, no, you have to heat it up to release the potency of pot. I did the research, so she would have been able to function.”

“I stand corrected,” I tell her.

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