Laura Linney and Nico Parker are mother and daughter in Laura Chinn's ‘Suncoast’
When writer-director Laura Chinn was a teenager in 2005, her mother moved her and her terminally ill brother to Florida
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — When writer-director Laura Chinn was a teenager in 2005, her mother moved her and her terminally ill brother to Florida. The idea was for him to spend his last days in hospice in peace. Instead, the place was mobbed by protesters and media because, as they’d quickly discover, Terri Schiavo was in that same hospice.
The circumstances provided the inspiration for Chinn’s directorial debut, “Suncoast,” starring Nico Parker as the teenager in question and Laura Linney as her mother. It’s streaming on Hulu starting Friday.
Though it’s not unusual for a filmmaker to draw on their life for narrative guidance, within this strange and fraught and emotional time Chinn saw an opportunity to tell not just her story but a more universal one about grief and empathy. And she got to work, using the skills she’d learned over the years, writing for and acting on television (including creating the series “Florida Girls”) and learning some new ones too (like photography and how to shotlist).
Schiavo was in a vegetative stage for 15 years after a cardiac arrest at 26 in 1990 and had become the face of end-of-life legal rights, which beyond the bitter disagreement between her husband and her parents had ignited a national debate. In 2005, right before her death, it was a full-on media and political frenzy.
