On July 23, 2016, The Washington Post ran a front-page story entitled “How’s Amanda?” written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow. In an intimate look at the tumultuous lives of a mother and daughter living outside Detroit, Saslow captured the nuances of the bond that Libby Alexander and her daughter Amanda Wendler share as they faced an all too common threat together– Amanda’s decade-long battle with addiction. “How’s Amanda?” was a stark and honest depiction of their lives that grabbed reader’s attention and offered no easy answers or cliched advice. Filmmaker Rodrigo Garcia saw it as an extraordinary opportunity to explore America’s opioid epidemic from a previously untapped perspective. He teamed up with Saslow to write a screenplay based on the article.
The film, FOUR GOOD DAYS, starring eight-time Academy Award nominee Glenn Close and Mila Kunis, is in theaters now.
Saslow sat down with Cherry the Geek TV to discuss the article, the opioid crisis, and what is was like to take his article and turn it into a film.
FOUR GOOD DAYS is now in select theaters from Vertical Entertainment.