Based on writer & musician Willy Vlautin first novel (dated 2005), The Motel Life is an intense and dramatic movie directed by Alan Polsky and Gabriel Polsky, starring Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff and Dakota Fanning.
Full of emotion, realism and centered on the sad story of two brothers, inspired on writing on Charles Bukowski’s books in its tragedy and  pathos.
The movie itself is amazingly suspended between empathy and pain of these two brothers with problems without ending excepting from their personal ways of escaping with their imagination, telling stories or drawing.
Stunning photography and extraordinary acting complete the upcoming masterpiece (the best in Rome by now?), with a great performance in direction after the two brothers’ productions of movies like “Little Birds” and “”The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans”.

The Motel Life explores the intense bond between two brothers living on the fringes of Reno, Nevada.
Orphaned early, they grew up depending on their big imaginations to escape the challenges of their transient life. When one of the brothers is involved in a fatal accident, it forces both of them to chose between running away or facing reality.
It is a story of brotherhood, shared dreams and the redemptive power of hope.
A story that surely will make you cry feeling closer to the protagonists.

Directors Alan and Gabriel Polsky told us:
“The novel we made a movie on, was written by a musician, so music has a great importance in all the project. One of our authors suggested us to make a script about that book he loved, and we felt in love with it, immediately. We changed something during the work-in-progress: Jerry Lee was different in the book for example, and we shot in Nevada where the story was set but in some different cities from the novel.
We choose Emile and Stephen because we saw their relationship and we found them really close one to the other: you know, it’s a movie on brotherhood and they needed to be connected in their souls!
Animated illustrations have been put in the movie because the story itself needed to be filled with something able to evoke imagination. Frank and Jerry Lee talents are in their way to escape from reality thanks to their arts, one in creating fantastic stories and the other in drawing them.
It’s a so real and intense story deep into human soul, totally told by the two protagonists from their stories.
We took only 24 days for filming the movie, a very fast work, you see!
Willy Vlautin has been son enthusiastic about our project to make a film on his novel, he’s a musician and when we make him meet actor-musician Kris Kristofferson he was really excited. Now he’s in Rome with us!”

Actor Stephen Dorff, Jerry Lee in the movie, added:
“My character, Jerry Lee, is a great one. He’s desperate and extremely unlucky but sweet, a good man. I read the script one day during the shots of Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” and I immediately told my agent I’d have loved to be part of the project. You know it was the best script I had in his office table. It’s an amazing story, and I think it’s one of the best movies I have ever done.
Jerry Lee, in the novel by Willy Vlautin, is someone completely different from me: he’s silly and weird, absolutely different from me in his appearance too, not a suntanned surfing-look-like man like me! But I thought it’d be a great opportunity to act a totally different man because I always search for roles far from my personality. I think that it’s part of my job, you know, acting like someone you are not. It makes the difference from so sad careers of some of my colleagues with all the same characters movie after movie.
Working with Emile Hirsch has been fantastic: we met about ten years ago when he was a very young and talented promise of cinema, and I found something of my beginnings in him. He started working early, as I did, for example.
Dakota Fanning is an amazing actress: I remember meeting her some years ago when she was a little girl, and now she’s a woman with such an amazing career despite of her young age. When I met her on the set I had already finished working with her sister Elle in “Somewhere”: they’re a great and talented family, we must admit!
What I loved in cinema when I was a child?
You know: I’ve always wanted to be an actor, but my parents did not, despite my father was a musician and he encouraged me to study but keep on trying… And here I am!
When I was a young adult my favourite stars and movies were Spiderman, Bruce Lee and Shining. I had posters in my room!”

Related Images: