Squid and the Whale, The

Park Slope, Brooklyn, 1986. When Walt Berkman, an impressionable 16-year-old, passes off the Pink Floyd song "Hey You" as his original work and performs it at a high school talent show, he's perfectly content with his rationale. "I felt I could have written it so the fact that it was already written was kind of a technicality." At the same time, his 12-year-old brother Frank drinks beer and wonders openly about his mother's sex life.

Both are simply reacting to the fall-out from the bomb dropped on their comfortable family life when their parents, Bernard--a once promising author and now middle-aged academic and Joan--a burgeoning writer with a book deal--announce that they are splitting up. The familiar, steady foundation is shaken. Walt and Frank are relegated to alternating weekends and a jumbled calendar of Mom or Dad nights. The kids are left to grapple with the confusing and conflicted feelings that arise from the sudden collapse of their parents' marriage.

Directed by
Noah Baumbach

Cast
Jeff Daniels - Bernard Berkman
William Baldwin - Ivan
Laura Linney - Joan Berkman
Anna Paquin - Lili
Jesse Eisenberg - Walt Berkman
Owen Kline - Frank Berkman
Halley Feiffer - Sophie

Production Co.
Redeemable Features
Ambush Entertainment
American Empirical Pictures
Andrew Lauren Productions
Original Media
Peter Newman Productions

Produced by
Andrew Lauren
Reverge Anselmo
Miranda Bailey

Studio
Sony Pictures Classics

Writer
Noah Baumbach

Music
Britta Phillips
Dean Wareham