The Squid and the Whale

When Walt Berkman, an impressionable 16-year-old, passes off the Pink Floyd song "Hey You" as his original work and performs it at a high school talent show, he's perfectly content with his rationale. "I felt I could have written it so the fact that it was already written was kind of a technicality." At the same time, his 12-year-old brother Frank drinks beer and wonders openly about his mother's sex life. Both are simply reacting to the fall-out from the bomb dropped on their comfortable family life when their parents, Bernard--a once promising author and now middle-aged academic and Joan--a burgeoning writer with a book deal--announce that they are splitting up. The familiar, steady foundation is shaken. Walt and Frank are relegated to alternating weekends and a jumbled calendar of Mom or Dad nights. The kids are left to grapple with the confusing and conflicted feelings that arise from the sudden collapse of their parents' marriage. (official distributor synopsis)