There’s no safer formula than the biopic. It worked for Ray, Walk the Line, and Capote—and it seemed as though it could work for Fur, too, especially since most audiences know Diane Arbus only through her haunting photographs. But director Steven Shainberg was sick of Behind the Music clichés.



“No matter how good Will Smith may be playing Ali, or Ed Harris playing Pollock, that straight-ahead, greatest-hits approach doesn’t work for me,” says Shainberg, who broke through with the kinky indie Secretary. “You already know everything that is going to happen.”



So Shainberg decided to gamble. “This is not a biopic at all,” he says. “It’s an imaginary portrait that tries to capture the otherworldly, hallucinogenic, mythological quality of her photographs.”



Not in any obvious way, mind you: There will be no restaged photo shoots of Arbus, played by Nicole Kidman, and Eddie Carmel, the Jewish Giant (“Hokey,” says Shainberg). No answers to biographer Patricia Bos­worth’s allegation that Arbus slept with her subjects. And, most shocking, no third-act suicide.



“I didn’t want to just write a string of events,” says screenwriter and playwright Erin Cressida Wilson, “with her taking photographs of freaks and then she kills herself: Snap, snap, snap, kill … ”



Instead, Fur narrows the depth of field, focusing on Arbus’s life during just three months in 1958, long before her most influential work. “At the age of 35, with two children, having worked for fifteen years with her husband in their fashion-photography studio,” says Shainberg, “she came home one day and said, ‘I’m not going to work with you anymore. I’m going to take my own pictures.’ ”



In Fur, Arbus stews at home on the Upper West Side and fantasizes about a mysterious neighbor: Robert Downey Jr., who Shainberg says is a “metaphoric and literal freak—all the people she went out and photographed, rolled into one.”



It’s a juicy role for Downey, but Kidman will be the one in extreme close-up. “I wanted her stripped,” Shainberg says, noting that she can be “too contrived” in some Hollywood films. “I didn’t want Nicole to do Arbus, to walk like her—all that stuff actors do when they play real people.” Of course, that’s the stuff audiences (and Oscar voters) tend to like—a fact not lost on Shainberg: “I’m not sure that there’s ever been a film that deals with a real person this way,” he admits.



— Fur, Directed by Steven Shainberg, Picturehouse; opens November 10 ®.

From New York Magazine

thnx for the article, that was really nice. it gives some interesting insights to the film. I am really excited how it will turn out to be.
where did you find it?

Thanks .

Thanks for the article

From what I saw in the clips they will be showing on AH today, he did everything he set out to accomplish!

Thanks. Very interesting article.

Thanks for the article..interesting insight.

Thanks Montage for the heads up

and..... Welome to NKU

Thanx 4 da article Montage

~Viviana~

Cool article. Thanks Montage !!! I am so excited for this movie. It sounds so good and after reading this article, it sounds even better!!

I love Steven's point of view on biopics and how they are so mannered. The fact that he is trying to do something a bit edgy with this while still retaining a bit of Arbus' life(with, I know, fictional twists mixed in) makes this all the more exciting.

I would love it if this changed the way we look at "biopics" and how there is such a taboo that they MUST be made a certain way.

Pic with the article:

thanks for the article.. i cant wait to see this film! and thanks for the pic skanky~

Thanks, interesting article.

Very interesting, he sounds like a man with a vision. Of course, I can't agree with him about "plain" biopics being boring. I thought 'Walk the Line' was one of the best movies I ever saw But that's just Kackie's opinion.

Thanks Montage

thanks! i love the last part about nicole not mimicking the real person but instead working out from the inside which is a lot harder to work on. that's a very brazen statment from the director. oscar or no oscar, it'll definitely be worth the wait (and torture, depends on how one sees it with the long months of waiting and teaser photos. i was scarred by that but the trailer alone makes up for it ).

Thanks!