FOXCATCHER

Wrestling with sibling rivalry, class war and bloody tragedy, Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher is as brutal and bizarre as true tales get. We pins director and cast to the canvas to find out more…

New York, 2006. An orderly queue forms in a small video store, autograph-hunters waiting for Bennett Miller. Hot off an Academy Award nomination for directing Capote, Miller is making a personal appearance, signing copies of the newly-released DVD of his 1998 breakthrough documentary The Cruise. One of those patiently waiting was Tom Heller, a would-be producer looking to make a connection. “He said, ‘I have the rights to a story that you’re going to want to make’ and left an envelope on the table,” recalls Miller, as he settles down with us for a natter.

“I didn’t want to talk to him about it – it was weird.” Nevertheless, he packed up the envelope stuffed full of press clippings and took it home. Months later, he came across it while he was cleaning up.

Inside were the seeds of a near-perfect movie – the tale of wrestling champion brothers Mark and Dave Schultz, an eccentric millionaire John E. du Pont and a shocking murder. “I read the first article and almost immediately thought, ‘This is something I’m going to do,’” admits Miller. Calling up Heller, who owned the life-rights to Mark Schultz and his unpublished autobiography, he began to negotiate.

Eight long years later, the result is Foxcatcher, a sublime, stately drama that looks destined to be a major Oscar contender. Ever since it bowed in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won Miller the gong for Best Director, the Academy buzz has been building around the Hollywood hive for a story that scratches under the skin of the American Dream to find a weeping sore. “It seemed like one of those stories that had secrets,” says the 47 year-old director. “Everybody [involved] was uncomfortable with some part of the story.”

While Miller interrupted his research to make 2011’s baseball-themed Moneyball, he couldn’t let go of a story that sees du Pont entice Mark Schultz to head up a wrestling team destined for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. “The details within it seemed so metaphorical,” he says, as if this true story read like the Great American Novel. A gold-medal winning tale of blue-collar versus blue-blood, “these two groups trying to belong in each other’s worlds…it’s almost too perfect,” he adds. “There’s no effort [needed] to put a neon arrow pointing at it. It’s just there! Any angle you look at the story, it’s like a diamond.”

At its heart is the enigmatic, patriotic figure of du Pont – an ornithologist, philatelist and heir to one of America’s richest families. He was also a sports lover who set out to form Team Foxcatcher. named after the stud farm his late father ran on their 800-acre Pennsylvania estate, du Pont took it upon himself to coach his wrestlers to Olympic glory. “I think he really had the need to be mentor,” says Steve Carell, who plays du Pont. “To be a mentor, to be a friend, to be a father figure. He wanted all of that from everyone, but especially Mark, because Mark was a world champion.”

Back in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Mark won gold, sandwiched between three NCAA titles and two World Championships. But he was always in the shadow of his older brother Dave, who also won gold – for freestyle wrestling – at the ’84 Olympics. “All of those titles, in some way, shape or form, were credited to Dave, because he was Dave’s little brother,” says Channing Tatum, who co-stars as Mark. “That’s the real truth. Mark will tell you that. Dave’s family will tell you that. And du Pont came along at this moment and just shined a light on Mark.”

All of which makes Foxcatcher sound like just the sort of fist-pumping, triumph-against-the-odds drama that Hollywood loves. Except that the truth is never quite as simple as a studio pitch. Setting up an amateur training facility at the Foxcatcher estate, du Pont becomes desperate for Dave (played by Mark Ruffalo) to join the team too, luring him in the only way he knows how: money. “There was something hollow to it all,” says Carell.

“Ultimately, all of these people he tried to garner respect from were people that he’d paid for. He couldn’t earn it naturally, as could someone like Dave Schultz.”

As his behaviour becomes increasingly unhinged, unstable and controlling against these working-class siblings, the privileged du Pont is gradually shown up to be a “poser”, as Miller puts it, acting out “a desperate and sad charade”, seemingly in the hope of winning favour from his haughty mother (Vanessa Redgrave) who’s rarely-seen presence haunts the Foxcatcher estate.

“I think that’s the bigger thing,” says Miller. “He’s a pretender. And everything he had is bestowed on him by coincidence. His great ancestors made a fortune and had a name and he inherited that and that’s all he had.”

Yet nobody could’ve predicted what followed, as du Pont’s relationship with the Schultz brothers imploded in the most tragic of ways. Unsurprisingly, the Foxcatcher shoot reflected the sombre outcome.

“It was a quiet set,” acknowledges the 34-year-old Tatum. “It wasn’t one of these sets like Magic Mike where we’re all having fun. There was no laughing.”

Which might seem strange given the presence of Steve Carell, but The Office star was about as far removed from Michael Scott and Dunder Miflin as he’s ever been. Even if he does spend the entire film behind a false nose.

Slapping on the prosthetics to emulate du Pont’s oversized protrusion, Carell explains they spent months before the shoot doing camera and lighting tests to see what would work before he wore it for real.

“It never felt like an appendage,” he nods. “After doing it for several days, it didn’t feel like anything at all.” While he also studied archive footage, “I wasn’t trying to do an impersonation of du Pont,” he stresses, “but more garner an essence of the type of person he seemed to be physically. It was probably most helpful in the dynamic we created on set.”

Going deeper into a role than he’d ever gone before, Carell’s appearance even began to scare the crew. “The craft service and catering people didn’t want to be around me – it was a very unique experience that way!” Even Tatum stayed away.

“Carell and I gave each other distance,” he says. “It wasn’t in a pretentious Method way, it was just this unspoken thing that just happened.

We didn’t talk about it.” But were they ‘in character’ when the cameras stopped rolling? Tatum nods. “All of us kind of were.”

So much so, he can barely recall shooting the scene where he’s naked on set. “I don’t even remember really. In those scenes, I wasn’t really thinking of that.” Seemingly, the melancholic atmosphere and the fact that many of the real-life protagonists – those with connections to the Schultz brothers – were on set left him distracted. “It always had weight, it always mattered. We weren’t making a movie for the movie industry… All of it mattered. I don’t know how to explain it. That’s why I don’t really remember walking through set naked.”

He does, however, recall the stinging scene where du Pont slaps Mark in front of his fellow wrestlers. “I got slapped about 20 times! I still owe Steve a lot for that!” he grins. “When you’re in that kind of a part, at that moment, you can’t think of yourself. If somebody slapped me, I’d freak out.

But Mark, I don’t know if he would. He could destroy du Pont with one single fell swoop of the hand, and for him to just swallow it, in the way he did, ultimately… That’s the real mark of what he does.”

Thwacking Tatum was about as physical as Carell needed to get to play his man. “The guys who worked with du Pont, they said he was an absolutely terrible wrestler and really had very little acumen in terms of the sport.” Thankfully, for the 52-year-old Carell, he didn’t need to join Tatum and Ruffalo on the mat. “It was, ‘The less you know the better.’” His co-stars, meanwhile, trained twice a day – two hours in the morning, four in the evening – for months leading up to the shoot.

If there’s humour in Foxcatcher, it’s of the jet-black sort. Like the fact that this physicallyweak phony nicknamed himself ‘Eagle’. “It’s a fact!” cries Miller. “He signed all his letters ‘Eagle’. On his jacket it says ‘John ‘Eagle’ du Pont – head coach’. And his trophies would say ‘John ‘Eagle’ du Pont ’. And he’s got a beak! None of it is made up.” Consider that the Eagle is the symbol of America, and it becomes clear just why Miller feels this story is ripe with allegory – a rich expression of power, class and status.

Curiously, the one thing that no one quite agrees on is whether there was a homoerotic undercurrent between Mark Schultz and John E. du Pont. “Quite possibly,” offers Miller. “No, not at all,” states Tatum. “Er, you know, that is certainly open to interpretation,” fudges Carell.

Perhaps, wisely, they don’t want to ascribe another controversial layer to an already emotionally charged story.

Whatever the truth, its clear Foxcatcher is set to be this winter’s water-cooler movie, not least for the transformative performances by its leads. Not that Carell is countenancing any awards chatter just yet. “The fact it seems to be warmly received, generally speaking, that’s great. And I’m extremely happy for Bennett – he’s so deserving. But I think it’s a slippery slope to discuss.” Still, for a film that began life in an envelope, it’d be fitting if its name  was pulled out of one on Oscar night. TF