"Foxcatcher" is at its most captivating when you look at the individual performances by a remarkable ensemble of actors. The interplay between the leads is both the core of the story and the real heart of the film's success.
With a breakthrough lead performance of sorts by Steve Carell as John du Pont, there's also room to praise another terrific turn by Channing Tatum as Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz and a subtle, easily underappreciated performance by Mark Ruffalo as his brother David.
In a slightly subdued mood in keeping with the film's tone, the three spoke to us at the Toronto Film Festival to discuss their participation in this remarkable film.
Moviefone Canada: Much of the actual motivation for what happens in the film takes takes place behind closed doors. Could you talk about the challenges of bringing these roles to the screen when so much that is truly going on is left unsaid?
Steve Carell: I think it's anybody's best guess. All we could do was learn as much as we could about the participants and story and the relationships, and then it's our best estimation as to what happened and what was going on. It's a fictionalized account of a true story, so you do your best in finding the truth within it, or something that feels truthful.
And you're right, there's no way to eavesdrop on these closed door interactions between people, but again, it's just our best estimation.
Channing, there's a scene where you're eavesdropping as they have a confrontation behind a window. It's one of the most remarkable scenes in the film. What are you guys as performers doing behind that window, and what are you as a performer recognizing in that scene?
Channing Tatum: Mark [Schultz] is just a wildly emotional person. His exact words to me were: "[He] wanted to hurt everyone in such a way that he would never be beaten."
I think that's probably his biggest fear, to be hurt, so he put up walls. When he let someone in, that's just a very fragile thing. Bringing Dave there [to du Pont's Foxcatcher compound] was one of the biggest slaps in the face he could probably ever have done to Mark. To try to put words on it, though, it's way more complicated than that, so it's hard to really explain all the nuances of it, because it's really what's going on underneath everything. It's not actually what's sitting on top.
Mark Ruffalo: That scene was a long time coming. It's a complication, obviously. [Turning to the other actors] Did we even shoot it on the other side of the door?
SC: I don't think so.
MR: [Director] Bennett [Miller] always knew he wanted to play it the way it played. Basically, it's saying that we'll play along with the coach and all of that stuff, but there's a point where you don't go and this is that place.
Was the argument scripted?
MR: No, but we improvised it and there was a lot of talk about what that moment was, and whether we should hear it or if it should just be implied. From everyone's account, there was that moment where Dave held wrestling in a very sacred place and he'd go along with this pretense to a degree. When it came to Mark, that was it, and that was the moment.
So when he went to apologize, when John du Pont doesn't show up at the finals and he goes to talk and he says, hey, I had a hard moment there, Dave knows that it was a hard moment between the two of them and it had crossed over to a place they'd never really gone to.
What was the worrisome about playing this character?
CT: Bennett keeps such a tension or a quietness. There's no laughing on set. The grips, the camera crew, everyone takes it very seriously, and he holds that energy. To be there for that long a time is hard to do, it's almost like a meditation if you will. I think that Mark Schultz, Bennett, and du Pont are just these black holes of energy in a way, they're just constantly inside, in pain and struggle.
Dave Schultz, the character played by Mark, is just trying to bring everyone up and out of that. I talked to Mark, explaining I didn't really realize that until we were at Telluride and we didn't have Mark [Ruffalo] there, he didn't get to come, and I just realized how much we missed him.
SC: He's a bright light.
CT: Yeah, truly. Seriously, I know it sounds corny but...
MR: It just looks bright because the rest is really dark. Everywhere else is really dark.
CT: Yeah, but seven months of wrestling practice and just going into that gym every single day, and I don't think there's that many people I would have kept doing that with. The literal beating of your head into the wall, it just makes you insane. He made it tolerable, and everybody showed up.
If it feels serious, it was. We had to look these people in the face that were really there on the farm and that really knew Dave and du Pont. I actually got to look my character right in the eyes and have to know that his life is going to go on after this film and I have to stand by it. I have to stand by him and everything that he's told me and shared with me in confidence and it matters.
How much did this role resonate with you on a personal level, considering that you wrestled when you were young?
MR: I was a wrestler in high school and it was a big part of my life, and I think I learned a lot about life, adversity, overcoming adversity and being alone. It was hard as a kid, but I learned a lot and got a lot of discipline from it. I also understood what the life of a wrestler was like, and how lonely it was and constant. The season never stops. It's all year long. I remember never really being able to eat turkey at Thanksgiving because there was a match a couple of days later.
So from 13 to 17, to live like that, it was heavy. It was intense, as a kid. And those guys lived like that their whole lives, so I understood what it was to be a wrestler and that helped me and I also felt like. I'd never seen a wrestling movie that had caught the real nature of it and so the wrestling was very appealing to me. And I knew, theoretically speaking, that I could do it, until I actually got in a room and started doing it, and the fantasy of myself quickly got beaten back by the reality of myself.
CT: I also have to say that he had to relearn everything because Dave was switch-handed from Mark, so he had to literally do everything backwards.
MR: Yeah, I was a righty and he was a lefty, so that was frustrating.
I take it the training was pretty hard then?
MR: Oh, it was so hard.
CT: I never want to do it again. Ever. I've done a lot of sports movies, I've done a lot of martial arts as well, and this was...
MR: He's a very quick study. First of all, he's an amazing athlete and a very quick study, and so I was following him the whole time.
There are reports that you'd lose a ton of weight super quickly.
CT: After lunch, we were just like, let's see how much we can lose and I think ... how much did you lose?
MR: I lost 10 pounds.
CT: Yeah, I think I was around 9 - 10 pounds in two hours.
SC: I gained 10.
Did you sit in a lawn chair and eat burgers in front of them?
SC: No, I was just off in a corner somewhere.
MR: Being ignored. He would come and no one would talk to him. It was strange. Well, first of all, you'd say, "Hi, Steve!" and then you knew, OK, I'm going to run away now, I don't know what to say to that person.
There's an amazingly animalistic way you carry yourselves physically in this film.
CT: I was thinking of Mark. I got to really study him, the actual him. Literally, that's how he actually grabs his fork [mimes an ape-like grip]. It doesn't look refined or taught or proper or anything. He just gets it done, so I got to really just study Mark. I wish I could say I'd created any of that, but it was just more me mimicking him.
MR: Yeah, me too. I just mimicked Dave as much as I could. They called him Tyrannosaurus Rex because of the way he held his hands. You just don't imagine one of the great wrestlers standing like that, but that's who he was.
Steve, do you play a villainous role differently than you do a comedic one?
SC: I [think] of them as flawed human beings, which is interesting. I thought it was a great script and working with these guys and Bennett was a draw.
You have described the experience as painful and masochistic.
SC: I'll be honest. The whole thing is almost a blur to me, from beginning to end. Once we got to Pittsburgh, the experience is a blur. I don't remember very much specifically about what the process was and what we were doing and what we talked about, or even how painful it was.
I felt like we were all immersed in something and then after a few months, we all came out, and I got to hang out with these guys when we started doing press. Until then, there was a tone, there was definitely a weight that was hanging over the entire experience. It's really hard for me to recall.
Is that feeling of heaviness and blurriness unique to this project?
SC: It is. For me, I don't remember having that experience before. It was exhilarating too.
You all were working with real human stories. How much room does it leave for creation and what's the balance between creation and recreation?
MR: I think there's a lot of room for creation still. Oddly enough, real life is so much more nuanced and surprising than what I can imagine. And I'm always surprised by playing a real person. It's kind of like having a framework.
It's like jazz or something. A jazz piece will start with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and go all the way to all different areas and still be highly creative, but you're working within a structure that gives you an ability to riff all over the place. I think that's what it was like working on this. Steve calls it a Greek tragedy, and Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to their original essence but completely remade. That's how this feels. There's a true story, but it's lifted up into the eternal, the universal.
SC: That's a fantastic answer.
CT: Yeah, I was going to jump in and then I was like ... I'm not jumping in there.
"Foxcatcher" opens in theatres on November 28.
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