The NYT has an excellent article on BUG in their summer preview. It really is an excellent and important piece that you should read in its entirety. But, since this blog is about Michael Shannon I will focus on the parts that speak so eloquently about him.
IN William Friedkin’s new film, “Bug,” paranoia is an infection that spreads from one character to another and eventually in the general direction of the viewer. A lurid psychological thriller with an acute case of the jitters and a nasty sense of humor, it does not exactly seem like the work of a mellowed old-timer, let alone that of a Hollywood veteran who made his most popular films when Richard M. Nixon was president.
Even less likely is the inspiration that Mr. Friedkin, 71, credits with leading him to “Bug”: opera.
Since accepting an invitation in 1996 from the conductor Zubin Mehta to direct Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck” in Florence, Italy, Mr. Friedkin has embarked on a successful parallel career as an opera director. He has not had a box office hit in decades and remains best known for “The French Connection” (1971) and “The Exorcist” (1973), but he has recently worked on some of the opera world’s most prestigious stages, mounting productions at the Kennedy Center and the Bavarian State Opera.
“The operas made me realize that the quality of the original material is what counts,” Mr. Friedkin said in a recent telephone interview. “I had more fun, and I discovered more about myself and the creative process through ‘Salome’ and ‘Aida’ and ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ than with some of the films I’ve made. They helped me see the importance of that initial creative impulse. That’s how I knew I should do ‘Bug.’ ”
Mr. Friedkin caught “Bug” during its Off Broadway run in 2004 and found himself as gripped as its conspiracy-minded hero. He saw it again and called Mr. Letts to propose a movie adaptation.
Heeding Lionsgate’s request for name actors, Mr. Friedkin offered the role of Agnes to Ashley Judd, a box office draw for Ms. Lansing in the late ’90s with women-in-peril thrillers like “Double Jeopardy” and “Kiss the Girls.” But for the male lead — despite interest from bigger stars — he insisted on keeping Michael Shannon, the actor who originated the role in London and also performed it in Chicago and New York. “He was born to play that part,” Mr. Friedkin said.
Nice. The rest after the jump....
Technorati Tags: Ashley Judd, BUG, Friedkin, Michael Shannon, NYT
To Mr. Letts, who adapted his own play for the screen, Mr. Friedkin was a perfect fit. “Billy works from the gut,” he said. “He would be the first to tell you he doesn’t overintellectualize, and that helps with a piece like ‘Bug.’ With a lot of his work you also get the sense it’s not only about obsessive people, but there’s an obsessive person at the wheel.”
“Bug,” set to open May 25, defies the wisdom that a stage-to-screen transposition should simply “open up” the material. Although the film takes place almost entirely in a motel room (“I like that it’s claustrophobic,” Mr. Friedkin said), its spatial logic is anything but straightforward: it opens with a disorientingly wide aerial shot and creates an interplay between interior and exterior that underscores the protagonists’ us-against-the-world mentality.
“Even if it’s all in a tiny room you have to think cinematically,” Mr. Friedkin said. “You can’t just stick three cameras there and record the performances.”
The biggest challenge was modulating the hothouse hysteria of some of the monologues — in particular adapting Mr. Shannon’s performance for the camera. An experienced stage actor, Mr. Shannon, 33, has had small parts in “8 Mile” and “Bad Boys II” and a pivotal one as the patriotic marine in Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.” “Bug” is his first lead film role. Having rehearsed and performed it hundreds of times onstage was, he said, “helpful but also sometimes a liability.”
Mr. Friedkin insisted that Mr. Shannon rethink every aspect of his performance, from body language to psychological context. “I wanted to wake him up to experiencing each moment afresh,” Mr. Friedkin said. “I would have Ashley say different lines to him to provoke a spontaneous response.”
A great actors’ showcase, “Bug” is also a highly demanding workout for its stars, a race to the cliff’s edge and beyond. Mr. Shannon has now performed opposite three actresses. “You have to establish that trust every time,” he said. “It’s a tricky piece of writing. You have to do scary things, and you have to be vulnerable.”
Ms. Judd was required to match Mr. Shannon’s tirades with her own sustained crescendo. Her character’s triumphant epiphany — “I am the super mother bug!” — caused some alarm when she first read the script: “I was like, ‘You want me to say this?’ ” But there’s a sly ingenuity to these breathless rants: The crazier they become, the more seductive their logic. “It was only after we did the scene that I really grasped it,” she said.
Mr. Friedkin sees “Bug” as another iteration of one of his favorite themes: unstable identities. “Most of my films are about people with very few alternatives,” he said. “They’re mostly also people for whom there is a thin line between good and evil.”
That description applies equally to “Cruising” (1980), his most controversial film, due for rerelease in the fall by Warner Brothers. The murky story of a serial killer who focuses on gay men, it stars Al Pacino as a sexually confused cop who may be responsible for at least one of the murders. The film received negative reviews and was condemned by gay-rights advocates but has since undergone a reappraisal.
A restored print will have its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this month. (“Cruising” was trimmed by more than half an hour before its original release to secure an R rating. Mr. Friedkin had hoped to reinstate those cuts, but the excised footage is apparently long lost.)
“I had the support of the guys in the S&M and leather bars where we shot,” he said. The objections came from other sectors of the gay population who picketed the West Village shoot. “It was like Sunnis and Shiites,” he said. “We had people throwing rocks at us, and the guys who worked at the bar were throwing rocks back at them. Mayor Koch had mounted policemen protecting the set.”
In his book “The Celluloid Closet” Vito Russo called “Cruising” “deeply homophobic on the conceptual level.” Coming just a decade after the Stonewall uprising, it was perceived as a negative portrait of a subculture, a film that equated homosexual urges with homicidal ones. But the movie’s few early defenders, who have since grown in number, point to its fluid view of sexuality, denunciation of police brutality and provocative ambiguity. (Like “Zodiac” it’s a serial killer movie without a solution.)
The release of “Bug” and the rehabilitation of “Cruising” should end Mr. Friedkin’s long dry spell, which is generally chalked up to poor choices and karmic payback for his youthful hubris. The designated bad boy of the 1970s New Hollywood and a champion tantrum thrower in his day, he now has the calm, commanding air of an elder statesman. Still an avid cinephile (he loves Michael Haneke and Asian genre films), he’s quietly confident about “Bug,” which he sees as a return to relevance. “There’s something in the air in this piece, a tension that’s very contemporary,” he said.
Mr. Letts wrote “Bug” in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. These days the idea of contagious paranoia assumes a different context: “Bug” was playing in Chicago on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Letts was reluctant to comment on the political subtext. “What was true in terms of the politics of the piece is even more true now,” he said. “That’s all I want to say.”
Mr. Shannon said his reading of “Bug” had grown less political and more personal. “I’ve realized the story isn’t really about paranoia,” he said. “As I got older it became simpler and more transparent. For me it’s about how intimate two people can get without destroying each other.”
A love story, in other words. “If you interpret it that way, it isn’t sensationalistic at all,” he added. “It’s quite beautiful.”
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