Kenneth Lonergan Joins THR’s ‘It Happened in Hollywood’ Podcast

Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan joined The Hollywood Reporter‘s It Happened in Hollywood podcast to retell the making of his Oscar-nominated 2000 debut, You Can Count on Me.

The film, which recently joined the Criterion Collection, is an intimate character study of siblings Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry (Mark Ruffalo, in his screen debut), orphaned at a young age and reunited as adult. Rory Culkin, younger brother to Macaulay and Kieran, plays Sammy’s bright son Rudy.

Lonergan had already had success as a playwright and was writing Hollywood comedies at the time (1999’s Analyze This, 2000’s The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle) when the opportunity arose to direct one of his own screenplays.

“[The studio] didn’t want to give me the final cut, so I brought Marty [Scorsese] in as a protector and he became the executive producer and he had final cut, which made them relax and made me feel like I would essentially have complete creative control, which was a must for me going in,” Lonergan explains.

Lonergan had already worked with Scorsese on a number of unproduced projects. “We’d become friendly and he’d always been very helpful — as he still is to this day,” he explains. The pair later collaborated on 2002’s Gangs of New York, on which Lonergan was one of three credited writers.

For the role of Sammy, Lonergan offered the part to Ethan Hawke, who passed. “So I auditioned a lot of the guys that I liked. And Josh Hamilton and Mark [Ruffalo] were kind of the neck and neck for it,” Lonergan recalls. “With Mark, you had obviously a hot theater talent, but he had not done a film yet for a major role.”

“He’d been trying to be an actor in LA for quite a while, bartending and, well, he’d been trying to do theater in LA, which is an idiotic plan, as Mark was going to tell you,” he continues. In the end, Ruffalo got the role. “He just seemed to fit the part better,” Lonergan says.

He’s proud of having offered Ruffalo a launching pad to his now storied film acting career. “The truth is, you feel both proud of yourself and proud of him. I do feel a certain pride in it, and yet actors bring so much to the project that you don’t feel like taking credit for it.

“Of course, you want them to be grateful to you forever, and not to forget what you’ve done for them,” Lonergan jokingly adds.

Listen to the You Can Count on Me episode of It Happened to Hollywood below and be sure to subscribe for more stories about the making of beloved films from the people who made them.