David Cronenberg, Michael Fassbender, Christopher Hampton, and Jeremy Thomas on A Dangerous Method

oh please please welcome the producer Jeremy Thomas the screenwriter Christopher Hampton uh the star Michael fasbender and uh for the first time at the New York Film Festival the director David Cronenberg uh I want to I want to start with a question for uh for Christopher which is if you can talk a little bit about the the sort of unusual gestation of this project and the different forms that it took from a film to a play to a film again well it was first written in the late mid to late '90s uh as a screenplay called Sabina uh for 20th Century Fox and Julia Roberts's company and uh you know founded in the way that screenplays often do uh and it seemed it seemed uh too good the material to sort of not take further um so I I turned it into a stage play uh called The Talking cure which we did in London um at the National Theater with Ray fines and um then I guess about a year or so later um I had a call from from Mr cronenburg uh which is um uh who said did I think it might make a film um so uh it it it couldn't it it had a sort of Securus uh um uh progress but but but I'm you know a happy ending I think and did did your take on the material IAL uh change during that time and and then again U and maybe David can talk about when he came into it if there was a sort of further um gestation of the project uh I think to to start with the film was called Sabina because it was mostly centered on on on Sabina Spiel but in between the the the the original screenplay and the the stage play uh it dawned on me that the central character was not Sabina and couldn't really be Saina that the central character had to be uh had to be young so um so there was quite a a shift in emphases uh um and then um I guess the you know David will talk about it but but but the work that I I I did um with him mostly had to do with refining it I think and and sharpening it and um and and uh honing it yes well actually maybe David you can you can answer this question because I I was especially watching it again this morning I thought did you did you ever fear that it might be a redundant at this point in your career to make a movie about Freud and young having made so many films about sexual perversion split personalities horror of the body and so forth and how how did you find your way into it that doesn't sound like me to me I I think that I've made a lot of comedies actually but um no uh I I don't really think about my other movies at all frankly I don't think about what I've done at all um when I decide to do something um I become passionate about it I'm only interested in in realizing that particular thing so I I don't think about whether this fits in with anything or doesn't or I've done it or not I mean if once I've get excited about it I think when I read Christopher's play I've never seen it perform but I I I uh felt in retrospect I think that I had always wanted to do something about Freud and the birth of psychoanalysis but to say that isn't to say anything really because it's such a vast topic and and full of this the panoply of Incredible characters that that surrounded the the birth of psychoanalysis all of them very eccentric and and and and wonderful um and what I saw in in Christopher's play was this fantastic structure that really beautifully distilled the essence of the of the era and and of that the psychoanalytic movement into primarily five characters and I thought that was that got me very excited because suddenly that was you know the the structure that could allow me to play with um with the with all of those topics I have to point out that the first movie I ever made transfer 7 minutes long was about a psychiatrist and a patient that was my first movie so this is really does feel like coming full circle um Michael can you tell us a little bit about how you uh became involved with the project and a little bit about David as a as a director of actors because I think uh the performances in the film are so completely stunning yeah um we first met in Toronto I um flew up to have a lunch with David and um and that's really when he started sort of directing me if you like um I always think you know great directors or great manipulators and um and uh you know he was already you know planting seeds in my mind then at that lunch about you know um the story and and what he found interesting about these various characters and um uh and where he thought sort of young was coming from and his background and we just had a really nice lunch and then we talked a lot about Motor Racing which we we both share a passion for um and then really by the time we got unset I think the one great thing well one of the many great things about David is he he allows you to sort of breathe within it in your own way you know it's like um again with you know great directors I find don't necessarily give you a huge amount of Direction on the day it's maybe a dinner that you had two nights before or a week before just little sort of hints and little nudges and and sort of um sway you in certain directions but without giving you anything sort of solidly now you do this I think any sort of great director that sort of worked with that that for them is the sort of is the last thing that they want it's really a very sort of collaborative process and um and one that's just very sort of free and he creates a very safe place to create and take risks and try things out and um I have to say it was it was a very humor set and and uh but everybody had done their homework you know and came ready to go to work and I think that's that's what um you know the sort of already the respect that David has sort of commands uh that off of his actors and Jeremy you've had a long working relationship with David by this point uh was this film did this film present any unique challenges from a production standpoint Visa other projects that you've done together no I suppose compared to many projects This was um fair I mean fairly simple project because we um we shot it in put it in Germany in Cologne in a studio there and uh with a very of nice atmosphere and as Michael said a very safe place to work I mean the principal problem today for me is of getting the resources to make a film as beautiful as this because you can see in the work an enormous amount of work and research and and Care went into the way the film is made into all the detail on the film and the research in the film and um I mean it was you know easy for me to do the film because David and I worked a couple of times before since 1980 in fact long then there was a moment he called me and told me are you interested in that I mean there was not a there wasn't even a beat yeah what to do it and um then we had him went on the journey which couple of hiccups couple of full starts but um was really most enjoyable one of the most enjoyable films I've ever been involved with and we we F we film the balance of the film in Lake con which is a very large lake in southern Germany and um that also was a s of idyllic place to work which really helped them help the film and help help the sort of concentrate everybody's work point about the use of Accents in the film how did they determine uh the use of accents and also a question about uh why none of the other disciples are shown in the film other than sabben I sort of asked Michael if he could do any accents other than his his own strange accent this Irish thing and he said well I could probably do a bit of an English one so I said okay let's go with that but no no I'm I'm sort of lying basically um basically um it it was really a very interesting interesting uh kind of um research to do because the question would be okay did did Freud have even a trace of a Yiddish accent when he spoke German did he speak yish did he have a vienes accent he wasn't born in Vienna he wasn't a native vienes uh would he have had a vienes accent would he have spoken High German instead and and also of course Yung would would he he was a Swiss German did he have a Swiss German accent or would he too have have reverted to high German and we uh there there are recordings of Yung speaking English you can see them on YouTube he did a lot of interviews he died in 1961 um for Freud there's really only one recording of his voice and he's speaking English except for the end of it and I did ask our German producer uh to tell me whether he sensed any kind of vienes accent in uh in what Freud was saying the answer was no he didn't he there was no vienes accent there so I I felt that they would speak definitely would speak High German to each other because seriousness was an important business for these guys they wanted really to be taken seriously as Physicians as medical men as scientists and so they would have dispensed with any regionality in in what they were in the even in their writing and their speaking and then and and they're both considered to be absolutely beautiful writers of German uh the their their literary qualities as writers is are really highly valued and once again that would be you know High German it would be very formal beautiful German so that would led us to say okay now how does that translate into Engish English and at that point we're saying it would be what we call received English which is a kind of a standard English accent not to Posh but not not East End London either and then for Kira we had because she was a Russian and I I was sure though there's no recordings of her that she would have spoken German with a Russian accent so I asked her to do a bit of a Russian accent and that's how we gradually got to to where we were with the accent yeah we started we sort of discussed Mid-Atlantic didn't we first and then we realized that we don't know what that means um because it you'd sink in the middle of the ocean and it's cold W and uh and then sort of it's actually that first time that we had lunch we first discussed it and it's like then you know um I think the great thing about sort of that that sort of received pronunciation is that you know when you're doing a period piece um I think it helps you sort of disappear into another era and also anybody in the academic world back then would not have passed or be taken seriously if they didn't speak hoo High German uh and then we sort of took um little um uh differences then between vgo acent and my own we wanted to show some sort of a colloquialism with young um so I didn't go very high um English and Vigo chose to go more clipped with his English to show the sort of difference there and then as as David was saying to sort of you know highlight that the fact that Sabina was Russian um to have her do sort of Russian accent well well you see feny on the boat and uh and uh he did travel to America with with Freud and Yung and I actually carefully in the in the scene in the Munich Munich hotel where where they're they're arguing about the coues and so on um I carefully cast every character there to look like the people who are actually at that at that uh at that meeting or there's an Ernest Jones and there's everybody there but it's just for me you know it's the same with Freud's family I mean I have I certainly have a little Anna Freud and right and you know we've cast them all very carefully for those who care but they weren't they there was no room for them their drama in the in the movie there just couldn't be I mean it was just expand you you could make more than a miniseries out of out of those characters a question about uh comparing the Friendship of the the two men in the film to the relationship between the two women well the men are far more childish um far less mature no far less mature nothing changes uh and I think you know in the end it was a mighty Clash of egos between the men and one of the things you might say about that is that one of the reasons we don't know anything about Sabina Shrine uh is because um you know her contribution to the history of psychoanalysis is really um not recognized because the people she was talking to were um busy claiming the The High Ground for themselves um so that there is evidence Freud actually yeah Freud gave her a footnote about the death Instinct uh Yung uh to whom she talked about archetypes and the anima and all that kind of thing I'm afraid to say never gave her any um never gave her any credit at all the last scene of the film I think is probably the only scene which might not have happened um what you lied to me I know I know but I'm I'm I'm owning up now um but I I think that you know I I I I believe that the the two women would have would have had that kind of relationship um uh um a kind of very very adult um understanding of of uh what was going on um I I think it should be said that uh Emma Young was a very interesting woman in her own right and wrote a couple of books about mythology and ended up being a psychoanalyst herself so that the idea that they should talk that way is very legitimate I think and we once again we didn't Christopher's original draft of this script alluded to that and I just thought but it came at the end and I thought it was just it was such a potent thing to realize that she was had ambitions your to be a psychoanalyst that it I thought the movie couldn't contain it at that point so we just took that little reference out but it is true um it seemed that everybody who came in contact with psychoanalysis ended up being an analyst you know there it was it was just irresistible they they couldn't let go of it just when their analysis was over they wanted more and and part of the way to do that was to become a psychoanalyst yourself it's like working in the theater question about how her nightly developed her character both emotionally and also physically in her hysterical scenes well unbeknownst to me Kira went to Christopher for advice he screwed it all up completely it took me ages to undo the damage that he did um but he did give her a stack of books to read as as did I in fact um but beyond that um we we started to we we began of course with the first scenes which were the the hysteria scenes and hysteria was you know a disease that seems to have disappeared it seemed to have been a a kind of a product of the that era and the so the repression of women that was uh a part of that culture um it it in fact the word hysteria comes from the Greek word that means uterus and at times they would actually remove the uteruses of hysterical women thinking that that might cure them so that gives you a bit of the context um uh however extreme it might seem at at the beginning kir what Kira does there it's actually very subdued compared with what uh Sabina sheline would have presented to Jung and in fact Chris Christopher has mentioned that he's actually seen the notes that Yung wrote um on her admission you know detailing her symptoms so we knew very well what what the symptoms of her particular version of Hysteria were and then there was actually film footage of hysterical patients at the turn of the century and a lot of photos of the the the do Sho who was a big influence on Freud specialized in in hysteria and so all these strange partial paralyses and and hysterical laughters and deforming of the body and twisting and tormenting your your physical posture and so on all of those are documented and and so for me basically it was to say to you know to decide how high we could pitch that it's it's very difficult to watch it makes you very uncomfortable as as it would but we had to deliver the disease to to to the to you the audience so that you would understand why she was completely disabled that she was dysfunctional and that's why she was brought to this institute because she couldn't function um so we had to show how extreme it was and I I felt that it should really be centered around the mouth because she is being asked by Yung it is called the talking cure to say unspeakable things about herself about her dreams about her sexuality about her masochism and all of that masturbation things that you were not supposed to speak about so the idea that she should be trying to speak the words try to come out but another part of her tries to prevent those words from coming out to deform them so that they're not understandable that's that's how we did that and and so on and then sort of gradually as she l loses the hysteria and becomes more and more confident under yung's tutelage and then has her Affair and so you can see the evolution of of the character but I have to say it's just as as Michael was saying I mean all of the prep was pretty much done in these discussions I mean a lot of directing happens off the set it happens when you're choosing the clothes that you wear for example it happens when you look at the locations and so on and by the time we got to the set Kira was there I mean she was just it was fantastic you you know I mean uh two takes and finished it was quite incredible actually if I just sort of add to that because we were what four days ahead by week two because well after actually after three days we were five days ahead that's very which seems impossible but part of it was that I literally I had boarded the schedule to take in account how difficult it might be to to to to develop cira's performance uh I'd never worked with her before and this was very difficult stuff and it was sort of ter that was new to her and she was just so good and so right on that we were finished in no time uh the question is is there an autobiographical Dimension to the film uh well you should ask Christopher first he wrote it I've always been very interested in psychoanalysis but I've never been interested in being analyzed so make of that what you will I to have not been analyzed except by Christopher and Michael um yeah it's uh no I don't think it's autobiographical other than that you know I mean Freud ended up being an old Jew and I'm headed that way myself be so that to that extent yes total autobiograph but um beyond that uh it's just it's really fascinating you know the the the way that these people for the it was an attempt to understand The Human Condition which is really what art is all about what is it to be human what is society what what are we what and and I think an artist and a psychoanalyst do very similar things you know you're you're presented with an official version of reality and then you say okay that's that but then what's really going on you know what's going on under the underneath what's under the surface what's driving things what's what are the hidden things and that's what a psychoanalyst does with his patient and that's what an artist does with his Society I think and his culture So to that EXT and not exactly autobiographical but a kind of a parallel process the question is what is uh what is David's hinge on the universe and in what direction is he swaying the audience to paraphrase the film um well first of all I I think and uh my feeling with the play was that it was very neutral actually I mean I and certainly I approached it that way that for me the this making the movie was a process of Resurrection I really wanted these people to come back to life I wanted to hear them and smell them and feel them uh and you know leather I don't think and uh uh young War leather so um behind close doors he used leather yeah and so um uh but but really it was also to resurrect the era because it was so so fascinating and I think kind of a crucial one because it was a a time you know Vienna was the the seat of the austr Hungarian Empire that that had lasted 700 years they had an 80-year-old Emperor who they felt would live forever they felt that man was evolving beautifully from animal to Angel that reason would conquer all that that everything could be everyone knew his place in society and everything was controlled you can see it by the clothes the high collars the high stiff collars and the corsets and everything um and and so it's and yet it was on the eve of the first world war which blew all of that to pieces that whole idea of European super civilization so that that but I felt I wanted that to be as accurate as possible I we I didn't have an agenda and actually I didn't feel that that Christopher had an agenda either which was what what was wonderful it was to present these people as accurately as they were um that really was my for me the project and then to see I I gotten all kinds of reactions from people people who think Freud comes off as a pompous ass others think he comes off magnificently and and young is a scoundrel and a terrible person which was really only applies to Michael not to young but and and um uh so really that's that I like that because it's it's it's a personal response to these characters and to the movie and some people think that that Sabina comes across as a sort of uh martyred uh feminist icon that would be fine too because you could certainly make a case for that so I have no I Had No Agenda really other than to see them come back to life and just to feel the the passion that they had for their ideas which they were not abstractions to them they Incorporated them totally into their lives into their sexuality into their you know their entire beings uh for me my hinge into the universe well is just I really as as I think Freud did uh insist on the reality of the human body I mean to me that is our reality and and Freud was insisting on it at a time when people were trying to deny that you know that abstract ideas were everything um uh and Freud was talking about you know penises and vaginas and excrement and anuses and stuff that no one wanted to talk about or even acknowledge the existence of and he was saying a lot of those things have huge repercussions in our adult life in our society and and so that that's my that's my take on things and if you ask me did I prefer Freud to Jung well I I feel more empathy for Freud's uh approach to The Human Condition I think Yung kind of represented ultimately a flight from the human body into spirituality and and and really religion I think ultimately he became a religious leader if you can believe it and um uh so so that's you know but but I didn't really feel the need to demolish Jung or or or or favor Freud or anything like that it wasn't that wasn't really part of the the process the creative process unfortunately we have to stop there but I want to thank David and everyone on the panel uh for being here at the New York Film Festival