'At the same time, I'm kind of doing my own thing. Cal's a different guy than he was when he was 17 years old. So I was endeavoring to find the similarities between the different Cals in those moments.'Ĭal's arc hits a crescendo when he arrives home drunk in the middle of the night, promptly pees onto the hardwood floor, and proceeds to unload a lifetime of internalized trauma onto his wife and son. Much of it with his penis still out the silent fifth member of the scene. The scene is long and devastating, as Cal vacillates between casual cruelty and delivering long-overdue truths.
Dane bounces between tragedy and dark comedy, self-hatred and self-acceptance, and deep-cutting reads on not only his own secrets but those of his family. It's like watching an exorcism, but performed in the foyer of a McMansion. 'My first thought when I read the script was, I better start working on this right now! Because it's a lot of words,' he says. I mean, you know, Cal is a deeply conflicted character. And he's been living this double-life for the better part of his adulthood.
