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Shame

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Brandon is a 30-something man living in New York who is unable to manage his sex life. After his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment, Brandon's world spirals out of control. From director Steve McQueen (Hunger), Shame is a compelling and timely examination of the nature of need, how we live our lives and the experiences that shape us.

Opens December 2, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 39 min.

 

Press Conference with Director Steve McQueen, Actor Michael Fassbender

 

(Q) : Steve, Talk a little bit about how "Shame" came about and why that felt to you why it was the right thing to do next.
 
(Steve McQueen) : Firstly, I'd like to say I'm just sort of very pleased to be here in New York with this film. The film is based in New York, so the movie is coming home really. Similar to the debut of "Hunger" in the Belfast, I feel that this is the real sort of place where I actually want to show the film. Okay, well the beginning of "Shame" it started with a conversation with myself and Abi Morgan. We had an arrangement to meet, I didn't know Abi at all, and we met in a café and we only had an hour, both of us were grabbing time. It ended up to be a three hour and a half conversation; we were still talking.

And through the conversation talking about the internet then this sort of film idea started to snowball from there. I mean after "Hunger" I had no real desire to make another film because it was such an exhausting experience. I think myself and Michael, I know you were extraordinarily exhausted, but after the fatigue of all this research and stuff was affecting me as such and I had no desire to go through that thing again. But obviously, because of meeting with Abi that's when it started to happen again, the desire to, the whole idea of a feature film, the whole idea of storytelling.
 
(Q) : You mentioned the internet, but what specifically let the idea of addiction to appeal to you, if you see it as a film about addiction?
 
(Steve McQueen): I mean you think of films like "The Lost Weekend," you think of film like "The Man with the Golden Arm," and you have this thing about, what attracted me about this particular addiction was to do with in order to facilitate this addiction we need another person. We need someone to facilitate that addiction, so therefore you have drama in a nutshell really. And it hadn't been sort of looked at properly in a way; that was obviously another attraction.  But also what happened was this: we start of in London. I didn't want to come to New York to make a film; that was never my desire.

The desire was to make a film about this particular subject matter, and we started in London but guess what, no one wanted to talk to us, no one wanted to have that conversation with us. So it was very difficult and all of a sudden you start hitting walls. I asked to speak to some kind of specialist in the field, the two specialists we spoke to happen to be in New York. I went and spoke to them and that's how we got access to people who have had the affliction and are dealing with the affliction of sex addiction.

And from there it just snowballed. Okay well New York, okay let's go here, let's make the film here then because people are willing to speak with obviously the encouragement of these two sort of experts in the field. And it was just amazing discoveries. It was almost like freaks or one of us. It didn't feel alien at all or bizarre or absurd. It felt very extraordinarily human. It's just another high.
 
(Q) : And Michael, were you eager to work with Steve again after the collaboration on "Hunger"? And we know, if I can ask this in a way that doesn't sound like it's a joke, for "Hunger" you obviously did an incredible physical transformation to prepare for the role and actually starved yourself. What did you do as an actor to prepare to play this role?
 
(Michael Fassbender) : Really? I just went out and had a lot of sex and just tried to sort of embrace it as best I could. No, working with Steve was something. I said to Steve at the end of "Hunger" obviously he changed my life literally, I mean definitely in terms of a professional point of view. I was getting to a point where I was 30 years old and the recession was just around the corner, which meant literally the same as every other industry; less jobs for less actors and for somebody to take a chance on an unknown actor and to give them the opportunity and take the risk to play a lead in the film. There was less and less of that happening. So other than I think a big argument on the first day of "Hunger."
 
(Steve McQueen): I remember it well.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : I think we just sort of, I don't know. It's that thing that you always, I remember when I was 17 and I started off doing this and my dream was to meet a director and have a relationship with a director. The things that I sort of looked at were Scorsese and De Niro, Lumet, Pacino, and that would be the ultimate, to sort of have a sort of collaboration like that and to be on a wavelength that powerful with somebody. And that's sort of what I was so lucky to sort of find in Steve with "Hunger." I think you mentioned it to me in 2008 that you had this idea, and I was like fine, just tell me when and where. I didn't even need to see a script, so it was that simple really. And preparation, I did a lot of just reading.

I spent a lot of time with the script, pretty much the same with my preparation for most other jobs. I spend a lot of time with the script, and through rereading, rereading, rereading the script lots of things just, I don't know, the character and the story starts to unravel itself, it starts to sort of, I don't know, set into my enamel. And then meeting people helps of course. I always find it difficult when you meet people, the same situation I found when we were doing "Hunger," asking people direct questions didn't really work that well for me in both scenarios, but I always try and get people to tell me stories. I like stories; I like to tell them and I like to hear them.

And when people tell stories they sometimes let their guard down, and through that you can sort of get little like footnotes almost, little sort of motivations. You can see where the essence of a personality is, and that was very helpful in terms of getting into that headspace with a character who can't really deal with intimacy. Somebody who doesn't really like themselves, well doesn't like themselves at all really and so sets about abusing themselves. So that's pretty much I think the answer to your question.
 
(Q) : Can you also talk a little bit about building your relationship with Carey Mulligan in the film? I think one of the things that's very impressive in the film is you sense a real shared history between those two characters even though not a lot of information is actually spoken about what happened to them, where they come from. Did you as actors build your own character histories and figure out the backstory of these characters together, or did Steve provide a lot of that? How was that worked out?
 
(Michael Fassbender) : Well you know again that was a really clever decision of both Steven and Abi's to have siblings. There's a real honesty between siblings I think and a real cruelty as well. Although there's a very strong bond but also there's an awareness of all the weak points and how to hit them and how to really strike home.
 
(Steve McQueen): It was interesting because myself, Carey, and Michael have siblings of the opposite sex, so that was an interesting starting point as well.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : Absolutely, yeah. Please don't interrupt me again when I'm talking. So we sat down, the three of us and we discussed about where these people are coming from, of course where they are in their lives when we meet them in the film, what's happened before. A biography for me is always an important thing to do anyway to sort of just get an idea and have a confidence of the character. And yes, we discussed a lot of that and how far we wanted to go with it and we did a little bit of workshopping with some scenes.

And then I also didn't want to spend too much time with Carey as well, because I wanted to keep that element of awkwardness, or I don't know how to describe it, but a certain element of tension and unsurity, that's the word that I'm looking for. I wanted to sort of preserve that and I think Steve felt the same. We did a couple of workshops and he was like "Okay, that's enough. Let's just wait until we get to the day of filming."
 
(Q) : I'm really interested in that tension between Brandon and Sissy. And for me I thought there was a sexual tension there. It was as if they were lovers but they couldn't go within the act, and I know that may be controversial to say, but I did feel that there was this incestuous element to the film that I really haven't heard or read anything about. Can you speak about that at all? Was that intentional? Can you talk about how they had boundaries but very, very loose boundaries?
 
(Steve McQueen) : Obviously, they're of the opposite sex, brother and sister. I mean obviously the background has something to play in their relationship and in their intimacy and also in the potential as such. There's a background to some extent but it's one of those things where it's in the air. You know, you meet people and you see something in the air, you see what's going on, but you can't really put your finger on it. It's like a wet piece of soup. It's constantly moving, constantly adjusting, and that's life I think. And also you can smell it but you can't taste it, you can taste it you can't smell it. It's there but it's not there, and that's how I wanted to have that history. The history presents itself in the present in different guises, and I think that's what I wanted really.
 
(Q : It's partly a question for Michael about how he develops the character's internal life and some of his psychological gestures, and somewhere in there something about the size of his forehead. And for Steve, how he marries the spaces in the film, the visual plan of the film to what's going on internally in the characters.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : It's very simple. If I'm not saying anything I am saying something, my lips just aren't moving. So I've got a dialog going on all the time. It's like even if I'm saying to you "Where were you last night?' but I know that you were somewhere that I didn't like, or whatever. There's a subtext always going on; I might say one thing and mean something else. So in those scenes where I'm not saying anything I've still got a dialog going on, it's just my lips aren't moving, and that just keeps me connected to what's going on beat by beat.
 
(Steve McQueen) : Let's talk about Brandon's apartment then, for example, as far as space is concerned. Going to a New York apartment where he can afford, we did a little research on that, and what was interesting about that is it's so damn small for the money. But at the same time this is a guy who hasn't a lot of time to decorate, furnish, or whatever. It's very practical. And what was interesting for me was that a lot of New Yorkers, a lot people living in Manhattan live and work in the sky. In Europe that's kind of odd; you live and work in the sky, a lot of New Yorkers.

And it's that idea that he's above it all, but at the same time he has a perspective onto the world, for example in the office and whatnot. On the widescreen format you can always have relationships with not just the actual participant in the film but also in its surroundings, so you always have that dialog. Two and two can actually make four because it's always in relationship to something else in the frame, and working with those reflections and working with that kind of space because these spaces are very geometrical. Glass, steel, white wall, it's very cold in a way, and then you can bring the whole thing to put on the computer to make it a bit more homey. But it really is what it is; quite formal.
 
(Q) : I'm very curious about the costumes. There seems to be a gender divide. Brandon is dressed impeccably the whole time, whereas women all seem to in some way mirror the sister in the messiness, in the coats, in the scarves. Am I completely wrong?
 
(Michael Fassbender) : The woman that Brandon picks up in the bar, she's impeccably dressed, she's obviously a businesswoman. Marianne is very beautifully dressed.

(Steve McQueen): You ladies, you're lucky you have a choice. We've got a suite; we're like penguins. So you can be very variable in your clothing, so nothing to do with the messiness at all, far from it, but stylishness absolutely.
 
(Q) : You said you moved it to New York because you were getting resistance.
 
(Steve McQueen) : It wasn't resistance; people just didn't want to talk. Again, they're living their lives and people didn't want to talk, but the people in New York, we got access to people who wanted to talk, and it there was difficulty for us to have access to people who wanted to talk in London, and that was all. It wasn't resistance, just unfortunate, and that was it.
 
(Q) : The single line "We're not bad persons, we just come from a fucked up place," and the way she injured herself and the fact that you moved from Ireland at a very young age seemed to suggest they might have been survivors of Catholic incest or something like that.

(Michael Fassbender) : We love incest in Ireland. That and the Catholic Church.
 
(Steve McQueen) : No, what I wanted to do with that "We're not bad people; we come from a bad place." Not fucked up, "we come from a bad place." And what it was to do with in some ways I wanted to make their background familiar rather than sort of mysterious in any way. And of course people say "What do you mean by it being not mysterious not telling us something about their background."

But actually what I'm doing is when people come to cinema and sit down they're bringing all their luggage, they bring all their baggage, they bring all their history and their past to cinema, and they're looking at people who are having conversations and you're projecting what the possibilities of what could have happened with Sissy and Brandon. And that's what I wanted. I wanted a situation that was more familiar to each individual here rather than mysterious or rather than some long yarn about what happened or what could have happened. So it was much more closer to the audience in fact.
 
(Q) : Since you mentioned that this is from a story that you collaborated on with someone else could you talk a little bit about the evolution of the script and how you came to this one and were there other versions and other elements that worked that we don't see on the screen but were in the process?
 
(Steve McQueen) : What we did was the wind carried us, honestly. I wanted the responsibility of this film. I wanted the responsibility of this particular subject matter, and with that responsibility comes real meticulous research and also talking and actually what would happen with this character, talking to all these people involved in this particular affliction. Their sexcapades, their downs, their ups, and so forth and what not. They were the ones who guided us in the making of this story and this film. So it was all about the detail, all about the research. It's all about the research.

You think about "The Lost Weekend" and how shocking that was when it came out to talk about an alcoholic. Obviously I'm not comparing my film to "The Lost Weekend," but it's the same to do with sex, and it's another outlet to have a certain kind of high, and this is what's happening right now. It's not made up. It's happening in New York City, it's happening in London, it's happening all over. It's not a fantasy, it's actually an absolute reality, and some people's glasses are half full and some people's glasses are half empty. It's a fact.
 
(Q) : A question about double entendres in the film, both in the dialog and words that we see. I think perhaps you might be referring to the scene where he has sex against the wall that has fuck written on it, for example.
 
(Steve McQueen) : Well what specifically were you thinking about?
 
(Q) : Mainly the scene with Marianne.
 
 
(Michael Fassbender) : "You want the steak pink," is it? Or the lamb pink, rather.
 
(Q) : All those words. What went into the thinking of including that in the film?
 
(Steve McQueen) : Some of it was conscious, some of it was unconscious, I'll be honest with you. I mean that scene, I wanted a situation that happened in the walk and talk and not having dinner. There's Marianne and there's Brandon. Marianne is interested in Brandon, Brandon is really interested in Marianne, but it's like two magnets; it's not going to happen. You know how it is in conversations, it happens also with Brandon and David. You know you're talking to someone, they're saying something, but you know you're talking about something else. You're testing the ground of how they are, but you're really talking about something else. That sort of heightened intelligence in conversation. Basically most talk is bullshit anyway, you talk nonsense, we just talk to fill the space. But basically what you're doing is feeling the other person out and that's it. And also that seen was all about the waiter.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : It's always that interjection, isn't it. Sorry; I'm interrupting you now. But that thing of always being interrupted by a waiter, there's something quite childlike I think about that conversation as well, the dinner table and the sort of uneasiness and the awkwardness of it. I think it's kind of charming as well and the sort of naïve moments. But that was fun, the idea that whenever you sit down, you're just trying to have a conversation with somebody, and the waiter keeps coming.
 
(Steve McQueen) : Again, it's the European thing coming over here and having that sort of first impression of course. And of course it's one of those things where he's lonely too. He wants a conversation, he wants to have a chat, he wants to tell you what's on the menu.
 
(Q) : As long as we're talking about that scene can you talk about your decision to play it out in one single, uninterrupted take, like the long conversation between Bobby Sands and his priest in hunger?

(Steve McQueen) : Well there are two scenes I'll talk about. For example when Brandon and Marianne attempt to sort of make love. The reason, for example, I wanted to have that filmed in one take, and it's a bit painful and it's kind of awkward, and it's uncomfortable, is because I wanted you to see Brandon making the attempt to make love, to in some ways be connected to another human being physically, really try. And that had to be played out in one take because we had to see him try, the effort, the attempt, the failure, the trying again, and then of course the unfortunate breakdown.

Similar to the situation in the restaurant. It's one of these things where cut, cut, cut, you want to have two people have a conversation, you want to be there listening and looking. You want that person's reaction and that person's response again. It's one of those things where you want to keep the plate spinning. Of course with the waiter coming in he's sort of the injection into the whole play. So just keep this camera running. There it is, it's there, it's right in front of you. We've got great actors. Why are we cutting? For close up? Give me a break.
 
(Q) : That must have been really tough in case cars got in the way or people or even pigeons.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : Pigeons.
 
(Steve McQueen) : Damn those pigeons.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : It wasn't actually. We didn't have any trouble. We didn't close down that many streets did we?

(Steve McQueen) : No, not at all. Don't tell him that, though. It was hard, man. No, it was great. It was just a straightforward thing really. It was late at night, there was a lot of traffic around, and Michael had to do it a couple of times.
 
 
(Michael Fassbender) : And that rubbish truck as well, that was by chance as well, wasn't it?
 
(Steve McQueen) : Lots of things were chance.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : Yeah, it's fun when it's like that.
 
(Q) : Logistically, can you discuss how difficult it was to get that long-take shot of the jogging across several avenues?
 
(Steve McQueen): We just answered that.

(Q) : A question about the tenderness in the film and that in the scene where Brandon very delicately touches Sissy that you know at that point in the film that he's going to change and is she right in this perception of that scene?

(Steve McQueen): I think that's interesting in the way it is about that. The whole film is about the tenderness, the whole film is about trying to communicate in an emotional way. It's all about that. So people write about this and that and the other, but actually it's just about human contact and human contact where you can feel real, like I'm alive. It's about that kind of contact and communication. With Michael he has the possibility and the capability of that kind of tenderness. I feel that most great actors, male actors, are very feminine and very strong female actors are very masculine, and it's the same with Carey and Michael. They have a certain kind of beauty, a certain kind of, I don't know, tenderness, I don't know what it is, but for me that's what came out of the film. And of course there were some for me wonderful moments with Carey singing and Michael's response to that and stuff, and the problem is it's a failure of communication of course. That's what makes it quite sad in a way.
 
(Q) : We're just about out of time.
 
(Steve McQueen) : Can I say one thing please? I apologize for interrupting. And also I just want to say the New York crew; just amazing. I'm not just saying it for effect. It's the happiest time I've been on a set. We had such a laugh. I mean of course we're making the film, which is a bit blue, but the New York crew was just amazing. We had such a fantastic time and they work so damn hard. I just want to say that they were fantastic.
 
(Michael Fassbender) : And it was special, it was special to film in New York. Such a great town and so much history of film and creativity and the energy here. You're very lucky, for those who live in the city. And the crew was top notch, amazing.

(Q) : Because you started out by talking about bringing the film home in a way to New York can you talk a little bit about having New York as a canvas for the film and how you went about choosing locations and deciding what to show of New York? Because I do think it's a great New York film and it has incredible sense of the city and the energy of the city.
 
(Steve McQueen): It was all about the character; where will Brandon live, where will Brandon go, where will Brandon eat, what will Brandon wear, where will Brandon go to work, how will he get to work? It was all that, just the character and following the character meticulously. That was it. We were slaves to the film, the character. And actually to get the arrival of the crew helped of course. I've been coming here since '77, since the blackout and Elvis died. Most of my family lived in New York. So that was it really, that was it. And being respectful to New York. It's easy because people are so nice here. It sounds corny to say that, but I've been coming here since '77. You can communicate. It's the city I know the best after London, and I live in Amsterdam.
 
(Q) : Steve and Michael, thanks so much.