It is said that the title originally came from a 1956 song of the same name by jazz musician and trumpet player Miles Davis. On similar themes, it reflects the helpless struggle of the old and the young to face life and reality. "Half Nelson" originally meant a wrestling move. In director Ryan Fleck's own words: "It's a stalemate in wrestling, but you can get away, although it takes skill. Just a metaphor for struggles, like drug addiction or different sociopolitical, class struggles. And so on. Every character in the film is struggling." Screenwriter Anna Burton said: "We knew we wanted to make a film that was subtle and thought provoking, and we didn't want to be too explicit, so we felt the title fit the film. style of".
It's a pity that the writers and directors couldn't make the song appear in the film because Mile Davis' music rights were too expensive and far exceeded the budget of this small-budget independent production.
The film took only 23 days to complete, a veritable low-cost independent production. A total of 40 people. The film started shooting in July 2006 and was completed in 23 days, one day earlier than the original shooting schedule.
In history class, Dunn played newsreels for students focusing on key moments in U.S. history in the civil rights and ideological struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, including the killing of Harvey Milk; the assassination of Chile's elected president, Salvador Allende. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) supported the military dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile; in the spring of 1964, Mario Savio, a student at UC Berkeley and leader of the Free Speech Movement, gave a speech in front of Sproul Hall, etc. .
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