The Squid and the Whale

Park Slope, Brooklyn, 1986. When Walt Berkman, an impressionable 16-year-old boy, claims he wrote the Pink Floyd song “Hey You” and performs it at a school talent show, he has very clear reasons. “I felt like I could have written it myself, so the fact that it had already been written was just a minor technicality.” Meanwhile, his brother Frank, who is twelve, drinks beer and talks openly about their mother's sex life. Both simply react to the bombshell that has exploded in the heart of their peaceful family life: their parents, Bernard—once a promising writer, now a middle-aged professor—and Joan—a promising writer about to publish a book—announce that they are separating. The family foundations begin to crumble. Walt and Frank must face the challenge of splitting weekends and the chaos of spending one night with one parent and the next night with the other.