Next, our fall film series continues tonight, "What They Had."It is the story of a family coming to terms with the mother's oncoming Alzheimer's. Jeffrey Brown has our look.Set in Chicago, "What They Had" is the story of a family coping as their mother begins to suffer from Alzheimer's.I have been telling them for years, you got to figure out what you want to do with the time comes,because we all know how this thing works.First-time director Elizabeth Chomko wrote the screenplay based on her own family experience.I was devastated by my grandmother's diagnosis, just because she was someone I so looked up to and felt so close toand really assumed that that would be the sort of end of her personality and the end of her spirit.The film opens with the elderly Ruth, played by Blythe Danner, wandering out into the night.What do you mean she's gone?Daughter Bridget, played by two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, returns home to help the family decide what to do next.I felt the most vulnerable that I ever have as an actor in the role,because it was playing someone that I felt was so similar to me, just a woman finding her way.And for so long, women are just by nature nurturers and we take care of people. It's just what we do and it's what we're taught to do.So at what point do you say that this isn't right for meand I need to take care of myself first, and stop pleasing other people in order to live my most authentic life?
