Lawn Dogs 1997
Lawn Dogs is a 1997 fantasy-drama film directed by John Duigan and starring Mischa Barton and Sam Rockwell. The film tells the story of a precocious young girl (Barton) from a gated community who befriends a landscape worker (Rockwell), and examines the societal repercussions of their friendship. Written by Naomi Wallace, the film was released by Rank Organisation, and was the company's last production.
Lawn Dogs 1997
Clare begins to notice Devon's friendship with Trent when he comes to do lawn work at their house, and becomes alarmed. Meanwhile, Brett and Sean vandalize Trent's lawnmower, pouring sugar in the fuel tank and start a fight with him after accusing him of stealing CDs from Sean's car.
The Stockard family, consisting of parents Morton (Christopher McDonald) and Clare (Kathleen Quinlan) and daughter Devon (Mischa Barton), has recently moved into Camelot Gardens, a frightfully soulless gated community with pristine mini-mansions fronted by massive, treeless lawns. Often present in the neighborhood mowing the grass is Trent (Sam Rockwell), a sinewy, vaguely insolent fellow who represents just the sort of element the rich folks have moved to Camelot Gardens to get away from.
The movie isn't clear about what it's trying to say--what it wants us to believe when we leave. It has the form of a message picture, without the message. It takes place in an upscale Kentucky housing development named Camelot Gardens, where the $300,000 homes sit surrounded by big lawns and no trees. It's a gated community; the security guard warns one of the "lawn dogs''--or yard workers--to be out of town by 5 p.m.
In one of the new houses lives 10-year-old Devon (Mischa Barton), who has a scar running down her chest after heart surgery. Her insipid parents are Morton (Christopher McDonald) and Clare (Kathleen Quinlan). Morton plans to run for office. Clare has casual sex with local college kids. And Trent (Sam Rockwell) mows their lawn.
In the affluent, gated community of Camelot Gardens, bored wives indiscriminately sleep around while their unwitting husbands try desperately to climb the social ladder. Trent, a 21-year-old outsider who mows the neighborhood lawns, quietly observes the infidelities and hypocrisies of this overly privileged society. When Devon, a 10-year-old daughter from one family, forges a friendship with Trent, things suddenly get very complicated.
There are no slip-ups from the cast either: newcomer Barton turns in a hypnotic central performance, while Rockwell is a sweet, tousled sort of "lawn dog". It gets a bit groan-worthy when it seems that Devon will cave in to a dramatic cliche - but then comes the twist that keeps things on track.
Newly arrived in an up-market housing development, quiet ten-year-old Devon doesn't quite fit in. Ignoring the urgings of her social-climbing father, Devon chooses the company of Trent, who mows the estate's lawns, rather than of the girls her own age. Their friendship grows during her visits to his trailer home, but although it is completely innocent it is obvious that it would be unacceptable to the residents if they found out.
United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Acclaimed drama from director John Duigan, starring Sam Rockwell and Mischa Barton. Ten-year-old Devon Stockard (Barton) leads a lonely existence in her wealthy parents' high-security suburban complex. Her only friend is Trent Burns (Rockwell), a 22-year-old drop-out who works as a 'lawn dog', mowing the lawns of the locals for a living. However, Trent is reviled and looked down upon by those he works for, and his friendship with Devon looks set to get him into a lot of trouble. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Montreal World Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, ...Lawn Dogs
Little Mischa Barton is a typical depressed kid in Lawn Dogs (1997). She's got good reason to be blue. She's just moved to a gated community that's dull, daddy's a conservative businessman, and Kathleen Quinlan is not only a MILF, she spreads her legs to get spewed by any guy with a working hose. Then Mischa finds the wolf of the woods, Sam Rockwell, who mows the neighbors' lawns, and he jumpstarts Mischa's immature engine. Rockwell rolls with Angie Harmon as Mischa watches--what better way to learn about the birds and the bees? Yeah, he's a real lawn dog. But who wouldn't bury their bone in Angie?
Mischa Barton is a typical depressed kid in Lawn Dogs (1997). She's got good reason to be blue. She's just moved to a gated community that's dull, daddy's a conservative businessman, and Kathleen Quinlan is a bored MILF. Then Mischa finds the wolf of the woods, Sam Rockwell, who mows the neighbors' lawns, and he jumpstarts Mischa's immature engine. No stranger to on-screen nudity, Rockwell outdoes himself in this flick, at one point jumping off a bridge for a spur-of-the-moment skinny dip. Totally gratuitous, and yet totally necessary.
The setting for the film is a closed-off Kentucky community that prides itself on middle-class homogeneity. The townspeople would probably ban outsiders if they could, but they tolerate a few, such as the young man who supports himself by mowing their manicured lawns. He becomes the innocent friend of a businessman's 10-year-old daughter, prompting unfounded suspicions - then hostility and violence - among neighbors whose well-groomed faades hide distressing amounts of corruption and dishonesty.
Animals, including dogs and horses, can contract pythiosis from swimming spores, said Erica Goss, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of plant pathology. About 10 cases of humans getting sick from this disease have also been reported in the U.S.
For four or five days we just lay around reading, playing tennis, swimming, tussling with the kids and dogs on the sloping front lawn. The house seems way too small to contain, comfortably, as many as 15. It does. Mostly, we just stay put, going out to eat a few times, but no movies, day trips, or music. Just the simple, fresh pleasure of hanging out with people you like, not having to do too much to get by. One night, Sandy cooked an Indian dinner, and one night I made pasta for the boys while the women went out to dinner. (There is nothing quite like chopping peppers.) Later, into the early hours of the next morning everyone played charades, but I passed out early. Asleep upstairs, I snored so loudly that everyone commented on it the next day.
TR: Hard. Listen to him. You're a kid in a little Iowa town, and the next thing you know your mother is as big as a garage and she goes away for a few weeks and nobody tells you a thing and when she comes home, she's got seven screaming monsters in her arms, and five-hundred reporters and TV crews camped on the lawn--- and your home is like a feed lot operation, people rushing around to feed em and clean em and you're standing there like the trombonist in the Juilliard String Quartet, non-existent--- so you run away and become a skinhead and get tattoos all over and you knock over gas stations and fill up your truck with semi-automatic weapons and you join the White Aryan Nation in northern Idaho.
"The responsibility of construing the language of an insurance contract is a question of law for the trial judge, and then for the reviewing court." Cody v. Connecticut Gen. Life Ins. Co., 387 Mass. 142 , 146 (1982). In interpreting insurance policies, "we [] construe the words of the policy in their usual and ordinary sense," Hakim v. Massachusetts Insurers' Insolvency Fund, 424 Mass. 275 , 280 (1997), and, when appropriate, "consider what an objectively reasonable insured, reading the relevant policy language, would expect to be covered." Hazen Paper Co. v. United States Fid. & Guar. Co., 407 Mass. 689 , 700 (1990).
We spent Tuesday mostly zipping about on errands. We had lunch in Middlebury, on a rock overlooking a river; Kir went to her office to work, and I wandered around Middlebury, stopping in crafts stores, book and music stores, and a pewter store. Waited for Kir (and Orca) on a lawn in the sunshine outside our rendezvous point for a while. When she arrived, we stopped for very rich ice cream, then went for a walk in a woods apparently dedicated to Robert Frost (bits of his poetry were on signs at various points along the walk). Warm afternoon ramble, discussing philosophy and nature, very relaxed and nice.
We dropped off Orca at Kir's mother's place (and I met that side of Kir's family, along with several dogs and several turkey and chicken chicks; the household reminded me a bit of a Jean Craighead George book). Hung out there for a while, then dropped in on Krystal and David, with whom we had dinner. Lots of discussion of roleplaying games, among other topics. Back to Kir's place; I dialed up and checked email 'til it got late, while Kir cleaned and packed for her trip. 041b061a72