The Upside of Anger Movie Trailer. Binder may have first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to be an actor, but in order to pen a script that revolved largely around women, he turned to the women in his own life for inspiration.
“To me, women and men are not all that different,” says Binder. “Like everyone, I have a mother and I’m also married, I have women in my life and you just write about the people that you see day to day.”
Binder decided to reflect the male perspective on the movie’s themes through the character of Denny, a retired professional baseball player turned radio DJ played by Kevin Costner.
“I wanted Denny to have been in a real kind of guy’s mode and guy’s world until he meets this family and becomes inundated with these females,” says Binder.
“And I wanted to really be able to watch how that affected him positively, negatively and emotionally – to see what the mix of being part of the Wolfmeyer family did to him.”
The Upside of Anger not only addresses the impact of anger from both a male and female perspective, but also examines the impact that emotion has on the family as a whole.
“I think there are going to be a lot of women who will really relate to this because divorce is so common and families splitting up has become so common,” says Joan Allen. “But I think what Mike has really done is examined closely what happens. We all say it’s not good for the family, but nobody really talks about the toll it takes and what it means to children whose father is suddenly no longer a part of their lives.”
“How does that really feel?” Allen continues. “How does that make a woman feel? How does that make children feel? I think that’s talked about a lot, but it’s not really seen, and that’s what I think this film really demonstrates. I think Mike has zeroed in on that and it’s going to hit the heart and strike a lot of people, but not in a preachy way. It’s just going to be very fun, a light venture into this area that’s a huge part of the global culture in this century.”
In order to bring The Upside of Anger to life on the big screen, Binder and the film’s producers knew they would need to attract a talented and diverse cast. The lineup they ultimately secured surpassed even their highest hopes. “I’ve always been somebody who believes it starts with the material, and Mike Binder wrote a great, edgy script that attracted an amazing group of performers who saw the potential in the material,” says producer Alex Gartner.
For the central role of Terry, the suddenly single matriarch of the Wolfmeyer family, Binder cast three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen, whom he had become friendly with when they both worked as actors on the drama The Contender.
“When I first read the script I definitely thought of it as a comedy, but it has very poignant parts throughout,” says Allen. “I know Mike wants it to be very multidimensional, especially for my character, because he doesn’t want it to be just one thing. That made it really fun to do the scenes because one day Terry is incredibly charming, and the next day she is tearing her hair out, then the next she is being a real pill. As an actor, I get to play a wide variety of emotional levels, which is great.”
Best known for her work in such dramatic films as Nixon and The Ice Storm, Allen was thrilled by the opportunity to take on a role laced with comedic elements. “Mike and I had worked together several years ago and I remember saying to him that maybe someday he could write something for me and that I would love to be in a comedy,” says Allen. “So he wrote this for me and I always thought of it as a comedy in which the humor comes from just the reality of the characters. There’s a lot of humor in real life.”
Binder remembers Allen’s offhand query well. “Joan told me on the set of The Contender that she had seen a movie I had written and directed called The Sex Monster, and asked when I was going to write a comedy for her, that she loved to do comedy. I told her to be careful what she wished for because of course I loved the idea of writing a role for her. So when the idea for The Upside of Anger came together, I was already thinking about what I could write for Joan. She’s an amazing presence.”
While Allen was excited to flex her comedic muscles on screen, Binder and the producers were thrilled to work with an actress whose range enabled the character he had envisioned on the page to spring to life.
“There was only Joan to play this part since Mike had written it specifically for her – in essence, she was Terry,” says producer Alex Gartner. “And she didn’t disappoint when she took on the role. It gave her a chance to do things she doesn’t usually do.”
While Allen may have been the first cast member to sign on to the project, she was far from the only one with an impressive resume. For the pivotal role of Denny, a retired baseball player and Terry’s next door neighbor turned love interest, Binder turned to an actor he had long admired – Kevin Costner.
“Kevin and I didn’t know each other well, but we had met in the early 1990’s when he walked up to me in a restaurant and said he was a fan of my comedy,” says Mike Binder. “We sat and talked for a bit, and then I saw him again years later at a movie premiere. He asked me what I was currently working on and I told him about this movie I was doing with Joan Allen, and he agreed to read the script.”
Costner, a veteran of portraying baseball players in such films as Bull Durham and Field of Dreams, sparked to the script and saw the character of Denny as very different from past athletes he has portrayed.
“Denny is a retired player and the twist on the character is that he really doesn’t acknowledge the game of baseball – he is a sports radio DJ who really just likes to talk about everything but baseball and wants his life to move on,” says Costner. “He is not your prototypical athlete who is looking to score all the time with the girls. He doesn’t try to cash in on his past fame, he really just wants to fit in somewhere.”
The Upside of Anger (2005)
Directed by: Mike Binder
Starring: Joan Allen, Kevin Costner, Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt, Mike Binder, Dane Christensen, Danny Webb, Suzanne Bertish, Magdalena Manville
Screenplay by: Mike Binder
Production Design by: Chris Roope
Cinematography by: Richard Greatrex
Film Editing by: Steve Edwards, Robin Sales
Costume Design by: Deborah Lynn Scott
Set Decoration by: Neesh Ruben
Art Direction by: Tim Stevenson
Music by: Alexandre Desplat
MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual situations, brief comic violence, drug use.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: March 11, 2005
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