MovieChat Forums > Ginger Snaps (2001) Discussion > Sam's age is driving me bonkers

Sam's age is driving me bonkers

posted 8 years ago by kiddo1-1
3 replies | jump to latest

So apparently, according to the script at least, Sam is supposed to be 23 years old. Look, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for massively late periods, werewolves, and Emily Perkins being the younger sister, but this just confuses the hell out of me. Firstly, no, just by looking at the two, I do not buy that he is eight years older than Brigitte. He looks more like a high-school dropout with absent parents who's nineteen at best and just maintaining his family's business and making some buck on the side, which is what I originally thought he was. But then you have him calling Brigitte “kid“, the whole cherry hound thing, or Ginger cursing him for being a pervert. The deleted scenes even have him mention how he's turning into his parents and doing some elaborate research. So yeah, the massive age difference seems to really be a thing.

I'm not entirely sure but by looking at the script it seems that there were several rewrites and Sam's character took the brunt of it. Originally, he was supposed to be this muscular, blond tatted up “Adonis“ who actually makes out with Brigitte on two separate occasions. If that really is the case, then no matter how much I love Kris Lemche in the role, this is the worst casting ever. Look, I appreciate that someone apparently pointed out that a straight-forward romance sub-plot between a 15 year old high-schooler and a drug dealer in his twenties is pretty gross, and that Sam is no longer a horrible person who hits and runs, but imho they overcorrected to the point that it just doesn't make much sense.

[–] am-23762 7 years ago

Personally, I think Sam the way he is in the film is for the best really. If he had been that Adonis character as was originally written in the script, I think it might well have made him unlikeable to some people, and I think despite Sam being a drug dealer, he was likeable in a way. It also would have affected the film in a negative way, I think. To have him as this tall, blonde, muscular dude would have made him seem out of place, personally, and it would have made the relationship between he and Brigitte seem even more pervy and unlikely, even.

Sam and Brigette in the movie were pretty evenly matched, physically and intellectually, and I think there was this chemistry between the two that just clicked. That was a large part of what made the film great -- the relationships between characters.

I think it may well have also gone against what Fawcett and Walton were trying to achieve, and that was a film that didn't do the same, tired old routine that every other film did - and that was to have the big, strong jock come in and save the day. Even though it has been criticized by some for its sexist treatment of male characters, in the end this is a film about girls facing horrific situations, battling against it and eventually emerging victorious.

I think that's why it's a such a great little film, because it broke the mould, dared to be different from the usual plot.

tl;dr: Even though Sam was way different in the film from the Sam in the script, I personally like the film version of Sam (and I don't even really like Kris Lemche all that much, especially not in anything else he's been in). He achieves this sort of scummy character with redeeming qualities, and while I didn't like Sam much in the beginning, I came to like him as the film progressed.

The Sam from the script -- I don't think I would have liked him nearly as much.

[–] kiddo1-1 7 years ago

Oh, I definitely don’t bemoan the fact that the script version of Sam is vastly different when compared to what actually ended up in the movie. As you say, keeping the character as it was originally conceived would have resulted in a very different and imho inferior story. Plus I really appreciate that the movie Sam is as much removed from the clichéd drug dealer stereotype as possible, so no disagreement on that front.

What baffles me, though, is that of all the edits and changes for the better that were made (just one example, in the script, when our tattooed Adonis hits the werewolf with his car, he believes he actually hit a human being and drives away. His following interaction with Brigitte really cements him as an unlikeable douchenozzle because it‘s based on his fear that she’s going to turn him in), it was Sam’s age that remained intact. Considering that Lemche and Perkins look exactly the same age, Sam being 23 while Brigitte is just 15 creates a lot of weird places which are just unbelievable and get more ridiculous with each subsequent viewing: all I need is one look at those two to simply not buy that Sam would feel old enough to call Brigitte „kid“; that Brigitte would be initially freaked out by Sam not because she’s incredibly antisocial but because he’d logically be an unknown authority figure; that he’d actually have some life experience to be such a world-weary adult rather just a moping kid; that he runs the greenhouse; and yadayadayada.

And what’s worse, at least for me, is that if it weren’t for that one scene where Ginger yells at Sam for being a pervert, therefore logically much older than Brigitte, it would all have been fine. It would have been safe to assume that Sam is simply a depressed lethargic misanthrope/dropout who may as well be 17-18, hangs around the school doing odd jobs for someone’s greenhouse, has a default cool status as the local drug dealer and forms a personal connection with Brigitte based on mutual weirdness. That I’d buy in a heartbeat and I can definitely see a lot of that in the final movie. But the instant Sam is revealed to be well over 20, this version of the character becomes unrealistic.

[–] am-23762 7 years ago

Okay, so I kind of agree with you. It's specifically his age as your thread title would suggest.

Why Sam had to be that specific age, I'm not certain, and one can't make the argument that it's because they were making allowances for Kris's real age, because I believe he was a year or so younger (21 going on 22) than the character at the time they filmed it -- this is mainly because as we know, Brigette's character is 15, and Emily was 22 when it was filmed. And when they wrote the character, he wasn't even cast -- that was much later on.

But I may make this argument. Nowhere in the film, to my knowledge, is it ever specifically stated that he is indeed that age, unlike Ginger and Brigette (I'm almost 16, she just turned 15...). Not as far as I know.

It's just in the scripts. So if I hadn't read the scripts, I probably would have assumed that he was about the age that you said: 18 or 19, 20 tops. And I did, to be honest. That's exactly what I thought.

One also has to take into account the military style jacket he wears at one point. I'm not completely familiar with their (Canada) uniform and service, and maybe it's a hand me down (I used to wear my brother's jackets from the army, even at that age), or he got it from a military surplus store (I have one acquired the same way from Yugoslavia or some such) or he picked it up off a drunk in an alley, but to me it always raised the possibility that he had even served in some branch of the military at some point. I don't know for certain because other than that slight clue it isn't ever really established. Yes, I have a hard time believing he ever served in the army, but then I have a hard time believing that James Blunt rode around in a tank in Kosovo once.

And personally, for all the things the film got right about high school and adolescence, this was one of the ways in which they messed up. It was fairly common and still is common, for girls to date or at least associate with older guys, even if they are out of school. I'm not commenting on whether I approve or not, but it is just that way. To call him a pervert, to me, was way out of touch with reality, and it was something I didn't really like about that scene to be honest.

I could understand if he were 30 or 40 something. But to paint this guy who is frankly still a kid (to me at least) as a lecherous old man is taking it too far.

So yes, actually now that I come to think of it, Sam's age always was a point of interest to me, and frankly I was kind of alarmed when I read the scripts and saw that he was supposed to be that old (23). I suppose it is something that bothers me from time to time, but Brigitte's wig is way worse than that.

You know what else bothers me? That Jason had a car, and he was what 15 or 16, same age as Ginger. Now when I was in high school, yeah some kids that age had a scooter, and it was unlicenced because they weren't the legal age yet. But a car -- only some seniors had cars. Then when I did a Google search, in some provinces in Canada you can have at least a Learner's Permit at 16 (some even younger than that, like Alberta at 14), so I guess it's not so unbelievable after all. It is for me, because I had to wait until I was 17 to even apply for a learner's.