Movies today deal with topics as fanciful as romantic vampires and as straightforward as two people who make a porno to pay the bills. Regardless of the range of the modern filmmaker, the topic of family matters remains a constant theme. When independent filmmaker and former UCLA student Randall Miller penned “Nobel Son,” the story of an egomaniacal genius who belittles everyone he encounters, Miller was writing about his own father, a former UCLA professor of biochemistry.
Directed by Miller and co-written by his wife Jody Savin, “Nobel Son” tells the tale of family dysfunction when a father chooses to fly to Sweden and accept his Nobel Prize rather than deal with his son’s kidnapping.
Barkley Michaelson (Bryan Greenberg) is working on his graduate thesis on anthropophagy, the practice of cannibalism, much to the disapproval of his father, Eli, who teaches chemistry at a university in Pasadena. Miller said he relates to Barkley’s inability to live up to his father’s academic standards.
He began his undergraduate career at UC Davis under the Pre-Med/Pre-Vet major but, like many young college students, realized he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He decided to pursue his interest in the movie business and transferred to UCLA and then to USC’s film program about a year later. With very different academic interests than his father, Miller never felt his father’s support.
“He thought I was basically wasting my life on drivel,” Miller said.
Alan Rickman portrays the highly judgmental Eli. He said he hopefully has no personal likeness to Eli but approached the role, which he described as that of a character who is “ostensibly a grown up but actually is probably about 11 years old,” as if it were any other.
“The job you have as an actor is not to judge your character ever,” Rickman said.
Rickman never met Miller’s father but found Miller’s honesty to be courageous.
“I thought that was kind of a brave thing for a writer/director to do, to use his own life,” Rickman said.
The film reflects Miller’s life in other ways as well. He, like Barkley, grew up in Pasadena while his father taught at Cal Tech prior to switching to UCLA. During his career at Cal Tech, he landed on the “short list” for the Nobel Prize multiple times. Miller and Savin also incorporated resemblances in the way that Eli and Miller’s parents treated other people.
“It ended up being kind of like “˜Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,'” Miller said. “(My parents) would invite people over and emotionally dissect them at a dinner party. That’s sort of Eli in a way.”
This similar behavior is present in the scene in which Eli’s co-workers hold a formal reception for him after learning of his award. He talks himself up by putting down his wife’s profession as a professor of forensic psychiatry and by pointing out his son’s inability to support himself with what Eli regards as a useless degree.
While Eli is in Stockholm basking in the glory of his award, Barkley develops Stockholm Syndrome for his kidnapper after finding some common ground: they both hate Eli. This turn of events begs the question of who the real antagonist of the story is: the ruthless kidnapper or the indifferent father? Though Barkley maintains a strong, unrelenting disgust for his father throughout the film, Miller’s relationship with his father had its moments. “Of course you always love your parents,” he said.
Miller’s father passed away before the film was made but not before reading the script. Savin claims he was the only one who failed to see his direct connection to the character of Eli.
“Other people had read it who know him and said “˜Oh my goodness, that’s your dad!'” Savin said. “Then he read it and said “˜This character’s preposterous!'”
Miller doesn’t think his father would have related to the story on screen at all but believes he would have enjoyed the film.
“I think he would think it’s pretty cool,” Miller said. “That’s the funny thing.”