Gilbert Grape's Genogram is based on the 1993 American film, What is Eating Gilbert Grape. Centered around the Grape family, Ellen and Amy and their two brothers Arnie and Gilbert, along with their morbidly obese widowed mother Bonnie Grape, are striving to survive and coexist with the absence of a father figure, low wage work, and seventeen-year-old Arnie's severe mental condition. As the Genogram suggests, in the movie, Gilbert lives in a decaying house dominated by his 500-pound mother, Bonnie Grape (Darlene Cates), a reclusive behemoth who rarely budges from her living room couch. There are his two sisters, long-suffering Elvis-worshipper Amy (Laura Harrington) and primping teen princess Ellen (Mary Kate Schellhardt).
