Pieces of April

Director: Peter Hedges

Shot in just 16 days on a budget of $100,000, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape screenwriter Peter Hedges made his directorial debut with this movingly unique tale of April (Katie Holmes), a young woman struggling to make a Thanksgiving feast for her estranged family. After her oven fails, April sets out to find a new one in her apartment building by visiting neighbors with mixed results as her family makes their own journey to the dinner. April’s parents, played by Oliver Platt and Patricia Clarkson, are especially good as the couple undergoing enormous emotional stress of not just the reunion with their daughter but also the terminal cancer diagnosis of Clarkson’s character. Clarkson, who earned accolades for the film, had quite a productive year in 2003, earning a few double awards for her performances in both this film and McCarthy’s The Station Agent. While Holmes does some of her finest work playing the red-haired rebellious punk daughter with dark painted fingernails, the actor playing her boyfriend Bobby, Antwone Fisher’s Derek Luke manages to charm the camera with every scene he’s in. Luke was offered the role after an audition that Hedges noted was the most impressive one he’d seen in his professional career since Leonard DiCaprio’s test for Gilbert Grape. Dedicated to Hedges’s mother who died of cancer, the film is an intimate work that is enhanced by its digital camera work and truly indie feel including the shoestring budget, which according to IMDB, stipulated that actors were paid $248 per day and Hedges received $10 to write and $10 to direct. Although the title comes from a song by Three Dog Night, the film contains one of the best soundtracks in recent memory by consisting entirely of selections created by prolific musical prodigy Stephin Merritt and his various bands. If you have yet to hear anything by Merritt, please check out the selections below (especially “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side”).

From the Pieces of April Soundtrack

“One April Day” by Stephin Merritt


“You You You You You” by The 6ths


“All I Want to Know” by The Magnetic Fields


“I Think I Need a New Heart” by The Magnetic Fields


“As You Turn To Go” by The 6ths


“The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side” by The Magnetic Fields


“Epitaph for My Heart” by The Magnetic Fields


“Heather Heather” by The Magnetic Fields


“Stray With Me” by The Magnetic Fields


“Dreams Anymore” by The Magnetic Fields