hanks accepted the role of ray with enthusiasm. "what's so bizarrely interesting about this black psychocomedy is that the stuff that goes on in real life in a regular neighborhood will make your hair stand up on the back of your neck." he was also intrigued by his character with distinctive personality traits. "sometimes there's more of an opportunity to create than others. here's a guy with a great life – a nice house, a wife, a beautiful tree, a nice neighborhood – and he's happy. next day, he hates it all. i thought something must've happened to him offstage. and that's the challenge for me of the part: to communicate ray's offscreen dilemma. one of the reasons ray doesn't go away on vacation is because it's another extension of the normalcy he's fallen into. so he thinks he'll try a more bohemian thing, which is to just hang around the house. with a week's worth of free time on his hands, ray is drawn into the pre-occupations of his neighbors, who always seem to be at home. but what i did is just back-story embellishment that any actor will do. perhaps from my repertory experience. i don't ask a director for motivation. if he says, 'go over to the window', i find the reason myself."