MOVIES
BY RICK LEVIN
CHANNING TATUM LEFT,
STEVE CARELL AND MARK
RUFFALO IN FOXCATCHER
TAKE DOWN
Eugene native E. Max Frye is up for an Oscar for his Foxcatcher screenplay
A
E. MAX FRYE
Eugene native and graduate of South Eugene High School,
screenwriter E. Max Frye is nominated (along with co-writer
Dan Futterman) for an Academy Award for his work on the
Foxcatcher screenplay. Directed by Bennett Miller (Capote,
Moneyball), Foxcatcher is based on the true story of John du
Pont, an heir to the Du Pont family fortune who, in the 1980s, established
Foxcatcher Farm, a wrestling facility on his estate where he worked with
sibling gold-medalists Mark and Dave Shultz.
But Foxcatcher isn’t your typical rah-rah sports bio. The film —
which stars Steve Carell (nominated for an Oscar) as du Pont and
Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo (also nominated) as the brother
wrestlers — is a stark, haunting depiction of hubris, alienation and
ambition that moves with the relentless rhythms of Greek tragedy. That
it was not included among this year’s Best Picture nominees is baffling.
Frye, who now lives in New York but has spent the past month
partaking in Hollywood’s pre-Oscar festivities, took a few moments
from the fun last week to talk with EW by phone.
What drew you to the story of Foxcatcher?
It was a pretty dark sports story, and one that began at
the top, with a gold medal and the National Anthem, and
then you kind of deconstruct the typical sports story and
that’s where you end it.
How do you view John du Pont?
As a character? Or the real John du Pont, as a human
being? Because those are two different things.
Let’s start with the real John du Pont. Was he a
sociopath?
No, I believe — and there’s no irrefutable evidence of
this — but I believe that he suffered from some sort of
psychosis. That, coupled with his name and his money,
allowed him to do things that you and I couldn’t do, and
allowed him free reign of his various paranoid fantasies
and his ego. I don’t know that he was more of a sociopath
than anybody else with that kind of money. But that’s him
in real life.
As far as the movie character goes, Bennett and I, when
we were first talking about this, we said, “Well, we don’t
want to make him crazy.” The audience is too easily able
to distance themselves from a person that they perceive as
a psychopath or a sociopath. So we tried to have the
character walk the line and keep him accessible and
empathetic in a certain way. And yes, he does horrible
things and he’s bad and creepy and weird, but we wanted
to keep him just inside the line of, “Oh, he’s a psychopath
or he’s a sociopath and that’s why he’s doing all these
things.”
Is there something inherent to wealth that creates
that kind of behavior? He seems to treat the people in
his life like playthings.
Well, listen, that can be applied to not only people with
wealth but people with immense power, whether that be an
athlete, which usually has an accompanying wealth these
days, or you can look at actors, also, and their often bad
behavior. It’s because nobody ever says “no” to them. If
you never say “no” to a child, he just keeps pushing it and
pretty soon you’ve got a tyrant on your hands. Yeah, I
don’t think that this behavior is inherent in the wealthy,
although it certainly helps to have that kind of money.
And what was your approach to portraying the
relationship between John du Pont and his mother,
played by Vanessa Redgrave?
Well, it wasn’t easy. Listen, it’s not Mommie Dearest,
where she’s beating him with a coat hanger and it’s clear
that she’s terrible. What I found fascinating — and there
wasn’t that much detail recorded, historically; it was more
anecdotal about the mom that we got from people who
worked on the [Foxcatcher] farm and some of the wrestlers.
A little went a long way.
For me, one of my favorite scenes in the movie is
when they wheel her in the wheelchair into the
wrestling room, and she doesn’t say a word. She just
looks at him as he’s trying desperately to glean some
kind of respect and admiration out of her by
portraying himself as a coach and a mentor to these
world-class wrestlers, which he wasn’t. And it
became very obvious, I thought, in that scene, just
by the expression on her face, and no dialogue
between them. Just the visuals were fantastic, and
made him sympathetic and empathetic and accessible
to the audience. That’s one of the things, no matter
if you have money or not, you want to please your
parents; you want to have them say, “Good job,
you’re doing something valuable and I respect what
you’re doing.” He never got that from her.
Do you view Foxcatcher as a kind of cautionary
tale?
I absolutely do not view it as a cautionary tale
about sports or wealth. I mean, this is a complete
outlier, bizarre, weird tragedy that happened, and
that’s why it got made into a movie. It just was so
strange and compelling, and these characters were
strange and compelling in the way they interacted
with one another. So, no, I don’t look at it like that.
I don’t look at it as any kind of comment on
America.
I’ve seen some people have said it’s liberal
Hollywood commenting on capitalism and
everything. Listen, everybody sees in art what they
want to see or can see, and so I’ve seen a few things
like that and I can definitely say Bennett and I never talked
about any of that. What was true was that he [du Pont] was
an absolute patriot, or considered himself to be a patriot
and an American and a flag-waver and wanted to be called
“Eagle,” and sent telegrams called “Eagle-grams” to his
wrestlers.
What was your experience growing up in Eugene?
Do you know South Eugene High School? Well, it’s very
long — it’s blocks long. When I was there, on the west end
was all the sports stuff — the gym and the wrestling room
and the weight room and all that. And on the east end was
all the arts — the theater and the art classes. And all the
stoners were out in the east parking lot, and the jocks were
in the west parking lot. I was one of the few people that went
from one end of the building to the other.
My senior year, there was a drama teacher named
David Nail, and he approached me and said, “Hey, how
would you like to do a play?” I had another friend who was
a football player, and he and I ended up being in the spring
production. Also, I took an acting class for children’s
theater. I discovered the notion of being able to tell a story
dramatically. That was my first exposure, was my senior
year at South. And I kinda kept that in the back of my head
as I struggled and flailed around to find what I was good
at and what I could do, because I didn’t want to be a
lawyer.
I ended up being a painter for a couple of years and
moved to New York to pursue that. I had a girlfriend and
we broke up, and I was distraught and didn’t know what to
do. I decided I was going to go back to school and I ended
up at NYU film school, and I don’t even remember how I
applied to the film school, but I did and I got in. And then
I had to take a mandatory intro to dramatic writing, and it
was just this instantaneous, “Oh! I can do this.” Wow, I
didn’t know I had that ability. My brain works that way.
And that was it. I was focused on screenwriting from
that moment. I got lucky, and here I am. I say that because
there are other kids growing up in places like Eugene that
might have talent that they don’t know about. So it’s just a
question of exposing yourself to a lot of things and seeing
where you’re good and what your motivation is. And hey,
you too could graduate from South Eugene High School
and end up at the Academy Awards. ■
Foxcatcher is playing at Bijou Metro.
EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • FEBRUARY 19, 2015
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