STACK NZ Jun #63

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with BENNETT MILLER .

B ennett Miller first came across the story in a newspaper article. “The circumstances seemed comical and absurd, but the outcome was horrible and real,” he says. “The deeply strange things that happened on the du Pont estate were unlike anything I had personally experienced, and yet they felt familiar. There was something about the story – or perhaps something beneath the story – that wasn’t strange at all. In fact, the opposite.” To bring this true-life tale to the screen, Miller embarked on extensive research into the case, a process that took a number of years and went beyond simply determining the plot. “I needed to learn what hadn’t been known about the story and that takes time,” he says. “My first undertaking was authoring and engineering the moments and sequencing what would become the film – a process that allowed the film to continue to reveal itself all the way through to the last detail in post-production.” Miller also conducted interviews with those directly involved, including Mark Schultz and his fellow wrestlers, Nancy Schultz, employees of du Pont, and the police officers assigned to the case. “This story harbours some uncomfortable truths,” he says. “Everyone I spoke with seemed to be guarding some aspect of what happened.” It then fell to screenwriters E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman to sort the fact from the fiction and build a complex, character-focused narrative. “Making a film like this, which is not a predetermined, connect-the-dots kind of project, requires a leap of faith on the part of the producers and actors,” Miller explains. “It’s almost like going into a documentary, where you don’t know exactly what form it will take when it’s finished. The only way for the film to become what it needs to become is to go into it with a question mark.” Undoubtedly the most fascinating player in the Foxcatcher saga is John du Pont, the fiercely patriotic “ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist”, coach and benefactor to the US Olympic wrestling team through the establishment of the Foxcatcher training

This story harbours some uncomfortable truths. Everyone I spoke with seemed to be guarding some aspect of what happened.

• Foxcatcher is out on June 3

facility and his generous financial contributions to the sport. “He was highly competitive and yearned for respect,” notes Steve Carell, whose disquieting portrayal of du Pont in the film was rewarded with an Oscar nomination. “I think he wanted people to look up to him in the way they looked up to Dave Schultz. He wanted to be one of the

guys yet still be held in a somewhat higher regard than others. Ultimately he was unable to earn that kind of esteem and admiration.

“I don’t see him as a monster,” he continues. “He’s someone who was suffering from mental illness and did something terrible. He was a very sad, damaged human being.”

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