On the Porch in 'Osage County' The Weinstein Company gambled that opening its dark family dramedy "August: Osage County" two days after Christmas, instead of on Christmas (when everyone has enough dark family dramedy to contend with), would pay off at the box office. In five theaters, its take ranked with this season's other dysfunctional family stories, like "Nebraska," but may not have had the surge the studio was hoping for. Directed by John Wells, from the Tracy Letts play (in which Harvey Weinstein was an early investor), it was carefully prepared for months. Mr. Wells, whose credits include "E.R." on TV and "The Company Men," on the big screen, insisted that the film be shot in Osage County in Oklahoma, and the state was happy to oblige. The movie of "Oklahama" wasn't shot there, and "they didn't want that to happen again," Mr. Wells said at the premiere this month. "It's a beautiful place, Oklahama," he added, "very severe and austere and beautiful, and I thought it would be great for the cast and all of us to be there and experience and really understand what that world is like." He convened the actors - including Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts as a warring mother and daughter - early and had them hang out on the porch of the house that served as the set. "It fed me in such a way, and I think all of us," said Margo Martindale, who plays Ms. Streep's sister. Sitting on the porch, doing our rehearsals, looking out at the landscape, it really added to the whole experience. Mr. Wells "did an enormous amount of work helping us fill in the back story," she added. Then we did our own stories and sat around talking. It was almost like a rehearsal for a rehearsal. One of Mr. Wells's tools was to send cast members a binder full of back stories for their characters, said Julianne Nicholson, who plays another daughter of Ms. Streep. Words, images, photos of people, landscape, things that are just evocative of that time and place, also the time and place when our parents were younger. It helped them build the family bonds. "I look back at pictures of this movie and I think that I'm looking at pictures of my family," Ms. Martindale said.