After my dad died, my mum and I endured the coercive control of her new partner for years. It was The Way Way Back that freed us both
In the first five minutes of the 2013 comedy drama The Way Way Back, a teenage boy has a conversation with his stepfather in a car bound for Cape Cod. You can only see the stepdad’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but you instantly know it’s Steve Carell. At this point, I loved Carell. He’s the reason that I, then a teenager, watched the film.
“Duncan … let me ask you something,” Carell’s character says. “On a scale of one to 10, what do you think you are?” Duncan responds shyly that he thinks he’s a six. Any normal adult would balk and correct him. Tell him he’s nothing less than a 10. “I think you’re a three,” says Carell’s character, Trent. Suddenly, I hated Carell with a blind fury. He was a vision of pure evil. I didn’t want to watch him in anything else, ever.
