Bill Condon is the Oscar winning screenwriter and director Gods and Monsters which was released to great acclaim in 1998 and launched Ian McKellan as a legitimate film actor. Since then Condon wrote Chicago and finally brought to light his long gestating project Kinsey which is a look at the life of Alfred Kinsey, a pioneer in the area of human sexuality research, whose 1948 publication "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" was one of the first recorded works that saw science address sexual behavior.
Check out the official website of Kinsey
Daniel Robert Epstein: I got a chance to talk to TC Boyle about his fictional book on Kinsey, The Inner Circle. He did with Kinsey what you did with James Whale in Gods and Monsters. Did you ever think about doing that with Kinsey instead?
Bill Condon: No I didnt. Wait I should take that back because I did research for a year before I figured out which approach I should take. I would have preferred something like that because I am not a huge fan of biopics that cover the whole life. In Gods and Monsters it was just a brief moment in Whales life. As opposed to what Boyle is interested in my focus was on what made Kinsey into the kind of person that pulled off this extraordinary thing in this really unlikely time. So that meant I had to deal with his childhood, his father and his discovery of science. All of those things that led him on this course so it had to have this bigger scope.
DRE: Peter Sarsgaard swears that you delayed calling cut on his and Liams kiss.
BC: I know! I may have on the first couple of takes just to see how far it would go. I dont know where I thought it was going though. I guess every second felt like five minutes to him.
DRE: Is it a shock that Kinsey came about in the US and not in Europe?
BC: I think that is one of the amazing things about him and also that he did it the Midwest as well. People have speculated it was because most of the research was happening while the war was going on so nobody was paying attention. But I dont think he would have had the same impact overseas because studies like this have gone on through the 20th century, but here it had been so long since anyone had done it.
DRE: Why do you think Kinsey has faded into history?
BC: I think what happened is that he died at a moment when he was out of favor then the sexual revolution of the 60s happened and was so much bigger than anything he had done. He contributed to that but he was dead by then. Masters & Johnson and other people had popularized these kinds of studies so Kinsey felt kind of quaint. But his ideas are still relevant and revolutionary now.
DRE: Is the scene with Kinsey, the ruler and the size of endowment, fact?
BC: Yes it is. Kinsey measured everything including his own penis. He measured it over time to see if it got smaller. He was famously well endowed.
DRE: Kinsey is quite the hero to the gay community. Is that what attracted you to his story?
BC: A little bit. Although I was very careful as a gay filmmaker to not make a simple gay story out of this. Kinsey affected everyones lives and had a huge effect on the womens movement. He was truly one of the first feminists and was the first person to look at the physiology of the female orgasm or sex organs.
DRE: There are funny moments in the film. Was that a difficult balance?
BC: Its a really interesting thing because we never did typical test screenings of the movie, thank god. Fox Searchlight doesnt try to take movies like this and put it through that cookie cutter process. But you do show it to audiences and by design there was a lot of laughter because laughter is a way to get through anxiety on certain things. But when it would turn people werent still laughing nervously. That was what I was worried about. If you look at a scene like when Laura Linney is imitating John Lithgow as Kinseys father and Liam laughs then hes crying. Thats the power of the actor, to have people laughing then everyone is silent.
DRE: What made you put the animal sex over the closing credits?
BC: Thats footage from the Kinsey Institute. I had this other idea that when Liam and Laura are in the woods they would see two porcupines going at it. She had a line Maybe we should alert Congress. Then they leave and we land on the porcupines with a love song and shoot it like a love scene. I was surprised when I was looking at all this footage of animal sex at how much of it is pretty animalistic. But porcupines do a pretty dance with one another. We had a porcupine trainer and it turns out that they only do it during certain seasons. They finally came up with the idea that it would be with two gay porcupines and one of them would have a little scent on them. But we had so little money to do it so it never happened.
DRE: This film was in the works for many years. Were Liam and Laura always attached?
BC: They were attached early on and they are sort of the heroes of this story because they would hang in there. They would call every so often and ask how things were going. It was really wonderful.
DRE: Was the Bill Sadler pervert character real?
BC: Thats real. Whatever untrue charges are out that Kinsey tolerated pedophiles, comes from the fact that he interviewed one for 18 hours and used some of that data.
DRE: I read that Kinsey might have been a lot more tolerant than you portrayed him in that scene.
BC: No he was absolutely clear that he had no tolerance for anything beyond consensual sex and certainly nothing that harmed other people. People distort things because he wanted information so as you see in that scene he maintains a veneer of tolerance but it was clear from letters he wrote later.
DRE: Did what the pedophile said influence Kinsey to later mutilate himself?
BC: No, I love the idea that masochism is a reincarnation of prudery. Here you are raised with the notion that sex is shameful then you throw them all away as many do. But what happens to that idea? It doesnt just disappear and at a moment of great weakness when Kinsey felt the whole thing was a failure he finds himself punishing himself. Its almost as if the voice of his father returned telling him there is something bad about what hes done. Thats the tragedy of this; he was someone who was intent on saving other people from going through the same torment he went through. But like an artist you can never completely heal yourself like an artist.
DRE: As Kinsey got older he started crossing a lot of societal boundaries, was that because he was a straight ahead scientist or because he was rebelling against his upbringing?
BC: I think it was both. In some ways he was missing the bigger picture but I was always struck by what a risk taker he was. It reminds me of Kennedy in the White House. You read things now that just seem inconceivable. Kennedy was picking up girls with Ben Bradley but he could count on the fact that Ben wouldnt write about it. Kinsey was the same way. He was very active in the homosexual community in New York in 50s which would have been well known now.
DRE: He really seemed to enjoy his celebrity.
BC: Yes he really flowered under it. He had a huge ego and that was one of his major contradictions. Here he is saying he wanted to do this purely scientific thing but at the same time he becomes a social reformer by using the platform hes been given to work against the current sex offender codes and try to change peoples feelings on lots of things. That is part of what brought on the criticism later on.
DRE: What kind of cooperation did you get from the Kinsey family for the movie?
BC: The family was mostly represented by the couple of granddaughters who were very helpful and open. The daughters themselves are not a big part of the movie. But with his son, though there was no great big break as there was between Kinsey and his father, but the son was more than mildly embarrassed by all the attention, so he separated himself somewhat from it. But the two daughters remained close to their parents and live in Indiana. They have just recently seen the film and liked it for the most part. Their one problem with it is its depiction of all of the sexual activity, both of them sleeping with Clyde, all of which is true. These were things that the Kinseys kept from their children and none of it was revealed until Paul Gebhard talked to these biographers in the 90s. So imagine being in your 70s and finding out these things about your parents. They still resist the idea that that ever happened.
DRE: So his son didnt want to have anything to do with the movie?
BC: Right but not in any kind of aggressive way. I think were going to have a premiere in Bloomington Indiana on Nov. 13 and I think hes going to come to that.
DRE: What was it like working with the Kinsey Institute?
BC: They were good for the most part. Theyve gone through periods where theyve been kind of more closed out especially when some of these real extremists have gotten in there and really distorted things, so theyve gotten a little wary. But they were open and then more open when Liam came, and I think theres just a sense of trusting that hes not going to go in there and get involved in some movie thats going to simplify or attack Kinsey. Though there were things I would have loved to have seen that I couldnt see. For example, to see the way Kinsey actually shot his films, just as a filmmaker, was something that really interested me and they wouldnt do it, which I understand. Its 50 years later, but still they were made under the promise of anonymity, although you know, so many of them are simply close-ups of genitals, I dont know how I would have been able to tell who they were. That was a shame. I was never looking for an endorsement from them. This is not an officially sanctioned version of him and for them; theyre not looking to put their name on the movie either.
DRE: In 2004 I think this country is more conservative than ever. How will that affect Kinseys box-office potential?
BC: I love to quote Gathorne-Hardy's biography of Kinsey, America is the most licentious culture since Rome and is the puritanical culture ever invented. Both things are always happening at once in our society. For people who are conservative see it as a culture that is awash in sexual imagery and the power structure has been taken over by those people. Its going to be interesting with Kinsey coming out because I do think that sex is something that gets talked about a lot. The movie acts as a kind of litmus test for this. As a film buff I know of hundreds of movies that have more explicit sexual content than this movie but I dont know any movie that talks about sex as relentlessly as this film. It does test peoples comfort levels.
DRE: You have a shot of a penis entering a vagina. Did you have trouble getting the R rating?
BC: No I was stunned; we were all ready for a fight. They called us and said that they had a contentious debate, they were going to give us a hard R for pervasive sexual content and said thank you we learned a lot.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website of Kinsey
Daniel Robert Epstein: I got a chance to talk to TC Boyle about his fictional book on Kinsey, The Inner Circle. He did with Kinsey what you did with James Whale in Gods and Monsters. Did you ever think about doing that with Kinsey instead?
Bill Condon: No I didnt. Wait I should take that back because I did research for a year before I figured out which approach I should take. I would have preferred something like that because I am not a huge fan of biopics that cover the whole life. In Gods and Monsters it was just a brief moment in Whales life. As opposed to what Boyle is interested in my focus was on what made Kinsey into the kind of person that pulled off this extraordinary thing in this really unlikely time. So that meant I had to deal with his childhood, his father and his discovery of science. All of those things that led him on this course so it had to have this bigger scope.
DRE: Peter Sarsgaard swears that you delayed calling cut on his and Liams kiss.
BC: I know! I may have on the first couple of takes just to see how far it would go. I dont know where I thought it was going though. I guess every second felt like five minutes to him.
DRE: Is it a shock that Kinsey came about in the US and not in Europe?
BC: I think that is one of the amazing things about him and also that he did it the Midwest as well. People have speculated it was because most of the research was happening while the war was going on so nobody was paying attention. But I dont think he would have had the same impact overseas because studies like this have gone on through the 20th century, but here it had been so long since anyone had done it.
DRE: Why do you think Kinsey has faded into history?
BC: I think what happened is that he died at a moment when he was out of favor then the sexual revolution of the 60s happened and was so much bigger than anything he had done. He contributed to that but he was dead by then. Masters & Johnson and other people had popularized these kinds of studies so Kinsey felt kind of quaint. But his ideas are still relevant and revolutionary now.
DRE: Is the scene with Kinsey, the ruler and the size of endowment, fact?
BC: Yes it is. Kinsey measured everything including his own penis. He measured it over time to see if it got smaller. He was famously well endowed.
DRE: Kinsey is quite the hero to the gay community. Is that what attracted you to his story?
BC: A little bit. Although I was very careful as a gay filmmaker to not make a simple gay story out of this. Kinsey affected everyones lives and had a huge effect on the womens movement. He was truly one of the first feminists and was the first person to look at the physiology of the female orgasm or sex organs.
DRE: There are funny moments in the film. Was that a difficult balance?
BC: Its a really interesting thing because we never did typical test screenings of the movie, thank god. Fox Searchlight doesnt try to take movies like this and put it through that cookie cutter process. But you do show it to audiences and by design there was a lot of laughter because laughter is a way to get through anxiety on certain things. But when it would turn people werent still laughing nervously. That was what I was worried about. If you look at a scene like when Laura Linney is imitating John Lithgow as Kinseys father and Liam laughs then hes crying. Thats the power of the actor, to have people laughing then everyone is silent.
DRE: What made you put the animal sex over the closing credits?
BC: Thats footage from the Kinsey Institute. I had this other idea that when Liam and Laura are in the woods they would see two porcupines going at it. She had a line Maybe we should alert Congress. Then they leave and we land on the porcupines with a love song and shoot it like a love scene. I was surprised when I was looking at all this footage of animal sex at how much of it is pretty animalistic. But porcupines do a pretty dance with one another. We had a porcupine trainer and it turns out that they only do it during certain seasons. They finally came up with the idea that it would be with two gay porcupines and one of them would have a little scent on them. But we had so little money to do it so it never happened.
DRE: This film was in the works for many years. Were Liam and Laura always attached?
BC: They were attached early on and they are sort of the heroes of this story because they would hang in there. They would call every so often and ask how things were going. It was really wonderful.
DRE: Was the Bill Sadler pervert character real?
BC: Thats real. Whatever untrue charges are out that Kinsey tolerated pedophiles, comes from the fact that he interviewed one for 18 hours and used some of that data.
DRE: I read that Kinsey might have been a lot more tolerant than you portrayed him in that scene.
BC: No he was absolutely clear that he had no tolerance for anything beyond consensual sex and certainly nothing that harmed other people. People distort things because he wanted information so as you see in that scene he maintains a veneer of tolerance but it was clear from letters he wrote later.
DRE: Did what the pedophile said influence Kinsey to later mutilate himself?
BC: No, I love the idea that masochism is a reincarnation of prudery. Here you are raised with the notion that sex is shameful then you throw them all away as many do. But what happens to that idea? It doesnt just disappear and at a moment of great weakness when Kinsey felt the whole thing was a failure he finds himself punishing himself. Its almost as if the voice of his father returned telling him there is something bad about what hes done. Thats the tragedy of this; he was someone who was intent on saving other people from going through the same torment he went through. But like an artist you can never completely heal yourself like an artist.
DRE: As Kinsey got older he started crossing a lot of societal boundaries, was that because he was a straight ahead scientist or because he was rebelling against his upbringing?
BC: I think it was both. In some ways he was missing the bigger picture but I was always struck by what a risk taker he was. It reminds me of Kennedy in the White House. You read things now that just seem inconceivable. Kennedy was picking up girls with Ben Bradley but he could count on the fact that Ben wouldnt write about it. Kinsey was the same way. He was very active in the homosexual community in New York in 50s which would have been well known now.
DRE: He really seemed to enjoy his celebrity.
BC: Yes he really flowered under it. He had a huge ego and that was one of his major contradictions. Here he is saying he wanted to do this purely scientific thing but at the same time he becomes a social reformer by using the platform hes been given to work against the current sex offender codes and try to change peoples feelings on lots of things. That is part of what brought on the criticism later on.
DRE: What kind of cooperation did you get from the Kinsey family for the movie?
BC: The family was mostly represented by the couple of granddaughters who were very helpful and open. The daughters themselves are not a big part of the movie. But with his son, though there was no great big break as there was between Kinsey and his father, but the son was more than mildly embarrassed by all the attention, so he separated himself somewhat from it. But the two daughters remained close to their parents and live in Indiana. They have just recently seen the film and liked it for the most part. Their one problem with it is its depiction of all of the sexual activity, both of them sleeping with Clyde, all of which is true. These were things that the Kinseys kept from their children and none of it was revealed until Paul Gebhard talked to these biographers in the 90s. So imagine being in your 70s and finding out these things about your parents. They still resist the idea that that ever happened.
DRE: So his son didnt want to have anything to do with the movie?
BC: Right but not in any kind of aggressive way. I think were going to have a premiere in Bloomington Indiana on Nov. 13 and I think hes going to come to that.
DRE: What was it like working with the Kinsey Institute?
BC: They were good for the most part. Theyve gone through periods where theyve been kind of more closed out especially when some of these real extremists have gotten in there and really distorted things, so theyve gotten a little wary. But they were open and then more open when Liam came, and I think theres just a sense of trusting that hes not going to go in there and get involved in some movie thats going to simplify or attack Kinsey. Though there were things I would have loved to have seen that I couldnt see. For example, to see the way Kinsey actually shot his films, just as a filmmaker, was something that really interested me and they wouldnt do it, which I understand. Its 50 years later, but still they were made under the promise of anonymity, although you know, so many of them are simply close-ups of genitals, I dont know how I would have been able to tell who they were. That was a shame. I was never looking for an endorsement from them. This is not an officially sanctioned version of him and for them; theyre not looking to put their name on the movie either.
DRE: In 2004 I think this country is more conservative than ever. How will that affect Kinseys box-office potential?
BC: I love to quote Gathorne-Hardy's biography of Kinsey, America is the most licentious culture since Rome and is the puritanical culture ever invented. Both things are always happening at once in our society. For people who are conservative see it as a culture that is awash in sexual imagery and the power structure has been taken over by those people. Its going to be interesting with Kinsey coming out because I do think that sex is something that gets talked about a lot. The movie acts as a kind of litmus test for this. As a film buff I know of hundreds of movies that have more explicit sexual content than this movie but I dont know any movie that talks about sex as relentlessly as this film. It does test peoples comfort levels.
DRE: You have a shot of a penis entering a vagina. Did you have trouble getting the R rating?
BC: No I was stunned; we were all ready for a fight. They called us and said that they had a contentious debate, they were going to give us a hard R for pervasive sexual content and said thank you we learned a lot.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
missy:
Bill Condon is the Oscar winning screenwriter and director Gods and Monsters which was released to great acclaim in 1998 and launched Ian McKellan as a legitimate film actor. Since then Condon wrote Chicago and finally brought to light his long gestating project Kinsey which is a look at the life...