Tagline: Life is a messy business.
Sunshine Cleaning movie storyline. A single mom and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in the off-beat dramatic comedy “Sunshine Cleaning.” Directed by Christine Jeffs (Rain, Sylvia), this uplifting film about an average family that finds the path to its dreams in an unlikely setting screened in competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Once the high school cheerleading captain who dated the quarterback, Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) now finds herself a thirty-something single mother working as a maid. Her sister Norah, (Emily Blunt), is still living at home with their dad Joe (Alan Arkin), a salesman with a lifelong history of ill-fated get rich quick schemes.
Desperate to get her son into a better school, Rose persuades Norah to go into the crime scene clean-up business with her to make some quick cash. In no time, the girls are up to their elbows in murders, suicides and other…specialized situations. As they climb the ranks in a very dirty job, the sisters find a true respect for one another and the closeness they have always craved finally blossoms. By building their own improbable business, Rose and Norah open the door to the joys and challenges of being there for one another–no matter what–while creating a brighter future for the entire Lorkowski family.
Sunshine Cleaning is a 2008 comedy-drama film starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. Directed by Christine Jeffs and written by Megan Holley, the film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2008. It was purchased by Overture Films for distribution and opened in limited release in the United States on March 13, 2009. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 25, 2009.
About The Production
The story behind Sunshine Cleaning is almost as unlikely as the film’s tale of sisters who rebuild their lives and family bond by starting a biohazard removal company. First-time screenwriter Megan Holley was inspired by a news piece she heard on the radio about a new growth industry: the crime scene clean-up business. “I thought that it would be just a fantastic backdrop to tell a story,” she says. “I started working on the script and I wrote a couple hours every day before work. It took me a while, but I finally got it finished and I sent it off to a local screenwriting contest.”
Holley won the competition and then attracted the attention of producer and former studio executive Glenn Williamson. When Williamson agreed to serve on the board of a film festival at his alma mater, the University of Virginia, he wasn’t anticipating reading one of the most original screenplays to have crossed his desk in years. “They’d asked my office to help evaluate scripts,” he says. “My assistant read it first and said, `This is really good,’ so I read it and it was really good. When I went to Charlottesville for the festival, I made it a point to meet Megan.”
Williamson told her he wanted to produce her film. He thought the script was a perfect fit for Big Beach Films’ Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub, producers of the Oscar-winning indie hit Little Miss Sunshine. “Megan’s got a seriously off-beat sense of humor,” he says. “So do I, and certainly the Big Beach guys do, too.”
Coincidentally, Saraf had heard the same radio program and was riveted by the idea of a story about crime scene cleaners. “I immediately thought, wow, that would make a great movie, but I could never figure it out,” he says. “In my thinking, it was a thriller or some kind of crime story. Then this script lands on my desk, this wonderfully emotional story in which these young women start cleaning up after crimes as a way to make money and unexpectedly find a sense of self-esteem through the work.”
In another coincidence for Saraf, the boy in the film is named Oscar, as is his own son. “In Little Miss Sunshine the title character is named Olive, which is the name of my daughter; totally a coincidence,” he says. “So when I sent the script to Mark Turtletaub, he called back and he said, `So we’re only going to make movies with `Sunshine’ in the title and your kids’ names in them?’”
Saraf and his partners were sold on the project immediately. “Megan has an incredibly original voice and we don’t find that very often,” says Turtletaub. “It’s heartfelt and quirky at the same time.”
“We thought Sunshine Cleaning was funny,” he continues. “We thought it was touching. We thought it was heartbreaking. We thought it was sweet. We thought it was real. We just couldn’t say no to it. And that’s how we make movies.”
Describing Holley as “the real deal,” Brody adds, “She’s a real person who has stories to tell, and always wanted to tell them and then finally sat down and wrote this script. She had this amazing day job working with crack-addicted rats. She said she would take them home because she felt sorry for them when they were going through withdrawal.”
According to Saraf, the Big Beach producers think very carefully when selecting a director. “Filmmaking is not just an artistic process,” he says. “It’s hanging out with somebody for a couple years. You want to make sure you like their work, and you like them as a person.”
Glenn Williamson had worked with Christine Jeffs on her second film, Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as the tragic poet, Sylvia Plath. “Christine was clearly talented with drama. She has a gift with the camera and with the actors, and I knew she’d create a visual style for this movie. This story’s got a real interesting mix of comedy and hum.”
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Sunshine Cleaning (2009)
Directed by: Christine Jeffs
Starring: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Steve Zahn, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Clifton Collins, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Eric Christian Olsen, Amy Redford, Ivan Brutsche, Christopher Dempsey
Screenplay by: Megan Holley
Production Design by: Joseph T. Garrity
Film Editing by: Heather Persons
Costume Design by: Alix Friedberg
Cinematography by: John Toon
Set Decoration by: Wendy Ozols-Barnes
Art Direction by: Guy Barnes
Music by: Michael Penn
MPAA Rating: R for language, disturbing images, some sexuality and drug use.
Distributed by: Overture Films
Release Date: March 13, 2009
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