A Family Resemblance

Like swallows to Capistrano, threats of a baseball strike and chrysanthemum blooms, the teen coming-of-age comedy continues to be a hardy perennial. But we’ve come a long way from the halcyon days of Andy Hardy. Gone are the worldly wise father figures and bucolic suburban settings, only to be replaced by pop references, profanity-driven dialogue and punch lines heavily reliant on flatulence and other bodily functions.

But however mindless the mass of teen movies appear, a small yet notable number of thoughtful, articulate-and still funny-films about adolescent angst have found their way to cinema screens. These movies, often produced on relatively minuscule budgets by independent production companies, offer a refreshing counterpoint to mainstream studio fare.

In 1999, “Election” won a lot of votes--and an Oscar nomination--for screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor’s lacerating take on high school politicking. “Rushmore” (1998) earned critical praise for its wry examination of the underbelly of prep school life. And the protagonist of this summer’s “Tadpole” is a 15-year-old who is more comfortable quoting Voltaire than rap lyrics.

The latest entry into the high-literacy teen stakes is “Igby Goes Down,” which opens in Los Angeles and New York on Sept. 13. Written and directed by rookie filmmaker Burr Steers, “Igby” stars Kieran Culkin in the title role, the disaffected younger son of a privileged East Coast family that, while still well connected, is no longer well financed. Whatever “old money” they may once have had has long since been spent or squandered.

The head of the Slocumb household is Mimi (Susan Sarandon), Igby’s monster of a mother, whom he refers to by her first name (when he’s speaking to her at all, that is) because, as he explains, “heinous one is a bit cumbersome, and Medea was already taken.”

His father (Bill Pullman) is an institutionalized schizophrenic, and Igby fears heredity will dictate his own inevitable decline to a similar fate. Repressed older brother Oliver (Ryan Phillippe) has bought into the gilded social status quo, hook, line and silver spoon (the latter figuring notably in a significant moment in the film). Then there’s smarmy godfather D.H. (Jeff Goldblum), his drug-addled mistress (Amanda Peet) and quirky Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes), who wins the hearts of both Slocumb brothers, breaking one in the process.

This melange of WASP dysfunction is a little bit “Catcher in the Rye,” a little bit “The Philadelphia Story” and a little bit “Five Easy Pieces”--with some “Mommie Dearest” acid searing the edges. If Igby’s going down, his story is serving up a heaping dose of dark comic irony in his wake. And although he’s not always entirely likeable, we do feel Igby’s pain--quite literally from time to time, as the teen finds himself being smacked upside the head by nearly every other character in the film, including his therapist.

Like the teens in “Rushmore” and “Tadpole,” when Igby rebels against the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune, it’s more often verbal than physical. The film does have its requisite share of sexual provocation, but most of the action in “Igby” takes place above the neck, not below the waist.

“I think [raunchy teen comedies] have their place,” says Steers. “They’re a lot of fun, and that’s definitely an aspect of being a teenager, but there are also really sophisticated kids around.”

Steers knows from whence he writes. “I’m from that world,” he says of Igby’s upper-class background. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C. His father was a state politician, his mother a member of the Auchincloss family. His uncle is author and playwright Gore Vidal, who makes a cameo appearance in the film. For sure, Steers has broken bread with a Kennedy or two in his time.

Stories of the upper class hold a prominent place in 20th century American literature--Vidal has written many himself. But for all their influence on our lives and times, the native gentry hasn’t been much on view in motion pictures. Perhaps this is, in part, because the film business has its genesis in Jewish immigrants who were denied access to the gates of real power and felt either unworthy or too resentful to tell such tony tales. Most often, the perspective offered on the very rich is one of too much money, too little morality.

“This is not well-plowed territory,” declares Vidal. “You have to know the field, and not many writers or directors or actors come from that. The only actor who really came from that world was Katharine Hepburn,” he recalls. “And she was considered really exotic.”

But why the reluctance to explore the American upper crust through a camera lens? “We’ve got the cleverest upper class on Earth,” Vidal observes dryly, speaking on the phone from his home in Italy. “They’ve persuaded everyone they don’t exist.”

With appropriate avuncular pride, Vidal points to the high degree of authenticity in his nephew’s fictionalized treatment of the well-born and -bred. “These people are real to Burr, and he’s enough of a writer-director to make them very real for the audience.

“They’re his people, why on earth would he lie about them? Only the untalented ones lie,” he admonishes, adding, “there’s something called imagination, mind you, where one can be false to an absolute truth. And Burr has that, certainly.”

Like his film’s protagonist, Steers was bounced from several elite private schools, in his case the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and Indiana’s Culver Military Academy. “It’s not an easy thing to get kicked out of a military school,” claims Steers who now lives in Silver Lake. “They only kick out the people that really want to be there. The people who don’t want to be there they make clean the latrines with a toothbrush.”

Steers left home in his mid-teens and moved to New York. Like Igby, he finished high school by way of a GED exam. He later gained entrance to New York University.

While Steers veers sharply from autobiography to fiction for most of the particulars of his film’s story, there is, alas, one more trait he shares with Igby: genteel poverty. “There was no money for me, no trust fund,” he notes ruefully. “I’ve always worked, ever since I was a teenager. The only thing that’s rich about me is my voice.”

Indeed, Steers, 36, speaks in a deep, mellifluous tone emblematic of both his patrician pedigree and past life as an aspiring actor. He’s been in a number of films, including “Last Days of Disco” and “Pulp Fiction.”

Igby first came to life in novel form, but as Steers began to see his story in more visual terms, he developed it into a screenplay. Script in hand, he was able to attract A-list talent such as Sarandon and Goldblum, who had been an early acting teacher of Steers’. “None of these actors was getting paid what they normally get paid,” he says. “It was their attachment that got the money that got the film made. Otherwise, no one would give a first-time director money for this kind of movie.”

“Igby” was shot on location last year in New York for a budget of about $8 million.

As Igby, Culkin is in nearly every scene of the film, and audience response relies on whether or not the viewer relates to his reactions to the goings-on around him.

Culkin, 19, also co-starred earlier this year in “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys” and is making a name for himself for bringing to vivid life off-center, unconventional characters. He has acted professionally since his debut in a television commercial at age 6. Older brother Macauley, who just turned 22, skyrocketed to high-paying stardom in “Home Alone” (1990). Kieran’s younger brother, Rory, 13, currently appears as Mel Gibson’s asthmatic son in “Signs.”

“Kieran’s an old soul,” observes Emily Gerson Saines, who has managed the family’s show business careers since 1994. At that time, Macauley had just made “Richie Rich”--and announced to his new manager that he didn’t want to work anymore. Fortunately, Kieran had no such reservations--or better taste.

According to Gerson Saines, “When Kieran first came into himself, which was around the time of “The Mighty” [1998], we talked about what would enable him to become a great actor, and we decided he should pick movies that had great scripts or great directors or great co-stars, people that he could learn from.” Indeed, young Culkin was more seasoned in the craft of filmmaking than his director, but he was also aware of how close to Steers the story was. “Obviously, Burr understands every moment of the script. All the characters are his, and he really cares about them. I could tell that as soon as I read it.”