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 Alan
Rudolph’s new film is about a crumbling marriage between two
dentists (Campbell Scott and Hope Davis) and an acrid imaginary
friend (Denis Leary). (1 hr. 44 mins.; R) — BILGE EBIRI
Opens August 1
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
Spotlight: Director Alan Rudolph
Skip the melodrama—let’s take an x-ray of real married
life” is how director Alan Rudolph says he approached The
Secret Lives of Dentists. “Let’s strip the roof
off their home and see what we find.” In Rudolph’s twenty-first
film, Campbell Scott and Hope Davis play husband-and-wife dentists
whose communication breakdown has possibly prompted her to stray,
and has certainly caused him to see a wicked manifestation of his
id in a friend (Denis Leary). “Denis gives voice to that secret
life we all share,” Rudolph says. “You’re at a
friend’s house for dinner and don’t like the meal. What
Denis does very well is throw that plate against the wall.”
Rudolph began his career in the mid-seventies, assisting and writing
for Robert Altman, and although he’s written and directed
such films as Investigating Sex, Afterglow, and Choose
Me, he’s hardly had an easy time of it. “I live
film-to-mouth. I had a place in New York, but I sold it because
there was an important element missing in my life—cash.”
It was Campbell Scott, who starred in Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker
and the Vicious Circle, who gave him this script. “It
was a hugely exhilarating experience,” Rudolph says. “This
happened to be about a subject close to my heart—I’ve
been happily married for decades, and I’m still trying to
figure her out.”
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