I Am Sam
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| I Am Sam | |
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| Directed by | Jessie Nelson |
| Produced by | Jessie Nelson, Barbara Hall, Marshall Herskovitz, Ed Zwick, Richard Solomon |
| Written by | Kristine Johnson, Jessie Nelson |
| Starring | Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Loretta Devine, Dianne Wiest |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | December 28, 2001 |
| Running time | 132 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $22,000,000 (estimate) |
| IMDb profile | |
I Am Sam is a 2001 film about a man with a developmental disability, Sam Dawson, who is single- handedly raising his daughter Lucy that he fathered with a homeless woman. Although Sam provides a loving and caring environment for the 7-year-old Lucy, she soon surpasses her father's mental capacity (Sam functions at the mental level of a 7-year-old). Questions arise about Sam’s ability to care for Lucy and a custody case is brought to court. The movie stars Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Dianne Wiest, Loretta Devine, Richard Schiff, Laura Dern and Brent Spiner and was written by Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson, who also directed the film. Sean Penn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
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[edit] Soundtrack
The soundtrack consists entirely of covers of songs by The Beatles. Initially, Penn wanted to set the movie solely to Beatles recordings. When the producers attempted to obtain the rights to use the songs, they learned that Michael Jackson, who owned the rights, was charging $300,000 per song. Should the rights have been purchased, it would have cost $4.5 million dollars, which would have set a record in terms of money paid for songs in a Hollywood production. Instead, Penn commissioned other artists, such as Sarah McLachlan, Rufus Wainwright, The Wallflowers, The Vines, and Ben Folds, to cover the songs for the soundtrack.
[edit] Synopsis
Sam is a man with a mental age of 7 who is well adjusted and has a great support system consisting of five similarly developmentally disabled men. His neighbor Annie, a piano-player and recluse befriends Sam and takes care of Lucy when Sam cannot.
He works at Starbucks bussing tables. Sam is popular with the customers, whom he addresses by name and favorite coffee. His job only gets difficult when Lucy starts grabbing objects and making a woman spill iced coffee down her shirt. In a humorous, but innocent exchange, Sam tries to remove an ice cube from the startled woman's cleavage. Sam then brings Lucy to his neighbor and baby Lucy croons, "Annie!" Sam says, "Her first word was Annie." Flustered but flattered, she retorts, "And people worry you aren't smart," and agrees to function as Lucy's babysitter.
It seems that life is great for the preschooler Lucy Diamond Dawson. Her single dad is the most wonderful loving parent a girl could have, although he has a tendency to satisfy her curiosity with nonsense like "mustard is yellow ketchup" and "some men are bald because their head is shiny and their face goes up extra high."
Lucy is as precocious as Sam is backwards. Sam loves reading Green Eggs and Ham to her, but when she starts reading "real hard" books like Stellaluna, she balks at reading the word "different" because she doesn't want to be smarter than her dad. She knows he's different, "not like other dads", but that's all right with her because he is loving, taking her to the park and to International House of Pancakes (every Wednesday, because "Wednesday is IHOP night").
Yet, problems for Sam and Lucy persist. When they go to Big Boy for a change, Sam makes a scene because he can't get the same kind of French pancakes he's accustomed to. At the school Halloween party, he dresses like a Sixties Beatle but embarrasses his daughter by becoming the center of attention. Other kids tease her because her dad's a "retard". She tells one boy she was adopted. This causes a crisis at her birthday party, and a child case worker, whose visit Sam didn't anticipate, culminates in Lucy being taken away from Sam. A judge allows him only two supervised, 2-hour visits per week.
Sam's friends recommend he hire Rita, a lawyer played by Michelle Pfeiffer. He shows up at her office and starts spilling out his situation while she juggles coffee orders to her assistant, Patricia. Socially, Sam is rather high-functioning--more together in many ways than his high-class, respected lawyer whose marriage is falling apart and whose son hates her.
Sam surprises Rita at a party, and, mortified at being caught talking to a man who appears distasteful, she announces that she's taking his case pro bono as all her colleagues trade unbelieving looks.
Rita begrudgingly works with Sam to help him keep his parental rights, but chaos arises when Lucy convinces Sam to help her run away from the foster home she is being kept in during the trial. Over the course of the trial, Sam gets a new job at Pizza Hut and Annie leaves her apartment for the first time in years. Sam also helps Rita with her family problems, and helps her to realize how much her son really means to her.
Meanwhile, Lucy is placed with a foster family who plan to adopt her. Lucy oftens runs away from her foster parents in the middle of the night to go see Sam, who moved into a larger apartment nearer to her.
In the end, the foster family who planned on adopting Lucy let Sam have custody of her. Sam says that Lucy still needs a mother and asks if the foster mother would like to help raise Lucy. The movie ends with Lucy's soccer game where Sam is the referee. In attendance are Lucy's former foster family, the newly divorced Rita and her son with whom Rita has renewed her relationship with, along with Annie and Sam's other friends.
[edit] Quotes
- Lucy: All you need is love.
- Ifty: (Sam has brought a preowned answering machine) It's an outgoing message so I think you should sound more outgoing.
- Lucy: Daddy, why are you different?
- Sam: You've grown.
Lucy: Have I?
Sam: Yeah, 'cause your ears are a little bigger and your eyes are a little older.
- Rita: Sam, sometimes I worry that I'm getting more out of this relationship than you are.
- Lucy's friend: Why does your dad act like a retard?
Lucy: He is.
- Sam: (Lucy is refusing to read a word in a book that Sam knows she can read but he himself cannot) read that word.
Lucy: (shouting) No!
Sam: Lucy, I'm your father and I say read the word...READ THE WORD!
Lucy: I don't want to read it if you can't.
- Sam: (On the phone to Lucy) Those teeth don't sound like they've been brushed.
- Lucy's foster mother: She fell asleep on the way over here. I almost turned around and drove her back and put her to sleep in the bed I made for her but then I thought she'd wake up in the morning...and want to come home.
[edit] Movie and song references
Sam's daughter is named for Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Lucy's idyllic early years are accompanied by Two of Us. At the Halloween party I'm Looking Through You drives home the point that Sam is "not the same" as other adults. Rita, the lawyer's name comes from the Beatles song Lovely Rita.
