Five Dollars a Day

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In one of the most charming and heartfelt performances of his career, Christopher Walken plays a free-spirited hustler named Nat who claims that he can live on just five dollars a day. His rundown apartment is a veritable warehouse of freebies, coupons and contest prizes; his ride is a bubblegum pink and white Sweet'N Low car that he won free use of for one year. But none of this bounty has helped Nat repair his fractured relationship with his son Flynn (Alessandro Nivola), who has not spoken to him in years. After all, Flynn once went to jail for one of Nat's failed schemes.
Flynn is having a pretty bad day. He gets fired from his job just as his girlfriend Maggie (Amanda Peet) decides to leave him. It turns out his father (who Maggie thought was dead) has called to say that he is dying and would like to see Flynn. Partly in the hope of winning Maggie back and partly because he thinks there is a tiny possibility that Nat's claim is true, Flynn agrees to drive his father to New Mexico for a last-ditch treatment. Cruising in the Sweet'N Low car (a free year of gas!), Nat pretty much dictates the trip's agenda. The itinerary includes free desserts at IHOP (every day is Nat's birthday), stealing room-service carts and even sleeping in furnished houses with “For Sale” signs outside. One of the better stops along the way is a visit to Dolores (Sharon Stone), a former disciple of Nat's. And in the midst of this madness, a complex story involving Flynn's mother finally comes full circle, just when he most needs a resolution.
Director Nigel Cole, whose excellent past work includes the appealing and delectable Saving Grace and Calendar Girls, goes for an edgier, sharper comic tone in this film. His ace leading cast is up to the task, and clearly relish the idiosyncratic narrative shifts supplied by screenwriters Neal and Tippi Dobrofsky. There is no question the audience will too.
 

Like just about any other independent filmmaker these days, Nigel Cole subscribes to Google Alerts, using the Internet service to scan for references to his new comedy Five Dollars a Day. Since he started, he's gotten thousands and thousands of links sent to him, but most of them have nothing to do with his movie.

"I didn't realize it was such a common expression," the British filmmaker chuckles during a Toronto International Film Festival Q&A attended by FilmStew. "It doesn't exist in England."

But then neither does Nat, the charming con man played by Christopher Walken, an amiable scoundrel whose daily expenses rarely exceed that titular five-dollar figure, as he scams his way into free lodging, food, cell phones, even a brand-new PT Cruiser and gratis fill-ups for year. After years of estrangement from his 30-something son Flynn (Alessandro Nivola), he lures the young man back into his sphere of influence by telling Flynn that that he's dying.

A visit home to Atlantic City turns into a road trip when Nat insists he needs a ride to New Mexico to undergo an experimental treatment. Once on the highway, even as Nat attempts to bond with his suspicious boy, he cannot help but play the same small grifts that Flynn so bitterly resents.

If this all sounds rather serious, Walken as the irrepressible old con is a hoot while Nivola is terrific in his second star turn of the festival (he also plays music mogul Leonard Chess in the biopic Who Do You Love?). Five Dollars is well worth twice that as it is fast, funny and sometimes moving. It is also a movie that Cole, whose other credits include Calendar Girls and Saving Grace, turned down the first time he was sent Tippi and Neal Dobrofsky's screenplay.

"I didn't think it quite worked," he reveals. But several years later it crossed his desk again, not as submission, but as a writing sample, having been reworked in the interim. "It was a whole lot better," Cole enthuses. "I read it and loved it."

At one time, Sam Rockwell was slated to play Flynn, only to drop out to make room for Nivola; however, Walken was one variable that remained unchanged. He was already attached to the project when Cole signed on to director, the filmmaker getting an education into the ways of one of the most idiosyncratic actors of his time.

Walken, it seems, is meticulous in his approach to the script, working on the lines at home alone for weeks or even months before shooting commences. By the time he gets to the set, he knows the text, which he then uses as a jumping off point, to his director's occasional consternation.

"Chris has a way with a script," Cole laughs. "Whatever the writer writes, it comes out sounding like Chris Walken. My job was to drag him back to the script."

Walken also expressed one key reservation to a vital part of the Dobrofskys' screenplay, telling Cole, "I can't say the name of a product." Normally, perhaps not a problem, but this is a movie in which Nat's scamming involves both his intimate knowledge of certain companies' practices and a bright pink PT Cruiser that is in essence an ambulatory billboard for Sweet 'n' Low.

Since dropping product names is an essential component of Nat's makeup, this was one argument with his star that Cole insisted on winning. The car, in fact, is another character in the movie. During eight weeks of pre-production, Cole says, "I don't think we spoke about anything but that damn car."

In the script, the car's sponsor was Polident, but the denture cream manufacturer passed on the opportunity to flog their product in a major motion picture. The director envisioned the Cruiser advertising some kind of pesticide with a big plastic cockroach poised atop the car. But in the end, it was the artificial sweetener company that bit, and somehow it seems appropriate that this very feminine car should provide these men with the ultimate male bonding experience.

For Cole, an Englishman working in America, one of the biggest challenges he faced was in getting the little details right, ensuring that a movie that was mostly shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico with another two days in Atlantic City actually looked like a cross-country journey. "It was tough," he admits. "[But] we had an idea that wherever they go, the road looks the same. The stops along the way look the same. [Every place] has a Chevron, a Howard Johnson's and an IHOP."

And thankfully, every edition of the Toronto International Film Festival has gems such as Five Dollars a Day.

www.filmstew.com/showArticle.aspx?ContentID=17511

Nat brüstet sich damit, dass er täglich nur fünf Dollar auszugeben braucht. Er begeht gemeinsam mit seinem Sohn Flynn einige Betrügereien, für die Flynn zu einer Haftstrafe verurteilt wird. Flynn bricht nach der Freilassung den Kontakt zu seinem Vater ab. Eines Tages wird er entlassen; seine Freundin Maggie verlässt ihn.Flynn begibt sich gemeinsam mit Nat auf eine Reise. Unterwegs schlafen sie in zum Verkauf bestimmten Häusern und erschleichen sich Benzin sowie Lebensmittel. Vater und Sohn besuchen Dolores, mit der Nat früher eine Beziehung hatte.Die Organisatoren des Toronto International Film Festivals bezeichneten die Darstellung des Protagonisten durch Christopher Walken als eine der charmantesten und herzlichsten Darstellungen seiner Karriere. Der Regisseur bediene sich eines scharfen komischen Tons. (quelle:wikipedia)
 

Backstage /during filming:

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FOX 29 news report on Christopher Walken filming the movie "Five Dollars A Day" in Jenkintown PA in October 2007.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMvyyrdfGW
 

         

Chris takes a break during filming 5Dollars

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - The very high concept of "$5 a Day" -- good-for-nothing hustler Dad writes to estranged son to tell him he's dying of brain cancer -- immediately gives rise to fears of utter predictability and thus utter boredom.

Happily, the brilliant, offbeat and always fresh script by Neal and Tippi Dobrofsky dispels those negative feelings immediately, and, aided by the sharp direction of Nigel Cole and a superb turn by Christopher Walken at his most devilishly charming, what results is an outstanding example of what a genre film can and should look like.

The film recently was purchased by Image Entertainment, which should have a modest winner on its hands if it plays the commercial release right. It also should do well in ancillary.

Alessandro Nivola, an increasingly accomplished actor who has come a long way from the film adaptation of Jane Austen's "Persuasion," his first big role, plays Flynn, a young man working as a restaurant inspector.

One very bad day, his girlfriend (Amanda Peet) leaves him because he's so secretive about his past. He's also fired from his job for not disclosing on his job application that he had served an 11-month prison sentence some years back.

At the same time, he receives a letter from his ne'er-do-well father, Nat (Walken), informing Flynn that he's dying of brain cancer and needs to see him right away. Flynn has his doubts about the veracity of his father's claim but ultimately gives in.

What results is a witty, often hilarious and constantly self-reinventing road movie that has Flynn driving Nat cross-country in a car -- decorated from front to back as a moving commercial for Sweet & Low -- that Nat has won the use of, along with free gas, for a year.

The circuitous path that Nat has charted for the trip includes stops at all his old haunts. Flynn's own life, and the secrets of his mother's disappearance, are ambiguously and touchingly unveiled in the process. One stop includes a visit to the gorgeous, well-preserved Dolores (Sharon Stone), a sexual fantasy for both men since she was Flynn's baby-sitter, that is the highlight of the film. If the ultimate end is predictable -- as it of course must be to remain a genre film -- virtually every step of the way is entertainingly original, if understated, and often quite thought-provoking.

Given such rich and witty dialogue, Walken makes the most of it to give one of the best, most endearing performances of his life. He's always good in individual scenes, but his sprightly interpretation of this scheming crook with a heart of gold is sustained throughout the film and constantly takes the viewer by surprise. Nivola also is thoroughly convincing as the frustrated, put-upon son who still loves his dad in spite of everything.

Best of all, the Dobrofskys' sharp-eyed writing, all the while keeping us slightly off-balance and thoroughly entertained, allows us a fresh view of modern-day American culture as seen improbably through the garishly decorated windows of a Sweet & Low car.Reuters/Hollywood Reporter