Driveways (2019) on Netflix
Kathy brings her son Cody to her late sister's house to pack it up and sell it. Cody cannot relate to the neighborhood kids, but he befriends Del, the widower next door.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.2/107,623 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes99%
Trailer
Plot summary
Eight-year-old Cody and his mother Kathy arrive at the house of Kathy's late sister April, in upstate New York, planning to pack it up and sell it. The electricity has been shut off and April left a $900 bill with the utility, so the two spend their first night in a motel. Inside, they find the place filled with hoarded belongings. Next door lives Del, an elderly widower and Korean War veteran, who watches the newcomers from his window and shows Cody how to work a garden hose. Kathy keeps Cody away from strangers, but she later drives Del to the local VFW lodge when his ride fails to arrive. The next day he has strung an extension cord across the driveway to give her house power, and she meets realtor Charlene about listing the property.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Driveways (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Andrew Ahn, his producers and a location scout searched all over the Poughkeepsie area until they asked a local real estate broker, who knew exactly where a pair of houses that fit the film's specifications stood and also knew the families who lived in them.
- Lucas Jaye, who had a recurring role on Fuller House but no film credits, was the last of the three leads cast in Driveways; his parents almost missed the audition deadline because they forgot to send his tape before a family trip to Disneyland.
- Brian Dennehy was among the first actors to commit to Driveways after he liked the script, while Hong Chau had emailed Andrew Ahn after seeing his debut, Spa Night, saying she would do anything he wanted in his next film; Ahn had coffee with her and believed she would bring the humanity he wanted for the part.
SPOILER
While shooting the scene in which Del tells Cody he is moving to Seattle, Brian Dennehy asked director Andrew Ahn to keep filming after Ahn thought the scene was finished, because Lucas Jaye's performance had given Dennehy new ideas.- Cinematographer Ki Jin Kim noticed that Lucas Jaye stomped out Hong Chau's discarded cigarette on every take of the truck stop scene, so Andrew Ahn added a closeup of it to the film to establish the relationship between the two characters.
- To make filming inside the hoarder house easier, the production designer piled all the hoarded items on wheeled tables, which gave more options for camera placement and made it easy to roll the clutter in and out.
- Co-writer Paul Thureen drew on his own life: the hitchhiking trip Del recalls in the film's closing monologue resembles one his father took after his military service, and Thureen, like Cody, was a shy child who vomited before his own birthday parties.
- Andrew Ahn's own voice can be heard off-camera calling "Bingo!" in the VFW bingo scene; he admitted in 2020 that he only realized in post-production that he had forgotten to edit it out.
