See You in My Dreams

See You in my Dreams was adapted from an excellent Sam Shepard story and tells the tale of a poor and increasingly desperate family from 1943 to1973. What starts as an ideal young American family deteriorates into joblessness, poverty, and alcoholism. Here is the kitchen/living room of their working-class farmhouse during good times......

Here is the same room after Mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and son (Will Estes) leave after years of abuse and neglect. Father Joe (Aidan Quinn) hunkers down in one room as his life further deteriorates.

Years later we find Joe (Aidan Quinn) the shattered World War II veteran living out his last days in a wretched tenement hotel awash in the debris of his former life.

The "Bottle House" was a multi-staged set piece set in the bleak desert that helped describe the arc from youthful optimism to neglect to eventual abandonment.