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James McAvoy, Daniel Radcliffe & Paul McGuigan
Reveal Their Inner Monsters In Victor Frankenstein
by Brad Balfour
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In an attempt to reboot another franchise, 20th Century Fox has pulled a genre bender on the Frankenstein tale – that of a creature created not by God, but by a man’s use of science and insane passion. Thanks to the late British actor Boris Karloff’s classic portrayal of the creature, we have an image of a tragic person cocooned within a monstrous body.
Still, what do we really know about his creator, Victor Frankenstein? As directed by vet actioneer Paul McGuigan, a new feature, Victor Frankenstein, tries to answer that question while alternating between being a bromance, a detective story and a tragedy.
Title character/protagonist of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the human Frankenstein was a scientist who crossed the study of chemistry with that of decaying beings. He gains insight into creation and gives life to a creature which is often referred to as Frankenstein’s monster, and incorrectly, as “Frankenstein.”
While many subsequent film adaptations (notably the 1931 Frankenstein movie, its sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, and Hammer’s productions starring Peter Cushing) Frankenstein has been portrayed as the prototypical “mad scientist.” In the original novel he’s a tragic figure, not unlike the character played by British film star James McAvoy in this about to be released reboot.
Told from the perspective of troubled assistant Igor (played by Daniel Radcliffe), the helper’s dark origins as a hunchbacked circus clown and virtual slave to its ringmaster are first explained in Victor Frankenstein, though not by Victor Frankenstein. In order to manage his ordeal, he teaches himself the medical knowledge of the day and provides the circus with a crude paramedic. When young medical student Frankenstein comes to the circus searching for animal parts, the two establish a quick rapport. This results in Igor’s escape to the medical experimenter’s clandestine quarters. Their friendship transforms Igor from hunchback to protégé.
Through Igor’s eyes, the audience witnesses Frankenstein’s emergence as the man introduced in Mary Shelley’s classic novel – one obsessed with creating life – who further develops into the demonic cinematic icon fixed in the collective pop consciousness.
Eventually, their experiments draw attention from wrathful authorities and a deceitful benefactor; Dr. Frankenstein and Igor become fugitives as they achieve their goal to use science to create life from death. Intoxicated by his obsession, Frankenstein strives at all cost in a remote castle laboratory to bring his creation to life. By this point, Igor has realized his mentor’s folly and seeks to prevent this being from happening.
Both Radcliffe and McAvoy have been genre audience favorites for years now, giving life to other historical icons from the printed page – the 26 year old Brit Radcliffe became Harry Potter and the 36 year-old Scotsman McAvoy developed The X-Men’s lead mutant Charles Xavier as a young man. Both draw on substantial acting chops, not just by defining these iconic figures but in handling substantial thespian chores in such films as The Last King of Scotland and Atonement (for McAvoy), and tough Broadway roles such as The Cripple of Inishmaan (for Radcliffe).
Director/producer McGuigan is also no stranger to transforming genre films with twists upon twists; just review his catalogue which includes such films as Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Push (2009) and Wicker Park (2004). Add to the creative team quirky writer Max Landis, who lends his own unique take, previously purveyed in the 2012 sci-fi thriller Chronicle and 2015 slacker spy caper American Ultra.
In applying all their talents, they’ve made a film together that will either win ardent fans or parse them away because it toys so much with the clichés that audiences have been familiar with. To tell us all about this, the trio of McGuigan, Radcliffe and McAvoy joined a gaggle of journalists at the Crosby Hotel – transforming us all into mad scientists.
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How different were your roles from the preconceptions we have about Victor and Igor?
James McAvoy: I think Victor has always been maniacally obsessed, way back to Mary Shelley’s original [onward]. What I felt we really went for is that in a true sense and we tried to investigate that in a real Post-Freudian world and not just go, “Well he’s a bit energetic and a bit obsessed.”
Halfway through the book he goes on vacation and comes back completely healthy and sane and goes, “Oh what, the monster’s alive? Thank goodness, I’m really healthy. I can go kill it.”
Whereas we tried to stay in a post-Freudian world, which is why he’s so maniacal, so hyper and bi-polar. It’s not just because it is who he is. It’s not just because he’s a mad scientist. Find the reason for that and then run with it for the whole movie. Don’t let him off the hook halfway through the movie, so that that when he has to go off and do the bad thing at the end – which is kill his own creation. We’re suddenly on his side because he’s now a good guy. We try and keep him discomfiting; we try and keep him that quixotic, mercurial character all the way through.
Daniel Radcliffe: The thing that I liked so much about the script was that it took a lot of different preconceptions about Frankenstein, ideas people have about the story – or think they know – and twisted them and played around with them and had real fun with that. Part of that was obviously giving Igor a back story and some real depth – more than we’ve seen in terms of that character before – and finding out why he would have this incredible loyalty to Victor. Despite how bad he’s treated a lot of the time, why that never waivers at all.
It was to have him be this little creature living an abject, horrible life at the beginning of the film. Then he’s saved from that, and brought into this world where he’s empowered in terms of he’s got a say and a purpose in life. For me, that was very key into how you can suddenly understand his insane devotion to this man even when it’s being tested.
And he’s lost his hunchback.
Daniel Radcliffe: That was one of the things I liked in the script. James touched on this earlier, you have to find ways of honoring all those clichés at the beginning of the film like we do. Then you can have some real fun subverting the other ideas that people have about them.
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Paul McGuigan: Max’s script starts off in a very interesting place because we don’t actually get to the point that people are familiar with until to very late on in the film. It was interesting to give Victor Frankenstein back his name a little bit, because when you’re told of Frankenstein, you think of the monster. It was nice to actually play with that a bit. Of course at some point in the film, he does become a monster, so there was an interesting throughline. In the beginning of reading the script, you go, “That’s interesting, I never thought about that.”
But it’s not just a monster movie, it’s a relationship film, about two men who have a commonality in their passion for science and anatomy. That was interesting to visualize at the beginning of the film, so people understand we’re at the commonality that is between them and then it just became about this relationship.
James McAvoy: It’s a book of two halves. The first half is about a scientist’s obsession. The second half is much more a Pinocchio story. An existential development of a monster going, “I want to be a real boy.” We still get that Pinocchio story, but we get it through Daniel’s character. The film is about people, human beings, people that actually exist and about scientists.
Max has said the reason he was inspired to write this was [because of] the advent of Facebook. People at the forefront of technological capability [are] using that to implement a massive change in the way we live our lives. That’s why he was inspired to write [this] Frankenstein. It’s about two guys with the keys to the kingdom or the fire of the Gods in their hands, doing stuff that could be terrible or could change the world for the better – you never know – and how they’re always vilified. Then in five years, we’re doing stem cell research anyway. It’s about those people rather than just the monster – but it’s still got cool monster **** in this one.
You both have played and defined now iconic characters such as Harry Potter and Professor X. What did you learn in defining icons here?
James McAvoy: Trying to marry up what Max wrote. He’s writing something that is not just an adaptation of the book. It’s not just a remake of an adaptation of previous films, cartoons, comic books, Halloween costumes. It’s a combination of the entire zeitgeist-driven collective consciousness perception that we have of what the word “Frankenstein” means. That’s why there’s an Igor in it when he was never in the book. That’s why other stuff happens.
For me it was about trying to marry up the entertainment value – this has to be an entertainment in the same way that Mary Shelley’s book was – and it has to be slightly dicey at times and controversial [as well]. That’s harder to do these days. People are not as disturbed easily. They’re not. We’re not as disturbed by a movie that shows two guys trying to become God as much as when she wrote that book, when it would have been a massive public outcry and revolutionary. Apart from [that, there was] the fact it was a ****ing woman writing the book, that was another level of “What?”
That was the stuff that was controversial back then. It’s going to be hard for us now to be controversial. But we still want to make people [are] a little bit shocked sometimes. A little bit grossed out. Make it a piece of entertainment, a solid piece of fun at the theater at the same time as making it about somebody who is so driven by… What? It doesn’t really allude to it in the book so we had to try and find what that was.
In our case what we found, and what Max wrote, was of loss and grief. He’s got this massive hole inside him that no matter how much he tries to fill it in, it doesn’t get any smaller. It just gets bigger and bigger. His ego compensates and he becomes a God in his own head. He’s very close to achieving the qualifying factor for becoming a God. The prime requisite for becoming a God is creating life. He’s nearly there, so he feels pretty massive and God-like. Those were some of the things that really formed it all in my head, trying to marry up the manic energy that was needed for the entertainment value of the film along with a lot of truth that fueled it more than just “Hey, we’re having fun!”
Paul McGuigan: If you take these two guys as actors and think about it as a filmmaker, you go, “What does James bring to this? What does Daniel bring?” If you look at it as the analogy of a person or a human, then you would say James is the heartbeat and Daniel is the soul of the film. That was interesting, a certain dynamic happened straight away from day one of filming where you have two very smart men who got that completely. For a filmmaker who is watching and observing as you do, you can see that energy and compassion. They both flip over at one point. You could swap them around because of the journey we go through in the movie itself.
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Daniel Radcliffe: The thing I loved about the script when I read it was that it was this big, bold, unapologetically entertaining cinematic action-adventure movie [which] also had at the heart of it this great and really interesting relationship story between these two guys that’s quite a toxic relationship in some ways. They’re both essential to each other, but I get damaged by him at times. There was a sweetness to Igor as it was written. There is no side to him. There’s no edge. What you see is what you get. There’s an honesty to how grateful he is to have been taken into this world that I found very appealing. I was trying to make that as real as possible, I suppose.
Did your working relationship mirror in any way the dynamic between Victor and Igor?
Daniel Radcliffe: Thankfully it didn’t mirror the relationship between the characters at all, in the sense that it was quite an abusive relationship. I think we’re fairly similar in terms of our work ethic and the fact that we take the job seriously. We’re focused but also, we’re not saving lives – it is about having fun. We’re lucky that we get to work in an industry where we can have a lot of fun while doing our jobs. It was great but thankfully, I was not indebted to James forever and he was [not] abusing me and hitting me. No, it wasn’t like that.
James McAvoy: For me the roles were reversed in one big way. Daniel is the most professional actor I’ve ever worked with in my life. I’m quite a professional actor and I pride myself in being very professional but to be like, “Wow, I’m learning from him.” That was kind of nuts.
Daniel Radcliffe: That’s weird…
James McAvoy: Just because you’re ten years younger than me, if not more, but actually you’re way more experienced than I am and hugely professional. Way more professional than some people I’ve worked with who have been in the business for 40 years. It’s nuts. It’s to be admired. We love each other!
Daniel Radcliffe: I’m dying over here.
Paul McGuigan: It makes me want to throw up. I’d work with James and Daniel in a heartbeat because seeing the amount of effort. They talk about being professional, but it goes beyond that. If you want to be smart, you just get the people that you know that are your favorite actors that you like to work with.
Daniel Radcliffe: I had heard lots of wonderful, lovely things about James and they all transpired to be true. Everybody had said the same thing to me, because I’ve got a lot of friends who I say to, “I’m working with this person, I’m working with that person,” Across the board when I said I was working with James, they said, “Oh you’re really going to enjoy that.” People thought of us as being kind of similar, and I do think we have a fairly similar work ethic. It wasn’t so much being surprised as discovering all the pleasant things I’d heard were true which is nice!
James McAvoy: On my first day on set, they came to my trailer door and said, “James, we need you on set.” I thought, “I’m ready, Well done me, I’m straight out of my trailer and not keeping anyone waiting.” I was quietly proud of myself. Then I’m walking to set and I heard Daniel literally running to set. I thought, “Is he going to do that every day? Because otherwise I’m going to lose weight by competitively trying to get there before him.” Daniel’s enthusiasm for what it is we do sounds like it should be taken for granted but it’s actually not always the case.
There are a lot of people who have a very self-harming, dysfunctional relationship with acting. It’s not good for them. They don’t like it. It makes them feel horrible. They want to hurt themselves and hate everybody for making them do it. Yet they’re really successful and have been doing it for a long time. Whereas what’s really cool about Daniel is [that he’s like], “This is our job. We’re good at it, really enjoy doing it. Yes, some days are harder than others and some days aren’t fun. But that’s life.” I just love that attitude because there’s no level of front to get through before you get to “shall we do some nice work and enjoy ourselves?”
How was it working with the bio-mashed-up creation called Gordon (the first creature Victor reanimates) in its digital and physical incarnations – it’s even weirder than the Monster?
James McAvoy: Gordon was great. We’ve discovered on the press tour that actually not everyone thinks Gordon is very cute! Because you spend so much time around him, you get a little de-sensitized! It’s like when you hear about people who work with the Muppets. You don’t talk to the animators, you just talk to the Muppets after awhile. It was similar with Gordon for me. I would go up and do something to him. Then the guys operating him would see that I was doing something and would make him respond, at which point you completely forget there are three guys in a box operating this and you start interacting with it. It was one of my favorite animatronics creature effects ever. Tia, a stunt girl in a grey suit who I got to do a lot of my fighting with, played Gordon. She was awesome too.
Paul McGuigan: I got to be Frankenstein doing Gordon! He was just called Gordon in the script. I thought what is Gordon? So I went to London Zoo and thought, “I’ll have a bit of you, I’ll have a bit of that. I’ll have a bit of this” and take it all back to these amazing animatronics people. Until the point when Gordon starts running, it becomes the CG version, but until that point it’s animatronics and old school, which I like. Also these guys were doing their own stunts. [Daniel] was hanging off a staircase with a stunt girl attached to him and James did all his own stuff as well. Gordon became a metaphor for how the film was. It’s there in front of you and we made it with different parts of animals. It’s part hyena, part monkey, with a dog’s leg there as well.
James McAvoy: There’s a deer’s leg there as well – Bambi’s leg!
Daniel Radcliffe: And there’s a cheetah there.
Paul McGuigan: It only has four legs!
James McAvoy: Holy ****, you put a horse’s what in there!!??
Paul McGuigan: That’s why he’s running so fast.
ames McAvoy: That’s why he beat me in the fight because I was intimidated by his girth! When we got the script – you know the film Flash Gordon? Brian Blessed, for me there’s an iconic line where he says, “Gordon’s alive! Gordon’s alive!” I thought I’d get to do that in this film. I think I did do it and it got cut. That’s my homage to Brian Blessed up the swanny!
Daniel Radcliffe: That’s a real shame!
The film is about friendship and loyalty. What is your friendship like with you having matching haircuts and all?
James McAvoy: It’s a fashion thing.
Paul McGuigan: It’s a boy band. Unfortunately I’m the guy behind them, I’m the drummer.
James McAvoy: He’s the guy that writes all the songs.
C’mon, why the short hair? What’s the deal with the matching buzzcuts?
James McAvoy: I thought he was getting way too much attention with his short hair so I thought, “**** it!”
Daniel Radcliffe: We’re both super right-wing now…
James McAvoy: It’s the new cool thing.
Daniel Radcliffe: They’re both for roles. I’ve just been playing an FBI guy who goes undercover with a bunch of Nazi white supremacists. That’s why I have this.
James McAvoy: I’m not doing that but I just started filming a new gig in Philly and that’s the haircut for that part.
How did the hunchback depletion scene get developed – the one where Victor establishes that Igor hump is actually an abscess?
James McAvoy: You mean pus in your mouth!
Daniel Radcliffe: It developed a lot…
James McAvoy: To the horror of our producers!
Paul McGuigan: James comes on set and asks for something that looks like pus that he can put in his mouth and everyone was like, “Really?” It was his first day on set because we’d done a week of shooting before he was available to us. He came on set and looked at Dan like he looks in the film, when he looks at him and goes, “Okay, you’re ready?” I thought, “Oh My God, he’s going to kill him!” James is very physical, Dan is as well, so it was an interesting day. That scene to me sums up the movie to me in a sense – the physicality, smart dialogue, the interaction between the two and the transformation.
Daniel Radcliffe: And the grossness.
James McAvoy: When I read the first scene at the circus which is a bit of a cheesy, action scene. That was there and that helped set the tone but for me; all the other scenes between Daniel and I seemed really physical. On paper, I don’t know whether it was what Max intended or whether we brought that. I feel we brought it a bit. I feel the film needed energy and pace and you can do that with editing, music and “Crash, Bang, Wallop!” But I felt we needed to provide that physical energy. The siphoning off the hump was in the script, but the actual idea of siphoning off what the hump contained in terms of the way people sometimes do with gasoline. Did I mention it to you in New York? I was like, “I want to do this. I’ve got this idea.” You were like, “Cool.”
We got there the day before we shot to have a quick rehearsal. I said to the prop guys we need some rubber hosing. “What’s he talking about?” We got the rubber hosing and we did it and everybody kept thinking, “This just is not going to work.” Arguably a lot of the audience might think, “Whoa that didn’t work for me” but we managed to get it to work. I’m really proud of myself.
And that line?
James McAvoy: That was me. It was made up. There’s a lot of made-up **** in every movie and you don’t necessarily talk about it or anything like that. For every one line that you make up that gets into a movie, there are 15 that get cast aside because they are terribly over-egging the pudding. Sometimes you need to add those things in – even if they are wrong – to learn what is right about what’s already in the script.
Paul McGuigan: It’s always a good day for me when you make all the old Fox producers very nervous. They were great by the way, but one took me aside and said, “Is he going to do that all the time?” I was like, “Yep, that’s the way we’re going to do it.” He’s quite literally humping him at one point. They were like, “Okay, this is an interesting dynamic.”
Daniel Radcliffe: It was great. It was so funny. I just remember the paling faces of producers when I walked off set. There were a couple of people looking… [terrified]. A making-of featurette of a South Park episode had a line where Trey Parker said, “We always know we’re doing really well when our producer looks terrified. That’s a good rule of thumb.”
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Harry: "I'm lucky to have you, aren't I?" Ginny: "Extremely." ~ Harry Potter and the Cursed Child icon art by lulu
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