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THE MORNING SHOW | Presented by AppleTV+ The News Is Only Half The Story. | 8 Emmy Award Nominations

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

[NEWS] The True Story Behind "Cake"

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING WARNING: The following story told in the interview tells explicit details regarding the true crime behind the film as well as film spoiler alerts.

article by: Ryan Parry

Jennifer's career-defining performance in Daniel Barnz drama film Cake has earned the actress a flurry of plaudits and award nominations. Aniston gives a gritty portrayal of suicidal mom Claire who is addicted to prescription drugs while struggling to live with debilitating injuries she endured in a car crash that killed her child. When Jennifer was missed from the Oscars shortlist, many critics said, "it was a miss and should've been included". Few watching the heart-wrenching Hollywood film will be aware that the screen drama is in fact inspired by a tragic and brutal real-life story. The film tells the story of what the film's screenwriter, Patrick Tobin, penned as the powerful movie following a devastating family tragedy who saw four of his brother's family members slaughtered. In an exclusive interview Tobin opened up about the life-changing event revealing how it inspired the story behind Cake explaining how his brother Tim gave him his blessing to speak about it for the first time.

"My brother gave me permission to speak about it," said Tobin, "and I think it honors his wife and daughter to talk about how they inspired this movie because they definitely did," he added.

(1998) Tim, Deb & 9-month old Alyssa Tobin
"On February 14, 1998, my brother, Tim Tobin, made a grisly discovery while picking up his family from his father-in-law's home in the small town of Gillette, Montana - he found four members of his family dead. His wife Deb's father, Don Schell, took a .22 caliber pistol and a 357 magnum in the middle of the night and shot dead the three people in the world dearest to Tim - Don's wife Rita, his daughter Deb and baby granddaughter Alyssa. Then Don killed himself. The following afternoon Tim found the scene of the carnage that he said, 'will stay with me for as long as a I live'. Tim explained to me, 'seeing my wife Deb and nine-month old daughter Alyssa lying in a pool of blood still haunts me today' " explained Patrick adding, "what shocked the family the most was that Dan had been a non-violent man all his life and had been a doting grandfather to my brother's young daughter."

Deb & Alyssa Tobin
Alyssa Tobin

After the slaughter Patrick's brother Tim felt he truly had nothing else to live for and he sank into a deep, suicidal depression. Realizing his brother was in pain, Patrick packed up his life in Los Angeles and moved back to Montana to be with his sibling and steer him as far away from suicide as possible.


"I moved twelve hundred miles to keep an eye on him," he said, "mostly to make sure he didn't kill himself," revealed Patrick. He drew on the pain of the tragedy to write the film Cake, which highlights how prescription medication can destroy people's lives. Patrick further explains that it was, "never my intention to write about that, but it quickly came out in Jen's character Claire. How the loss of he character's child was tapping into a lot of my brother's pain and our family's pain."

Left to Right: Daniel Barnz, Sam Worthington, Adriana Barraza, Jennifer, Anna Kendrick, and Patrick Tobin
Patrick's powerful movie script caught the attention of some of Hollywood's most celebrated actors including Sam Worthington, Felicity Huffman, Adriana Barazza, Anna Kendrick, and William H. Macy, who star alongside Aniston in the film. Yet Tobin said, "the greatest hope for the movie was that it made people rethink about how we are using medicine to treat pain."

Patrick also explains the lack of tracking what medications each person is taking, "I could go a see a doctor tomorrow and tell the doctor 'I'm experiencing extreme pain' and I can guarantee you I would get 30 Vicodin pills easily. If I couldn't then I'd go somewhere else instead because there's no system of tracking what I'm taking or who gave it to me. That's what Jen's character, Claire, does by going to Tijuana, and the worst part is that really happens."

Aniston says, "This is one character that I didn't want to give up. After I got done playing the part and the camera's quit rolling I didn't want to stop playing the part because I felt like I wanted to learn more about the story. That's what I love is that Patrick's script left me wanting more. Now that I've played a character with chronic pain people have been opening up to me about their personal stories and I think that the trick to living with chronic pain is 'coming to terms with it and finding peace with it, and learning to deal with it in a healthy manor rather than pill popping, in spite of it.' I know people with addictions and have worked with people with addictions. For that reason, this was a very challenging role for me to play."

Patrick Tobin at a "Cake" premiere
Patrick explains about writing Jen's character, "For me, I thought it was an interesting choice to tell the audience why her character is the way that she is until later in the movie. I didn't want people to hate her, so that's where we were able to use humor. The humor in the movie was crucial because it helps to take you along through the story and Jen managed that perfectly. When she was cast as Claire it became apparent very early in filming that she was the perfect choice because Jennifer is such a great actress as well as a comedian and it comes so naturally to her."

Aniston ends the interview with, "What I've learned as the message of this film is: 'As bad as life gets, there is ALWAYS, always H-O-P-E."

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