This week, the Hollywood Reporter launched a new interview with the actress Shelley Duvall. To say “a rare interview” is a massive understatement. Duvall practically disappeared from the public eye in the 1990s and remained so until Phil McGraw and his team of charlatans and opportunists subjected her to one of the more exploratory interviews in Dr. Phil story, and that is saying something.
In the THR article, Duvall was asked about his experience with manufacturing Stanley Kubrick The brightness. The treatment Kubrick gave Duvall during filming is a legend; it could be called abject cruelty, but it is usually referred to as “art”. When asked by writer Seth Abramovitch if she saw things that way, that he was exceptionally brutal with her, she replied: “He has this streak. He definitely has that. “
Since Tippi Hedren resisted physical injuries and psychological damage in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock while filming The birdsThe history of Hollywood is full of stories of male directors torturing their actresses, ostensibly with the aim of extracting from them the best possible performance, like an infected tooth. The way your actions are described softens over time, as words like “push” are used to describe what the director did, as if he took your hand and gently guided you to the role. But, in light of some recent stories, it is time to revisit what this “push” really looks like, and why we have long accepted that this is just what genius directors do, and their actresses should be grateful. After all, Hedren’s performance was praised. But it is Hitchcock who is most associated with the film. Your hands are on every element of your creations, including, without consent or desire, your actresses – and as such, they are yours.
This is known as “author theory”(As we understand today), when the directors have total control over their projects and, to that end, are seen as the beginning and end of the product. They are seen as wholly and uniquely responsible for – and, as a result, the only artist worthy of celebration – all aspects, from script to performance, visual style and more. His films are not a collaborative process, but the work of one man and many people who helped him to realize his vision. Thereby, many of the women around him are collateral damage, just in the way of this powerful and passionate art.
G / O Media can receive a commission
Watch the documentary behind the scenes by Vivian Kubrick, Making the shine, was always uncomfortable. Duvall’s fragility emanates from the canvas, his palpable anxiety and trauma, all discarded by the director while being encouraged. To keep it at that level, he warned those on the set: “Don’t sympathize with Shelley.” To get the best performance as Wendy Torrance, Kubrick seemed to believe that she should be treated like Wendy Torrance.
“Going through an excruciating work day after day. Almost unbearable ”, she told Roger Ebert in 1980. “Jack Nicholson’s character had to be crazy and angry all the time. And in my character I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day, for the last nine months in a row, five or six days a week. I stayed there for a year and a month, and there must be something about Primal Scream therapy, because after the day was over and I cried for my 12 hours, I came home very happy. It had a very calming effect. During the day, I would be absolutely unhappy. “
She was miserable. The doc shows her hair falling out, and she said later she was “in and out of health problems because the stress of the role was too great”.
What Duvall and so many other actresses in history experienced as normal would be a cause for concern these days (we hope). In that interview with Ebert, Duvall paused due to a twinge of pain – which she told Ebert she “only” received twice a week at that point – and told a story about shooting Terry Gilliam Time Bandits. “And the scene required six dwarfs to cross the roof of a medieval carriage, but the dwarves were a little afraid to jump off the scaffold, so Terry didn’t think, he just jumped and weighed 180 pounds and landed on my head. I could have been paralyzed. As it is, there is only a pain that goes through my ears and reaches my eyes and then goes away. I’m sure it can be fixed. “
She casually shares these stories, stopping to ask Ebert what he thinks about the tea she made, or the trees in her home. But, looking back on the knowledge we now have, of what would later become of Duvall, these stories are not casual. They are horrible.
This feeling was echoed by Anjelica Huston, Nicholson’s girlfriend at the time who was present while The brightness was being filmed. “I got the feeling, certainly from what Jack was saying at the time, that Shelley was having a hard time dealing with just the emotional content of the play,” said Huston THR. “And they didn’t seem to be that friendly. It seemed to be a little like the boys were coming together. That may have been completely my misinterpretation of the situation, but I just felt it. And when I saw her during those days, she usually looked a little bit tortured, shaken. I don’t think anyone was being particularly careful with her. ”
After all this, Duvall questioned whether it was worth it or not. “After I did The brightness, all that work, almost no one even criticized my performance on it, even to mention it, it seemed ”, she said to Ebert. “The reviews were all about Kubrick, like I wasn’t there.” It was Duvall who suffered, and it was Kubrick and Nicholson who received the acclaim. Author Stephen King, who detested Kubrick’s interpretation of his novel, described Duvall’s performance as “A screaming dish towel.”
Even now, it is quite easy to look at all this as “just as it was”. To define Hitchcock and Kubrick in this box as eccentric geniuses who were allowed to mistreat actresses while their work continues to be hailed to this day. But it is not relegated to the past. If the MeToo and Time’s Up Moves they taught us something, is that countless men in power have used that power to hurt women. Just this week, we received a severe reminder that this includes even modern men whose work has been hailed as “feminist” numerous times.
After several months of Justice League actor Ray Fisher alleging abuse of the director Joss Whedon (and others he says they are guilty) while working on that film, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Charisma Carpenter expressed his support for actor Cyborg. You may have noticed that she had her own story to tell. Using her social media accounts, she explained the abuse she says she received from Whedon on the sets of Buffy and Angel. In one case, Carpenter says she was invited to shoot at 1 am while she was pregnant, making her go through a physically demanding job and finally making her have Braxton Hicks contractions. Carpenter called this “retaliation”. Carpenter’s statement was echoed and supported by co-stars Amber Benson, Sarah Michelle Gellarand Michelle Trachtenberg, who was just 15 when she started Buffyand who wrote on Instagram that Whedon was you are not allowed to be alone with her, and that she was “submitted. For a lot. ”
Of course, Fisher’s experience tells us that Whedon’s treatment was not limited to women, and abusers are not just men, but very rarely does the author’s theory include women, for a number of reasons. Women are not given as many opportunities as your male peers, and “difficult women” are Hollywood outcasts, while difficult men are simply artists.
Whedon’s name and brand are present in every piece of every project he has done. It’s called Whedonverse, after all. And his name, his position, opened countless doors. It was delivered the Avengers movies and have chances to write scripts for Wonder Woman and Batgirl. He assumed Justice League by Zack Snyder, and it wasn’t just Fisher who said that his time with the director was not great. Gal Gadot told the LA Times, “I had my own experience with [Whedon], which was not the best, but I took care there and when it happened. I took it to the superiors and they took care of it. But I’m glad that Ray came up and told his truth. “
But, according to Benson, “Whedonverse” women are still healing after all these years. Fisher and Carpenter have been telling their stories for a long time, and while it’s great that we’re finally listening, why did it take so long? Well, probably because admitting that this individual is a problem is admitting that our favorite shows and movies are contaminated. But Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Avengers, and everything else Whedon did is bigger than him, as are the works of any other harmful individual who happens to be part of the art we like, even if it is a big part.
It’s time to let go of the idea that an iconic breeder is responsible for everything we love about a property he’s involved in. Because with so much power come individuals who will exercise it for evil.
Do you know where I first learned this? Joss Whedon.
To learn more, make sure to follow us on our Instagram @io9dotcom.