Cast/crew interviews with Michael

http://entertainment.inquirer.net/12333/mcqueen-launches-sex-addict-film-shame-in-venice

McQueen launches sex-addict film ‘Shame’ in Venice
Associated Press
9:58 am | 9:58 am

From left, German actor Michael Fassbender, Canadian actress Sarah Gadon, Canadian director David Cronenberg, British actress Keira Knightley, French actor Vincent Cassel and Danish actor Viggo Mortensen arrive for the premiere of a "Dangerous Method" at the 68th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Friday, Sept. 2, 2011. AP

VENICE — For British director Steve McQueen, there was no better place than Manhattan to film “Shame,” his new film that portrays the life of a 30-something sex addict, played by Michael Fassbender in often graphic detail.

“Excess and access. New York is the place,” McQueen said Sunday ahead of his second film’s world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Fassbender’s Brandon has no trouble indulging his appetite, be it over the Internet, in his workplace toilet, nightclubs, city streets, or even the Standard Hotel, which has gained notoriety on its own as a showcase for exhibitionists due to its floor to ceiling street-facing windows.

“If you stay at the Standard Hotel, there is a little card that says, ‘Please refrain from undressing at the window.’ I think it is obviously a tempting proposition when you have a building and a beautiful platform like that, to use it any way you want,” co-screenwriter Abi Morgan said.

Brandon manages even a nonphysical sexual encounter with a beautiful woman on the subway, with the pair transmitting their desire through intense stares.

Fassbender, who film credits include “X-Men: First Class,” ”Inglorious Basterds” and the upcoming “Jane Eyre,” acknowledged a certain discomfort at playing graphic sex scenes.

“Just have to jump into it,” Fassbender said. “The most important thing, I suppose, is just make sure that everybody involved is comfortable, and just sort of go for it so you don’t have to do too many takes.”

This is the actor’s second film with McQueen — after 2008′s “Hunger,” which won the new director’s prize in Cannes — and his second film screening in competition at the 68th Venice Film Festival this year.

He walked the red carpet earlier in the festival for his role as psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung in David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” a random juxtaposition that raises the question: Might Jung have had a cure for Brandon?

“Maybe,” Fassbender said after a press conference.

Carey Mulligan plays Brandon’s eccentric and flighty sister, Sissy, whose arrival on a visit upends her brother’s tightly organized life. The siblings, it is revealed, shared a troubled childhood — the details of which are never disclosed — that Brandon would just as soon leave behind but which Sissy is determined binds them even tighter.

Mulligan’s Sissy performs a soulful version of “New York, New York,” sung ever so slowly and deliberately, bringing her otherwise outwardly stoic brother Brandon to tears that he tries to conceal.

McQueen said he thinks the lyrics are actually very sad, and he wanted to try to reinvent the song best known for upbeat renditions popularized by Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli.

“I think Carrie obviously did a marvelous job, and of course Michael’s reaction was tremendous. It was an extraordinarily emotional day when we recorded that,” he said.

The slow, deliberate delivery of the song is repeated elsewhere in the film in slowly revealed scenes that take time to expose the characters’ emotions.

McQueen, an award-winning video artist, has participated in the Venice Biennale before — in the contemporary art section. Two years ago, McQueen’s work was the British entry in the art show across the lagoon from the Lido.

“As far as the art work or feature film work, I think there is no barrier between the two,” McQueen said. “It’s the same process, but just as one might be long, narrative and such, the other is less so. It’s work. That’s all.”

The film festival’s grand prize, the Golden Lion, will be awarded September 10.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10749498

McQueen launches sex-addict film 'Shame' in Venice
11:30 AM Monday Sep 5, 2011

British director Steve McQueen. Photo / AP

For British director Steve McQueen, there was no better place than Manhattan to film Shame, his new film that portrays the life of a 30-something sex addict, played by Michael Fassbender in often graphic detail.

"Excess and access. New York is the place," McQueen said Sunday ahead of his second film's world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Fassbender's Brandon has no trouble indulging his appetite, be it over the Internet, in his workplace toilet, nightclubs, city streets, or even the Standard Hotel, which has gained notoriety on its own as a showcase for exhibitionists due to its floor to ceiling street-facing windows.

"If you stay at the Standard Hotel, there is a little card that says, 'Please refrain from undressing at the window.' I think it is obviously a tempting proposition when you have a building and a beautiful platform like that, to use it any way you want," co-screenwriter Abi Morgan said.

Brandon manages even a nonphysical sexual encounter with a beautiful woman on the subway, with the pair transmitting their desire through intense stares.

Fassbender, who film credits include X-Men: First Class, Inglorious Basterds and the upcoming Jane Eyre, acknowledged a certain discomfort at playing graphic sex scenes.

"Just have to jump into it," Fassbender said. "The most important thing, I suppose, is just make sure that everybody involved is comfortable, and just sort of go for it so you don't have to do too many takes."

This is the actor's second film with McQueen - after 2008's Hunger, which won the new director's prize in Cannes - and his second film screening in competition at the 68th Venice Film Festival this year.

He walked the red carpet earlier in the festival for his role as psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, a random juxtaposition that raises the question: Might Jung have had a cure for Brandon?

"Maybe," Fassbender said after a press conference.

Carey Mulligan plays Brandon's eccentric and flighty sister, Sissy, whose arrival on a visit upends her brother's tightly organized life. The siblings, it is revealed, shared a troubled childhood - the details of which are never disclosed - that Brandon would just as soon leave behind but which Sissy is determined binds them even tighter.

Mulligan's Sissy performs a soulful version of New York, New York, sung ever so slowly and deliberately, bringing her otherwise outwardly stoic brother Brandon to tears that he tries to conceal.

McQueen said he thinks the lyrics are actually very sad, and he wanted to try to reinvent the song best known for upbeat renditions popularized by Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli.

"I think Carrie obviously did a marvellous job, and of course Michael's reaction was tremendous. It was an extraordinarily emotional day when we recorded that," he said.

The slow, deliberate delivery of the song is repeated elsewhere in the film in slowly revealed scenes that take time to expose the characters' emotions.

McQueen, an award-winning video artist, has participated in the Venice Biennale before - in the contemporary art section. Two years ago, McQueen's work was the British entry in the art show across the lagoon from the Lido.

"As far as the art work or feature film work, I think there is no barrier between the two," McQueen said. "It's the same process, but just as one might be long, narrative and such, the other is less so. It's work. That's all."

The film festival's grand prize, the Golden Lion, will be awarded Sept. 10.

- AP

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14780692

4 September 2011 Last updated at 11:47 ET

Director Steve McQueen leads UK charge on Golden Lion
British director Steve McQueen McQueen's debut film Hunger won the Camera D'Or in Cannes in 2008

Steve McQueen's Shame, the first of a trio of British films vying for the top award at the Venice Film Festival, premiered in the city on Sunday.

A brother-sister drama, it follows sex addict Brandon (Michael Fassbender) and his wayward sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) seeking solace in New York.

Fassbender, who previously played the lead in McQueen's debut film Hunger, joined McQueen to promote the film.

"I love Brandon. He's not so far away from most of us at the end of the day."

"Clearly Hunger was a political film but Shame is also political," said McQueen.

"That one was about a prison in Northern Ireland, this one, it's about how someone's freedom can actually imprison them and they need an addiction in order to numb a pain."

McQueen said working with Fassbender, who played IRA activist Bobby Sands in Hunger, was "a bit like falling in love".

"When you have it, you recognise it - and that's it," McQueen told industry paper Variety. "I'm extraordinarily fortunate. I think he's the best actor out there."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/04/steve-mcqueen-film-shame-venice

Steve McQueen's film Shame leads UK charge to win Golden Lion in Venice

John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights also in the running for the top prize

Mark Brown in Venice
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 September 2011 18.29 BST

Carey Mulligan in Shame, the second film by the artist Steve McQueen.

The Brits arrived at the world's oldest film festival today/ and brought more graphic sex than you can shake a stick at in the shape of artist Steve McQueen's second movie Shame, starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.

The film, McQueen's second after Hunger which dealt with Bobby Sands and the IRA hunger strikes, was enthusiastically received after its first screening in Venice. It leads something of a British charge as one of three UK movies in competition for the festival's top prize, the Golden Lion.

Tomorrow, Andrea Arnold brings her keenly awaited version of Wuthering Heights, while today, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch are in town for a new film version of John le Carré's classic spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, boosted by a statement from Le Carré himself heaping praise on the film by the Swedish director Tomas Alfredson.

Shame tells the story of Brandon, a single thirtysomething man in New York who is addicted to sex in any of its forms as long as it does not involve love or intimacy. His ordered lifestyle is thrown into a sort of chaos with the arrival of his needy sister, played by Mulligan.

McQueen said that after making Hunger, a film about a man with no freedom, he was interested in making a film about a man who had access to anything. "They are both films about politics and freedom," he said.

Neither of the lead actors was shy of getting their clothes off and the film, because of its subject, does contain a mighty lot of sex – whether sex with escorts, internet sex, threesome sex, solo sex in the office toilet, sex in a window of the Standard Hotel or backroom gay sex – much of it accompanied by Bach.

For Fassbender it comes just two days after he was in Venice for the David Cronenberg film A Dangerous Method in which he has sex with and spanks his patient, played by Keira Knightley.

Fassbender said the graphic sex scenes had been uncomfortable to film. He added: "The most important thing is to make sure that everybody involved is comfortable, as much as you can be, and then just kind of go for it so you don't have to do too many takes."

Mulligan is in Australia filming The Great Gatsby with Baz Luhrmann so it was left to McQueen to answer a question on her nudity. "She's an actress," he said. "Who cares? It's not a big deal. She's an artist."

McQueen's first film, Hunger, has not been released in Italy and the director said he understood it was because of the male nudity, so goodness knows what will happen to Shame.

McQueen said he loved his main character. "He's not a bad person. He's a person living now, with all the trappings of now. Of course it shapes you, taints you. As a character I think he's very familiar to all of us."

The film was written by McQueen and Abi Morgan, whose series The Hour recently finished on BBC1. They interviewed many men who have this kind of addiction, they said, and the word that kept coming up time and again was shame – hence the title.

The film contains some impressive acting and a memorable rendition of New York, New York from Mulligan. "For me it's a very sad song, very much blues," said McQueen. "It was an extraordinarily emotional day when we recorded that. It was amazing."

It is very much a British film, co-produced by Film Four with money from the defunct UK Film Council. Asked why it is set in New York with American characters, McQueen said it felt right as a 24-hour city of both "excess and access".

The film was enthusiastically applauded at its first screening on the Venice Lido.

For many, the remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy means just one thing: heresy, given the celebrated 1979 TV series starring Alec Guinness.

In a statement, Le Carré said he had felt much the same way. "The television series had needed seven episodes," he said. "And slice it how you will, television drama is still radio with pictures, whereas feature film these days barely talks at all."

But, he said: "My anxieties were misplaced. Alfredson has delivered a film that for me works superbly, and takes me back into byways of the novel and its characters that the series of 32 years ago didn't enter."

The writer was also full of praise for Oldman's George Smiley, who evokes the same "solitude, inwardness, pain and intelligence" that Guinness brought to the part, but Le Carré added: "If I were to meet the Smiley of Alec Guinness on a dark night, my instinct would be to go to his protection. If I met Oldman's, I think I just might make a run for it."

There is something of a buzz for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, whereas with Arnold's Wuthering Heights, no one knows quite what to expect. Arnold has made two acclaimed contemporary dramas, Red Road and Fish Tank, so there is a lot of interest in seeing her adapt Emily Brontë's classic novel.

If any of the three do win on Saturday they will be only the second British film in 20 years to win the Golden Lion, with Mike Leigh's Vera Drake taking the prize in 2004. Other films in contention are Todd Solondz's Dark Horse and Roman Polanski's middle-class angst drama Carnage.