Smart People

About Smart People

Smart People is a 2008 comedy film starring Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page and Thomas Haden Church. The film was directed by Noam Murro and written by Mark Poirier. It was filmed on location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, including several scenes at Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh International Airport. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where North American distribution rights were acquired by Miramax Films. The film released wide on April 11, 2008.

Carnegie Mellon English Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a depressed middle-aged widower. He is arrogant at work, uninterested in his students, and alienated from his two children. His adopted ne'er-do-well brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) arrives to borrow money and stay for a while, and tries to unwind Lawrence's lonely, high-achieving teenage daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page). Meanwhile, Lawrence has a meet cute with a sympathetic doctor, Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), a former student he does not recall. Janet fulfills her long-ago crush with a "face-to-face" date with the professor, at which he displays his stultifying arrogance. On another night, in the midst of a contentious Christmas family dinner at the Wetherholds', Janet arrives unannounced with a cake. After Chuck gets Vanessa drunk and she makes a pass at him, he moves in part-time with Lawrence's son James (Ashton Holmes) in his college dormitory. James' girlfriend and Lawrence's student Missy (Camille Mana) tells Lawrence that James has had a poem accepted at The New Yorker. By contrast, Lawrence has failed to sell his latest academic tome to any publisher. Vanessa changes the title to You Can't Read! and the book is sold to Penguin Group, a large non-academic publisher in New York. Janet accompanies Lawrence on a trip to New York, where she learns she is pregnant by Lawrence and then breaks up without telling him the news. Back in Pittsburgh a few weeks later, Lawrence goes to the hospital to reconcile with Janet, who reveals her pregnancy. He has meanwhile become a more involved parent and professor. During the end credits, the main characters cradle twin babies.

According to actor Camille Mana, the script for Smart People circulated in Hollywood for several years, and "previously Robert Redford was supposed to direct it and it was developed at Focus Features." The film originally was set at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., but filming an independent film in that city was deemed too difficult.