As he copes with the death of his fiancée, a young man befriends her parents and must figure out what he wants out of life.As he copes with the death of his fiancée, a young man befriends her parents and must figure out what he wants out of life.As he copes with the death of his fiancée, a young man befriends her parents and must figure out what he wants out of life.
- Awards
- 1 win & 6 nominations
- Server #1
- (as Robert Clendenin)
- Photographer
- (as Ed Lachman)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaLoosely inspired by writer and director Brad Silberling's own experience. He was dating Rebecca Schaeffer at the time she was killed by an obsessed fan in 1989.
- GoofsMassachusetts did not have the death penalty in the early '70s.
- Quotes
Joe Nast: I'm sorry, I can't, I can't do this. It didn't happen. We loved each other, we broke it off. If I don't-Jesus, if I don't say this now, it'll never-she'll never be a part of this. What are we-what are we doing here? I don't even-I don't even know this guy. She-she didn't even know this guy. What's he got to do with her? I don't-look, you asked me to bring her in the room, and she's not here-she's not. And whatever happens here, whatever happens to this guy, she's not here. And the only way that you're gonna bring her in here is with the truth. I don't know-I don't know what else to say. You just tell me what to say, and I swear, I'll try, but if you want her, you got to keep it honest. You have to understand that Diana had this thing, this way of bringing out the real in people, not just the best, you know-their honesty. And I guess she's doing it again now cause there's no way I'd be sitting here saying these things I can't believe are coming out of my mouth. It was Diana who finally had the courage. *She* was the one who told *me* that I didn't want to go through with it. And I guess she's-she's doing it again, cause all of this-all of this is everything that she wouldn't want. She wasn't a bride-to-be. She wasn't a victim. She was strong and real and messed up and wickedly honest, just like her mother. And if I sit here trying to paint it any other way, I... Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just-I thought-I thought that if I could just... paint the pictures that you needed, you know, that... that somehow... that somehow you'd bring these people some peace, finally, and they'd have their daughter back, or... But, uh... that's not how she'd wanna be. The truth is hard. Sometimes it looks so wrong, you know-the color's off, the style's wrong, but I guess it-I guess it's where the good one's live.
- Crazy creditsThe credits end with "For all our loves...departed, or yet to arrive..."
- ConnectionsFeatured in Moonlight Mile: A Journey to Screen (2002)
- SoundtracksI Want to Take You Higher
Written by Sly Stone (as Sylvester Stewart)
Published by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. o/b/o Mijac Music (BMI)
Performed by Sly and the Family Stone
Courtesy of Epic Records
By Arrangement with Sony Music Licensing
Writer/director Brad Silberling certainly knows whereof he speaks. He based his tale on the death of his own girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who was slain by a crazed fan in 1989. As a result of his personal experience, Silberling is particularly adroit at dramatizing the utter inadequacy of people's responses to grieving loved ones. He captures with dead-on accuracy the superficiality and hollowness of the clichés, shibboleths and expressions of concern proffered, however well intentionally, in the name of `compassion' and `understanding.' Silberling shows that, in a time of grief this all-encompassing, a family unit must turn in upon itself, shutting out the rest of the world in the process.
This is what happens with the Floss family. Ben and JoJo can speak openly and frankly about their daughter only with each other and with the young man, Joe, who was on the brink of becoming a member of their family and who not only lives with the couple but is all set to become a partner in Ben's commercial real estate company. In a way, Silberling has set a difficult task for himself right from the start. By choosing to not show us Diana before her murder, we find ourselves unable to sense the void her death has left in the lives of these three people. We are caught a bit off guard by the strangely casual tone of the opening sequences in which the family prepares for and attends the girl's funeral. Ben, JoJo and Joe all seem to be taking this shocking death a bit too much in stride. It is hard for us to believe that she has only been dead for three days when the story opens. Yet, on the other hand, we know that people do often manage to find amazing stores of inner strength that help them get through the early stages of a person's death only to collapse into grief once the funeral is over and all the guests have gone home. This happens to be the case here though the moments of despair in this film never plunge quite to the depths of those in, say, `Ordinary People.' In fact this might almost be called `Ordinary People-Lite,' a film about grief for a mass audience that doesn't want to be too disturbed by the experience.
That may sound like a more negative assessment of the film than I am trying to convey, for `Moonlight Mile' is an often sharp and incisive piece of moviemaking, intelligently written and beautifully acted by Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ellen Pompeo as the postal worker who falls for the grieving husband-to-be. Set in New England in the 1970's (for no reason I can fathom, actually), the film is really the story of Joe and his coming to grips with the reality of his situation. Essentially weak-willed and eager to please everyone about him, Joe has to decide whether to allow himself to become absorbed into the lives and world of this couple functioning almost as their surrogate child or to break away from this co-dependency and strike out on his own, with or without the new woman in his life. The film deftly balances a number of seemingly conflicting moods and tones, as moments of subtle satire and lowbrow slapstick yield to scenes of searing drama and heartbreaking emotion just as in life. Admittedly, the end of the film may be a bit too neatly arranged and upbeat for this particular material, but the extraordinarily skilled and gifted cast makes us believe it anyway. One might wish for a bit more grit and messiness in the presentation, but `Moonlight Mile' which has been exquisitely photographed, by the way still has the power to move us.
- Buddy-51
- Oct 20, 2002
- How long is Moonlight Mile?Powered by Alexa
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $21,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $6,835,856
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $329,771
- Sep 29, 2002
- Gross worldwide
- $10,011,050
- Runtime1 hour 57 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1