Development for You Can Count on Me began in the 1990s, with Lonergan completing the screenplay based on characters that were the focus of a one-act play he wrote. Principal photography took place on location in the Catskill Mountains in 1999.
You Can Count on Me premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2000, where it tied with Girlfight for the Grand Jury Prize, and Lonergan won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It was given a limited theatrical release released in the United States by Paramount Classics beginning November 10, 2000, with its release eventually expanding to 150 theaters nationwide. The film went on to become a sleeper hit, earning $11.2 million internationally, and was met with critical acclaim. At the 73rd Academy Awards, Linney was nominated for Best Actress and Lonergan was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
Plot
Sammy and Terry Prescott lose their parents to a car crash. Years later, Sammy, a single mother and loan officer at a bank, still lives in her childhood home in a village in the Catskill Mountains of New York, while Terry has drifted around the country, scraping by and getting in and out of trouble.
After months of no communication with his sister, Terry and his girlfriend Sheila are desperate for money, so he comes to visit Sammy and her son Rudy, who are excited about reuniting with him. Despite the disappointment of learning that he cut off contact because he was in jail for three months, Sammy lends him the money, which he mails back to Sheila. After Sheila attempts suicide, he decides to extend his stay with Sammy, which she welcomes.
For a school writing assignment, Rudy imagines his father, who he has no memory of, as a fantastic hero. While Sammy has always given him vague yet negative descriptions of Rudy Sr., Terry is frank with him that Rudy Sr. is not a nice person – though Rudy naively believes his father has changed. Sammy rekindles a sexual relationship with Bob, an old boyfriend, but is surprised when he proposes to her after a short time so says she needs time to consider it.
At the bank, the new manager Brian tries to make his mark with unusual demands about computer color schemes and daily timesheets. While co-worker Mabel works well with the changes, Sammy is upset when Brian requests that she make arrangements for someone else to pick up Rudy from the school bus rather than Sammy leaving work at random. After some minor arguments, they start having sex, despite Brian's wife being six months pregnant.
Terry grows close to Rudy during their time together. Yet he pushes the limits of Sammy's parental control, keeping Rudy out very late as the two play pool at a bar. She turns to Ron, her church minister, to counsel Terry about his aimless outlook on life. While Terry resists his sister's advice, he and Rudy grow steadily closer. Realizing her own questionable decisions, Sammy turns down Bob's marriage proposal and breaks off her fling with Brian.
After a day of fishing, Terry and Rudy decide to visit Rudy Sr. in a trailer park in a nearby town. Confronted by his past, Rudy Sr. denies he is Rudy's father and starts a brawl with Terry. Rudy watches silently as Terry beats Rudy Sr. and gets arrested.
Sammy brings her brother and son home. When Rudy insists that Rudy Sr. is not his father, Sammy finally tells him the truth. Sammy asks Terry to move out, but admits how important he is to her and Rudy, suggesting he get his own place in town and get his life back on track. He scoffs at Sammy's idea and plans to go back to Alaska. While at first it appears the separation will be another heartache, they reconcile before Terry leaves, coming to terms with their respective paths in life.
Kenneth Lonergan began developing the screenplay for You Can Count on Me around 1995, after he had written and staged a one-act play titled This Is Our Youth featuring the sibling characters of Sammy and Terry.[3] "It was always going to be a movie even though it was based on the one-act, because the town itself plays such a big part of the story—what it meant to him and what it meant to her—and it’s hard to convey a sense of a town’s outdoor atmosphere in a play," said Lonergan. "I always saw their relationship to the town and to the scenery too—I wanted it to be in a very beautiful setting that felt constrictive to him but calming and secure to her—and I didn’t know how in the world to do that in a play."[3]
You Can Count on Me marked the feature film debut for Lonergan, who had previously worked primarily in theater.[3] John Hart, the original main producer for the film, promised Lonergan a budget of $3 million if he could cast two notable stars in the lead roles; $2 million if he could cast one notable star; and $1 million if the film featured unknown actors.[3]
To produce the film, Hart partnered with The Shooting Gallery, an independent film company which filed bankruptcy shortly after You Can Count on Me was released.[3] In a later interview, Lonergan described the company as "crooked" and alleged that they owed him and several other filmmakers money which went unpaid.[3]
Casting
Matthew Broderick was the first actor to be cast in the film in the supporting role of Laura's boss.[3] Lonergan said that "the whole film was actually contingent on him being in it, because he was the biggest star in it."[3]J. Smith-Cameron, Lonergan's then-girlfriend, was cast in a minor role.[3]
Laura Linney was cast in the lead of Sammy after auditioning for the part.[3] Lonergan said he was drawn to the "wonderful sunniness to her but also this sadness—not smiling-through-the-tears but genuine warmth and a genuine depth of feeling."[3] While Linney was an established actress at the time, Mark Ruffalo was largely unknown, and Lonergan said the film's producers were "a little bit nervous about [casting] him."[3] However, after executives observed Linney and Ruffalo performing scene readings together, they approved Lonergan's casting choice.[3]
Filming
Principal photography of You Can Count on Me lasted 28 days, with six-day work weeks.[3] Lonergan recalled being "miserable" and "a nervous wreck" on the set, though he said: "Nobody on set was difficult though, the cast and crew were wonderful."[3]
The story takes place in the Catskill region of south east New York state, in the fictionalized communities of Scottsville and Auburn. While there is an actual Scottsville and Auburn, New York, they are over 200 miles (320km) away, in the north west Great Lakes and Finger Lakes regions of the state, respectively. The film was primarily shot in and around Margaretville, New York, a village on the border of Catskill Park, in June 1999.[4][5]
While the bank exteriors were filmed at Margaretville's NBT Bank, the interiors were filmed in an unrelated bank closer to New York City, since NBT considered interior filming a security risk.[6] The scenes where Rudy Jr. walks home in the rain were filmed with the assistance of the Margaretville Fire Department, which used their trucks and hoses to create the rain.[7]
Some outdoor scenes, most notably the fishing trip, were filmed in Phoenicia, New York.[7] The Margaretville cemetery could not be seen from the road, so those scenes were shot at a cemetery 4 miles (6.4km) outside the village, on Route 30.
You Can Count on Me premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2000,[9] where it competed for the Grand Jury Prize and tied with Girlfight (2000).[10]
The film was released on DVD and VHS from Paramount Home Entertainment on June 26, 2001.[14] It comes with commentary from director–writer Lonergan, cast and crew interviews, plus the theatrical trailer.[14] In July 2025, it will be released in 4K and standard Blu-ray formats by The Criterion Collection.[15]
Reception
Box office
During the film's U.S. opening weekend beginning November 10, 2000, the film earned $118,170 between 8 theaters.[2] Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the film's release expanded to 53 theaters, with a weekend gross of $417,000, averaging $7,868 per screen.[16]
The film went on to become a sleeper hit,[17] grossing $9,416,804 in the United States, and $1,825,717 internationally, for a worldwide gross of $11,242,521.[2]
Critical response
The film received critical acclaim.[18][19][20]On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 105 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10.The website's consensus reads: "You Can Count on Me may look like it belongs on the small screen, but the movie surprises with its simple yet affecting story. Beautifully acted and crafted, the movie will simply draw you in."[21]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[22]
Los Angeles Magazine highly praised the film, specifically for its writing and acting.[23] Reviewer Stephen Holden described the film as "the perfectly pitched directorial debut of the playwright (This Is Our Youth) and screenwriter (Analyze This) Kenneth Lonergan. Because it arrives near the end of one of the most dismal film seasons in memory, this melancholy little gem of a movie, which won two major awards at the Sundance Film Festival, qualifies as one of the two or three finest American films released this year....You Can Count on Me is an exquisitely observed slice of upstate New York life that reminds us there are still plenty of American communities where the pace is more human than computer-driven. The movie dares to portray small-town middle-class life in America as somewhat drab and predictable. Without ever condescending to its characters, it trusts that the everyday problems of ordinary people, if portrayed with enough knowledge, empathy and insight, can be as compelling as the most bizarre screaming carnival on The Jerry Springer Show."[24]
David Edelstein called the film the "best American movie of the year", noting that "[w]hat the film is 'about' can't be summed up in a line: Its themes remain just out of reach, its major conflicts sadly unresolved. But Lonergan writes bottomless dialogue. When his people open their mouths, what comes out is never a definitive expression of character: It's an awkward compromise between how they feel and what they're able to say; or how they feel and what they think they should say; or how they feel and what will best conceal how they feel. The common term for this is "subtext," and You Can Count on Me has a subtext so powerful that it reaches out and pulls you under. Even when the surface is tranquil, you know in your guts what's at stake." Edelstein concludes "Lonergan doesn't yet know how to make the camera show us things that his dialogue doesn't, but when you write dialogue like he does, you can take your time to learn. Hell, he can take another 20 movies to learn."[25]
According to Roger Ebert, "Beyond and beneath, that is the rich human story of You Can Count on Me. I love the way Lonergan shows his characters in flow, pressed this way and that by emotional tides and practical considerations. This is not a movie about people solving things. This is a movie about people living day to day with their plans, fears and desires. It's rare to get a good movie about the touchy adult relationship of a sister and brother. Rarer still for the director to be more fascinated by the process than the outcome. This is one of the best movies of the year."[26]
Rob Mackie of The Guardian praised the film, likening it to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and writing: "In its unassuming way, this is one of the finest films in a disappointing year for American movies...Lonergan films it in short, pithy scenes and leaves the interpretation up to you: is Ruffalo a liberating influence or was Culkin better with a protective mother as his formative influence? These are the sort of people US movies very rarely bother with."[27]
In a 2016 BBC poll, You Can Count on Me was voted by four critics as one of the greatest films since 2000.[28]
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