Michael Fassbender’s Brandon doesn’t enjoy most of the sex he’s having in “Shame.”

http://www.metro.us/newyork/entertainment/article/1039469--michael-fassbender-s-own-shame


Michael Fassbender’s Brandon doesn’t enjoy most of the sex he’s having in “Shame.”
Published: December 01, 2011 4:33 p.m.
Last modified: January 02, 2012 7:08 p.m.

Michael Fassbender has been talking about sex all day long. He’s looking a bit weary as he hunches over, elbows on his knees in the Crosby Street Hotel in New York, trying to explain how he could manage to simulate so many torrid scenes for his NC-17 film “Shame” - about a sex addict living in New York City. In between explaining to us what “fancy a root?” means in Australia (sex) and his ideal choice for an Oscar host (Tina Fey) the 34 year-old Irishman opened up about shooting so many scenes that demanded his full-frontal nudity. He didn’t mind that part, but watching them is another story.

“It was — I’m sure you understand, you just sort of imagine it was you — it’s odd. The faces that one (laughs) pulls in these encounters – I wanted it to be very honest without any filtering or anything,” Fassbender says with a slightly embarrassed grin. “So it’s kind of full on seeing yourself. It’s kind of like listening to your answering machine back on your phone system. That’s bad enough, so imagine yourself naked.”

Fassbender is having a particularly sexy year, given that he’s also starring in “A Dangerous Method” as psychotherapist Carl Jung, whose methods of treatment for a young woman become a bit, ahem, carnal. We wondered what Jung might’ve had to say to Fassbender’s “Shame” persona, Brandon.

“I think he’d first of all tell him that it’s all right,” he says. “To be maybe a little bit kinder to himself. I think Brandon maybe doesn’t like himself very much and so he sets about abusing himself and damaging himself. So that’s what he’d say and then he’d probably say, ‘go see my friend Ziggy Freud. He’s in Vienna and he’d probably be more suited to your case than I am.’”

Working with Steve McQueen
This is Fassbender’s second collaboration with artist turned director Steve McQueen, with whom he made “Hunger” about Irish poet and hunger striker Bobby Sands. With the two already set to make another feature together, “Twelve Years, a Slave” co-starring Brad Pitt. Fassbender explained what has made their partnership so unique.

“I don’t know. It’s just one of those things. It’s like chemistry,” he says. “It just sort of works. We’re both very comfortable being ourselves around each other with all the ugly attributes as well as the good. We’re very honest with each other and we demand the best from each other and ourselves. We’re trying our best and we trust each other so if we fall, we’re going to go down together and hopefully help each other back up again.”