NEW YORK -- The first time actor John Hawkes heard about Mark O'Brien, the polio-afflicted author, journalist and poet he portrays in the new film "The Sessions," it was due to the Oscars. Documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu had just won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for 1996's "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien." Hawkes read a quote from her in the newspaper basically noting that the dress loaned to her for the evening cost more than the budget for her film, and he enjoyed a chuckle over that.
Hawkes knows a little something about low-budget filmmaking, too. After working consistently for years as a character actor on screen and TV, he's become something of an indie darling. "The Sessions" in fact marked his third-straight trip to the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year (at which point the film was titled "The Surrogate"). And 16 years after the Oscars managed to put O'Brien on his radar, he looks entirely likely to pop up on Oscars' radar for his performance of the man.
But going back to "Breathing Lessons," it was a crucial tool for Hawkes when it came to inhabiting O'Brien. "I watched it probably 40 or 50 times," he says. "There was Mark in all his glory. There was his twisted body and his voice and his attitude and his poetry, all prevalent. There are a lot of things I could mime from that film. It afforded me a chance to capture some of the real sound and feeling and vibe of Mark himself."
But the performance needed to be about way more than mere physicality. O'Brien spent over four decades in an iron lung. But from that prison his spirit flew on the page. The wealth of writing available to Hawkes was equally beneficial, he says, and indicative of the undying light he most wanted to capture in his performance.
"I suppose a guy who lives 49 years and 43 of them in an iron lung and exceeds a lot of expectations, just by nature that person is going to be a battler," he says of his way into playing the part from within. "A character who's been dealt an unfortunate hand, I would want to avoid self-pity. You don't want to watch a character wallow in their grief, but rather try to solve their problem, and that seemed to be a good part of Mark's life. And humor was hugely important, to find humor wherever we could in the script. The situation is fraught from the outset."
And indeed, there are light touches throughout that keep the film not only balanced, but realistic as a result. The story told by "The Sessions" is a specific one, though, that of the time O'Brien spent with sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene (played by Helen Hunt in the film). Knowing he was nearing the end of his rope and had never been with a woman intimately due to his affliction, O'Brien enlisted Greene's services for six sessions of sex therapy. But the bond depicted in the film crosses sterile therapist/patient boundaries and becomes something moving unto itself.
Adding a sense of realism to the dynamic is the fact that Hawkes and Hunt had never met prior to the film. So a lot of the spark of introductory awkwardness is alive in those scenes, Hawkes says, while the growth of the relationship was helped further by the fact that the sessions were filmed sequentially.
"You hear the word 'brave' thrown around about acting performances a little too freely, but I think in this case it actually applies," he says of his co-star's work. "It's a really courageous performance on a lot of levels. And you also hear 'the nudity was necessary' for the movie or the story or whatever and in this case it's not bullshit. It's such an integral part of the movie and her character needs to handle it in such a specific way, and she does it so beautifully."
Hawkes says the Sundance experience has been "phenomenal" and that he laments the fact that he won't be at the fest with another film in 2013, but three years in a row have meant a lot. And it seems they've all been leading to this moment, when he finally assumes leading man status in a vehicle of his own.
"For me it's been the first time I've seen each of those movies ['Winter's Bone,' 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' and 'The Sessions']," he says. "It's been a nervous thrill to watch those with a crowd and Sundance has been really great to me…It's kind of an overwhelming festival but I really admire Mr. Redford. I mean you think of all the people who've been inspired and given chances to work there, from the labs to the festival itself, and it's literally hundreds of filmmakers. That's an honorable and rare and wonderful thing."
The first of that string brought Hawkes his first-ever Oscar nomination, but he says that hasn't really changed his life all that much. "I think part of that is how I've approached it," he says. "Maybe I'll be in a summer blockbuster, sequel eight of some film along the way, but so far I've been able to avoid that. I don't need much money to live. I've saved money from the TV shows I've been on. I have a low overhead and I just prefer to do things that stir me. There are some really amazingly great, big movies out there, but I just haven't really been asked to be a part of them, so I prefer to do the little ones at this point. I'm made nervous by higher visibility on many levels. Since I don't have a mortgage, I don't have any children, it offers me freedom to kind of do what I want to do, which is low budget films that not that many people see, normally."
Nevertheless, his work in "The Sessions" will bring him to a whole other level. And "two-time Oscar nominee" starts to have a much different ring to it. He'll find himself in a race with formidable competitors like Daniel Day-Lewis, Anthony Hopkins and Denzel Washington -- actors who have been well-rewarded by the Academy, in other words. Might his affable portrayal spark a desire to award new blood at the Dolby Theatre? Perhaps. But Hawkes isn't likely to miss a beat if it does.
"There's no goal beyond the life I already have," he says.
Ben
Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed
hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of
subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the
life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien.
Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by
indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a
physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs
due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a
hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive
standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for
next year’s Academy Awards.
Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to
discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so
powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking
out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s
Bone.
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
Ben
Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed
hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of
subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the
life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien.
Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by
indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a
physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs
due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a
hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive
standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for
next year’s Academy Awards.
Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to
discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so
powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking
out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s
Bone.
I grew up close to Berkeley and was a little familiar with Mark O’Brien
before seeing the film, but it captured that sense of place for me –
especially with little touches like Pink Man to set the atmosphere.
Yes, of course! That’s good, because we shot in Los Angeles because we
couldn’t afford to shoot up there. We had to make our own Pink Man and
everything. [Laughs] Luckily there are a couple of Victorian streets in
Los Angeles that we were able to utilize.
How familiar were you with O’Brien’s story beforehand?
I was minutely aware of Mark because I had heard of Jessica Yu’s
amazing, Academy Award-winning short doc about Mark, called Breathing
Lessons. I’d just vaguely kind of remembered that, and I may have seen
an article about him at that time, but it was a new kind of story to me
when I picked up the script and read it. I was pretty taken with the
script itself, by Ben Lewin, and knowing he was going to direct the film
which is often a wonderful thing – it’s the person who wrote the
script, directing the movie. I just thought he was an extraordinarily
interesting man, a polio survivor himself and very uniquely qualified to
tell the story.
When the project came to you – a very challenging role, to say the least
- what made you decide you had to do it?
My first question to Ben, as we sat down to meet before he’d offered the
role and before I’d accepted the role, was ‘Why not a disabled actor?’
And he assured me that he had taken the last couple of years, he’d put
out feelers to disabled groups, and had auditioned several people – a
couple of them are in the film – and just felt like he hadn’t found his
Mark. So with that huge question answered, I talked to Ben a lot about
how he saw the film as a whole, how he saw the character of Mark; I had
my ideas, we chatted and seemed to get along really well, so it was a
good fit. We went forward from there. And this is a very small project.
Ben raised the money by appealing to friends, basically, and so this
tiny little script suddenly attracting William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, and a
bunch of other wonderful actors – it’s vindicating to read something
and think, ‘This is really good!’ And then you realize other people
think so too. I’m not insane, it is a great script!
How challenging was the shoot itself, physically?
It was very challenging – again, a minute amount of the challenge that a
disabled person faces, moment to moment, but certainly it was
physically challenging. I helped invent a device that we used to curve
Mark’s spine, basically a large piece of foam that we nicknamed ‘The
Torture Ball’ because it would lay under the left side of my body and
curve my spine for every shot in the movie. Sometimes I’d have to lay on
that for an hour at a time, and it was hard – it apparently displaced
my organs. [Laughs] My chiropractor told me that my organs were
migrating and to hopefully finish the movie soon. I have minor health
issues that may relate to laying on that thing, but nothing compared to
what many people suffer daily, and it’s a small price to pay for what’s
turned out to be a really beautiful film.
To paraphrase Mark himself in the film, it may have hurt – but it was
worth it?
Yes! Definitely.
It’s an interesting choice that Ben made to present Mark’s story here
not as a straight biopic but with a focus on his relationship with his
sex surrogate. What do you think that shifted angle brings, as opposed
to a more conventional portrayal?
Interesting. I think Ben originally had seen the movie as a biopic and
then began to realize that the part of Mark’s life that interested him
the most was his quest to learn his sexual possibilities as a disabled
man. I think it’s a really wise choice; biopics are interesting, but I’d
rather see a documentary of a person’s whole life, and I’d much rather
see a narrative feature focused on a small piece of their life. And if
you can focus on a small piece of someone’s life and tell it well
enough, I think it informs the whole of their life. And there’s a real
interesting story there – there’s a relationship that develops,
certainly heightened in our film, but with the blessing of the real
surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Green, to heighten and complicate their
relationship a bit and to make it a love story of sorts. The subject
matter, as you describe it, doesn’t have wide appeal but I think it has
so much humor and so much truth, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Mark’s voice really comes through – the same painfully honest, witty
spirit you can see in his writings.
It was important to me to fight self-pity at every turn, and for the
film as a whole to fight sentiment as much as possible.
He certainly never wanted people to feel sorry for him.
No! The idea that he was a courageous person and stuff, he thought was
bullshit. Like, how do you presume to know what I feel, what I go
through? I think through his articles he was very interested in the
political and social aspects of his disability. One thing that’s
striking about Jessica Yu’s film, and I believe I also read something
Mark wrote about it, is that to the taxpayer – to those of us who help
support disabled people by paying taxes – it was half or maybe one-third
of the cost of him being in an institution and live on his own, to pay
rent, to hire attendance, way less of a strain on the taxpayer than
keeping him an institution, where he was sadly stuck for a few years of
his life when his parents were too old to take care of him. Luckily, the
University of California, Berkeley in the ‘70s said, we’ll take care of
any student who qualifies, who can pass our admission – it doesn’t
matter what their disability. There’s an amazing photograph of his iron
lung, 800 lbs. of it, hanging from a crane right outside his dorm room
window as they’re trying to get it inside. So I know Mark always had a
really felt beholden to Berkeley and felt a wonderful debt to that
college and that town. They opened up his life, he was kind of reborn in
his 30s in Berkeley.
Sex and love are central to Mark’s journey in this film, and it’s such a
fascinating terrain to explore – the relationship between disability
and sexuality, and sexuality and manhood, and what they all might have
meant to him.
I can’t exactly speak in exact detail to his innermost thought, but he
was quite effusive in his writings. In Jessica Yu’s film there is a
brief mention of his surrogate time. Bill Macy’s made the point that he
worked with a group, and disabled people, like able-bodied people, want
to be independent as much as possible and live their lives that way, and
they also want to love and be loved. Those are commonalities among
people everywhere, and certainly disabled people are no exception. I
think that Mark mainly was interested in sex because he was more largely
interested in love and in a relationship with someone, and I think that
he felt that if he ever met someone he could love, that he would want
to have explored his possibilities, sexually. So that’s where the
surrogate comes in.
The minute that the first screening here ended, folks were buzzing about
next year's Oscars.
It’s a little early! [Laughs] It’s a lot early. I mean, there may be
twenty more amazing films that come out in the next year. I hope so! So
who knows? It’s way too early and it doesn’t exactly make me nervous, I
just turn a deaf ear to it because low expectations have always been the
key to happiness for me. I don’t want to expect things to happen as
much as hope, and if those Oscar predictions come true, fantastic –
because it will bring more people to this film.
After the success of Winter’s Bone, perhaps, how much did things change
for you? Has the way that you’ve chosen projects in the last few years
evolved at all?
No, though I’ve certainly been afforded the opportunity to choose what I
might be a part of. It’s not like every director in every movie is
seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I’m not suited
for, a lot of things I’m not interested in, and a lot of things that
directors wouldn’t be interested in me for.
What are you interested in?
I’m interested in amazing stories told by talented people, and to get to
play a terrific role. The three things I try to find are story, parts,
people.
Has it gotten easier to find the great characters?
You know, I think it maybe is. It’s certainly changed for me because
when I first got to Los Angeles 20 years ago, I had worked a lot of my
life and was still working regular jobs. Acting was more fun to me, and
paid better when I could get the gigs, so in order to avoid any further
carpentry and restaurant work and things I’d been doing for many years, I
just took whatever came my way. I was happy to be able to pay rent and
eat. Certainly I’m freer now; I don’t get to do everything I want to do,
but I no longer have to do things I don’t want to do - so that’s good.
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
en
Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed
hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of
subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the
life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien.
Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by
indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a
physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs
due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a
hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive
standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for
next year’s Academy Awards.
Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to
discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so
powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking
out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s
Bone.
I grew up close to Berkeley and was a little familiar with Mark O’Brien
before seeing the film, but it captured that sense of place for me –
especially with little touches like Pink Man to set the atmosphere.
Yes, of course! That’s good, because we shot in Los Angeles because we
couldn’t afford to shoot up there. We had to make our own Pink Man and
everything. [Laughs] Luckily there are a couple of Victorian streets in
Los Angeles that we were able to utilize.
How familiar were you with O’Brien’s story beforehand?
I was minutely aware of Mark because I had heard of Jessica Yu’s
amazing, Academy Award-winning short doc about Mark, called Breathing
Lessons. I’d just vaguely kind of remembered that, and I may have seen
an article about him at that time, but it was a new kind of story to me
when I picked up the script and read it. I was pretty taken with the
script itself, by Ben Lewin, and knowing he was going to direct the film
which is often a wonderful thing – it’s the person who wrote the
script, directing the movie. I just thought he was an extraordinarily
interesting man, a polio survivor himself and very uniquely qualified to
tell the story.
When the project came to you – a very challenging role, to say the least
- what made you decide you had to do it?
My first question to Ben, as we sat down to meet before he’d offered the
role and before I’d accepted the role, was ‘Why not a disabled actor?’
And he assured me that he had taken the last couple of years, he’d put
out feelers to disabled groups, and had auditioned several people – a
couple of them are in the film – and just felt like he hadn’t found his
Mark. So with that huge question answered, I talked to Ben a lot about
how he saw the film as a whole, how he saw the character of Mark; I had
my ideas, we chatted and seemed to get along really well, so it was a
good fit. We went forward from there. And this is a very small project.
Ben raised the money by appealing to friends, basically, and so this
tiny little script suddenly attracting William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, and a
bunch of other wonderful actors – it’s vindicating to read something
and think, ‘This is really good!’ And then you realize other people
think so too. I’m not insane, it is a great script!
How challenging was the shoot itself, physically?
It was very challenging – again, a minute amount of the challenge that a
disabled person faces, moment to moment, but certainly it was
physically challenging. I helped invent a device that we used to curve
Mark’s spine, basically a large piece of foam that we nicknamed ‘The
Torture Ball’ because it would lay under the left side of my body and
curve my spine for every shot in the movie. Sometimes I’d have to lay on
that for an hour at a time, and it was hard – it apparently displaced
my organs. [Laughs] My chiropractor told me that my organs were
migrating and to hopefully finish the movie soon. I have minor health
issues that may relate to laying on that thing, but nothing compared to
what many people suffer daily, and it’s a small price to pay for what’s
turned out to be a really beautiful film.
To paraphrase Mark himself in the film, it may have hurt – but it was
worth it?
Yes! Definitely.
It’s an interesting choice that Ben made to present Mark’s story here
not as a straight biopic but with a focus on his relationship with his
sex surrogate. What do you think that shifted angle brings, as opposed
to a more conventional portrayal?
Interesting. I think Ben originally had seen the movie as a biopic and
then began to realize that the part of Mark’s life that interested him
the most was his quest to learn his sexual possibilities as a disabled
man. I think it’s a really wise choice; biopics are interesting, but I’d
rather see a documentary of a person’s whole life, and I’d much rather
see a narrative feature focused on a small piece of their life. And if
you can focus on a small piece of someone’s life and tell it well
enough, I think it informs the whole of their life. And there’s a real
interesting story there – there’s a relationship that develops,
certainly heightened in our film, but with the blessing of the real
surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Green, to heighten and complicate their
relationship a bit and to make it a love story of sorts. The subject
matter, as you describe it, doesn’t have wide appeal but I think it has
so much humor and so much truth, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Mark’s voice really comes through – the same painfully honest, witty
spirit you can see in his writings.
It was important to me to fight self-pity at every turn, and for the
film as a whole to fight sentiment as much as possible.
He certainly never wanted people to feel sorry for him.
No! The idea that he was a courageous person and stuff, he thought was
bullshit. Like, how do you presume to know what I feel, what I go
through? I think through his articles he was very interested in the
political and social aspects of his disability. One thing that’s
striking about Jessica Yu’s film, and I believe I also read something
Mark wrote about it, is that to the taxpayer – to those of us who help
support disabled people by paying taxes – it was half or maybe one-third
of the cost of him being in an institution and live on his own, to pay
rent, to hire attendance, way less of a strain on the taxpayer than
keeping him an institution, where he was sadly stuck for a few years of
his life when his parents were too old to take care of him. Luckily, the
University of California, Berkeley in the ‘70s said, we’ll take care of
any student who qualifies, who can pass our admission – it doesn’t
matter what their disability. There’s an amazing photograph of his iron
lung, 800 lbs. of it, hanging from a crane right outside his dorm room
window as they’re trying to get it inside. So I know Mark always had a
really felt beholden to Berkeley and felt a wonderful debt to that
college and that town. They opened up his life, he was kind of reborn in
his 30s in Berkeley.
Sex and love are central to Mark’s journey in this film, and it’s such a
fascinating terrain to explore – the relationship between disability
and sexuality, and sexuality and manhood, and what they all might have
meant to him.
I can’t exactly speak in exact detail to his innermost thought, but he
was quite effusive in his writings. In Jessica Yu’s film there is a
brief mention of his surrogate time. Bill Macy’s made the point that he
worked with a group, and disabled people, like able-bodied people, want
to be independent as much as possible and live their lives that way, and
they also want to love and be loved. Those are commonalities among
people everywhere, and certainly disabled people are no exception. I
think that Mark mainly was interested in sex because he was more largely
interested in love and in a relationship with someone, and I think that
he felt that if he ever met someone he could love, that he would want
to have explored his possibilities, sexually. So that’s where the
surrogate comes in.
The minute that the first screening here ended, folks were buzzing about
next year's Oscars.
It’s a little early! [Laughs] It’s a lot early. I mean, there may be
twenty more amazing films that come out in the next year. I hope so! So
who knows? It’s way too early and it doesn’t exactly make me nervous, I
just turn a deaf ear to it because low expectations have always been the
key to happiness for me. I don’t want to expect things to happen as
much as hope, and if those Oscar predictions come true, fantastic –
because it will bring more people to this film.
After the success of Winter’s Bone, perhaps, how much did things change
for you? Has the way that you’ve chosen projects in the last few years
evolved at all?
No, though I’ve certainly been afforded the opportunity to choose what I
might be a part of. It’s not like every director in every movie is
seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I’m not suited
for, a lot of things I’m not interested in, and a lot of things that
directors wouldn’t be interested in me for.
What are you interested in?
I’m interested in amazing stories told by talented people, and to get to
play a terrific role. The three things I try to find are story, parts,
people.
Has it gotten easier to find the great characters?
You know, I think it maybe is. It’s certainly changed for me because
when I first got to Los Angeles 20 years ago, I had worked a lot of my
life and was still working regular jobs. Acting was more fun to me, and
paid better when I could get the gigs, so in order to avoid any further
carpentry and restaurant work and things I’d been doing for many years, I
just took whatever came my way. I was happy to be able to pay rent and
eat. Certainly I’m freer now; I don’t get to do everything I want to do,
but I no longer have to do things I don’t want to do - so that’s good.
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
en
Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed
hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of
subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the
life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien.
Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by
indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a
physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs
due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a
hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive
standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for
next year’s Academy Awards.
Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to
discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so
powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking
out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s
Bone.
I grew up close to Berkeley and was a little familiar with Mark O’Brien
before seeing the film, but it captured that sense of place for me –
especially with little touches like Pink Man to set the atmosphere.
Yes, of course! That’s good, because we shot in Los Angeles because we
couldn’t afford to shoot up there. We had to make our own Pink Man and
everything. [Laughs] Luckily there are a couple of Victorian streets in
Los Angeles that we were able to utilize.
How familiar were you with O’Brien’s story beforehand?
I was minutely aware of Mark because I had heard of Jessica Yu’s
amazing, Academy Award-winning short doc about Mark, called Breathing
Lessons. I’d just vaguely kind of remembered that, and I may have seen
an article about him at that time, but it was a new kind of story to me
when I picked up the script and read it. I was pretty taken with the
script itself, by Ben Lewin, and knowing he was going to direct the film
which is often a wonderful thing – it’s the person who wrote the
script, directing the movie. I just thought he was an extraordinarily
interesting man, a polio survivor himself and very uniquely qualified to
tell the story.
When the project came to you – a very challenging role, to say the least
- what made you decide you had to do it?
My first question to Ben, as we sat down to meet before he’d offered the
role and before I’d accepted the role, was ‘Why not a disabled actor?’
And he assured me that he had taken the last couple of years, he’d put
out feelers to disabled groups, and had auditioned several people – a
couple of them are in the film – and just felt like he hadn’t found his
Mark. So with that huge question answered, I talked to Ben a lot about
how he saw the film as a whole, how he saw the character of Mark; I had
my ideas, we chatted and seemed to get along really well, so it was a
good fit. We went forward from there. And this is a very small project.
Ben raised the money by appealing to friends, basically, and so this
tiny little script suddenly attracting William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, and a
bunch of other wonderful actors – it’s vindicating to read something
and think, ‘This is really good!’ And then you realize other people
think so too. I’m not insane, it is a great script!
How challenging was the shoot itself, physically?
It was very challenging – again, a minute amount of the challenge that a
disabled person faces, moment to moment, but certainly it was
physically challenging. I helped invent a device that we used to curve
Mark’s spine, basically a large piece of foam that we nicknamed ‘The
Torture Ball’ because it would lay under the left side of my body and
curve my spine for every shot in the movie. Sometimes I’d have to lay on
that for an hour at a time, and it was hard – it apparently displaced
my organs. [Laughs] My chiropractor told me that my organs were
migrating and to hopefully finish the movie soon. I have minor health
issues that may relate to laying on that thing, but nothing compared to
what many people suffer daily, and it’s a small price to pay for what’s
turned out to be a really beautiful film.
To paraphrase Mark himself in the film, it may have hurt – but it was
worth it?
Yes! Definitely.
It’s an interesting choice that Ben made to present Mark’s story here
not as a straight biopic but with a focus on his relationship with his
sex surrogate. What do you think that shifted angle brings, as opposed
to a more conventional portrayal?
Interesting. I think Ben originally had seen the movie as a biopic and
then began to realize that the part of Mark’s life that interested him
the most was his quest to learn his sexual possibilities as a disabled
man. I think it’s a really wise choice; biopics are interesting, but I’d
rather see a documentary of a person’s whole life, and I’d much rather
see a narrative feature focused on a small piece of their life. And if
you can focus on a small piece of someone’s life and tell it well
enough, I think it informs the whole of their life. And there’s a real
interesting story there – there’s a relationship that develops,
certainly heightened in our film, but with the blessing of the real
surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Green, to heighten and complicate their
relationship a bit and to make it a love story of sorts. The subject
matter, as you describe it, doesn’t have wide appeal but I think it has
so much humor and so much truth, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Mark’s voice really comes through – the same painfully honest, witty
spirit you can see in his writings.
It was important to me to fight self-pity at every turn, and for the
film as a whole to fight sentiment as much as possible.
He certainly never wanted people to feel sorry for him.
No! The idea that he was a courageous person and stuff, he thought was
bullshit. Like, how do you presume to know what I feel, what I go
through? I think through his articles he was very interested in the
political and social aspects of his disability. One thing that’s
striking about Jessica Yu’s film, and I believe I also read something
Mark wrote about it, is that to the taxpayer – to those of us who help
support disabled people by paying taxes – it was half or maybe one-third
of the cost of him being in an institution and live on his own, to pay
rent, to hire attendance, way less of a strain on the taxpayer than
keeping him an institution, where he was sadly stuck for a few years of
his life when his parents were too old to take care of him. Luckily, the
University of California, Berkeley in the ‘70s said, we’ll take care of
any student who qualifies, who can pass our admission – it doesn’t
matter what their disability. There’s an amazing photograph of his iron
lung, 800 lbs. of it, hanging from a crane right outside his dorm room
window as they’re trying to get it inside. So I know Mark always had a
really felt beholden to Berkeley and felt a wonderful debt to that
college and that town. They opened up his life, he was kind of reborn in
his 30s in Berkeley.
Sex and love are central to Mark’s journey in this film, and it’s such a
fascinating terrain to explore – the relationship between disability
and sexuality, and sexuality and manhood, and what they all might have
meant to him.
I can’t exactly speak in exact detail to his innermost thought, but he
was quite effusive in his writings. In Jessica Yu’s film there is a
brief mention of his surrogate time. Bill Macy’s made the point that he
worked with a group, and disabled people, like able-bodied people, want
to be independent as much as possible and live their lives that way, and
they also want to love and be loved. Those are commonalities among
people everywhere, and certainly disabled people are no exception. I
think that Mark mainly was interested in sex because he was more largely
interested in love and in a relationship with someone, and I think that
he felt that if he ever met someone he could love, that he would want
to have explored his possibilities, sexually. So that’s where the
surrogate comes in.
The minute that the first screening here ended, folks were buzzing about
next year's Oscars.
It’s a little early! [Laughs] It’s a lot early. I mean, there may be
twenty more amazing films that come out in the next year. I hope so! So
who knows? It’s way too early and it doesn’t exactly make me nervous, I
just turn a deaf ear to it because low expectations have always been the
key to happiness for me. I don’t want to expect things to happen as
much as hope, and if those Oscar predictions come true, fantastic –
because it will bring more people to this film.
After the success of Winter’s Bone, perhaps, how much did things change
for you? Has the way that you’ve chosen projects in the last few years
evolved at all?
No, though I’ve certainly been afforded the opportunity to choose what I
might be a part of. It’s not like every director in every movie is
seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I’m not suited
for, a lot of things I’m not interested in, and a lot of things that
directors wouldn’t be interested in me for.
What are you interested in?
I’m interested in amazing stories told by talented people, and to get to
play a terrific role. The three things I try to find are story, parts,
people.
Has it gotten easier to find the great characters?
You know, I think it maybe is. It’s certainly changed for me because
when I first got to Los Angeles 20 years ago, I had worked a lot of my
life and was still working regular jobs. Acting was more fun to me, and
paid better when I could get the gigs, so in order to avoid any further
carpentry and restaurant work and things I’d been doing for many years, I
just took whatever came my way. I was happy to be able to pay rent and
eat. Certainly I’m freer now; I don’t get to do everything I want to do,
but I no longer have to do things I don’t want to do - so that’s good.
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral
