John Cusack is Cool

Just got back from a screening at the Academy of the new drama starring and produced by the wonderful actor John Cusack.

The film "Grace is Gone" tells the story of a mid-Western father of two young daughters who freaks out when he learns that his soldier wife was killed in Iraq. He has no idea how to tell the girls that their mother is dead, so he puts them in the car for a rambling cross-country road trip to their favorite amusement park.

John Cusack does a wonderful job in the film, a true dramatic turn for him. This is not the charming, witty John Cusack we know from such classics as Say Anything and High Fidelity. It's one of his most demanding roles and the SAG screening I attended was certainly pointed toward potential award season nominations.

Outraged by the Bush administration's censorship of photographs of American military coffins returning home, Cusack produced the film to show the true human cost of the war that is being paid for on a daily basis, but not by most of us. It's the soldiers and their families who are paying, he told the audience in a Q & A after the film. The American public has its head in the sand. The President tells us to keep spending and consuming, the dwindling military is replaced by guns-for-hire, and all the expenses are paid with credit. We are accumulating societal injuries that will scar an entire generation.

Though Mr. Cusack expressed his views forthrightly, the film was not preachy at all. On the contrary, the film intentionally focuses on the hardship on families rather than politics. The two young girls who played his daughters were simply marvelous and John spoke very fondly and respectfully of the two young actors.

I sat in the second row, about ten feet from John Cusack. He seems like a down-to-earth guy, very humble, and extremely patient to endure the fawning and often ridiculous questions of a roomful of actors. I was lucky to attend thanks to my soon-to-be-ex tour boss (and SAG member) Philip, who has taken me to several of these types of events. Unfortunately, Philip is leaving the tour company, and the country, so we won't be attending anything like this again for a while.