What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that the movie has very mature material, including very strong language, brief nudity, sexual references and situations (including masturbation and a porn Web site), drinking, smoking, and drug use. The movie has quasi-comic violence, but characters are injured and killed. Characters break the law, including stealing from nature preserves and making psychotropic drugs.
- Families can talk about how we chose our passions - or whether they choose us. Do Laroche and Orlean envy each other? Does Charlie envy Donald? Why did Charlie the real-life screenwriter divide himself in two in the movie portrayal? Why did he take real-life characters like Susan Orlean and John Laroche and have their movie characters do things that they never did? What do you learn from Laroche's reason for not fixing his teeth? If you were going to re-create yourself as a movie character, what would you write? This movie both uses and makes fun of many movie conventions - which ones did you spot?