"The Surrogate" praised at Sundance Film Festival, looks to be an early contender for next year’s Oscar season. Starring John Hawkes and Helen Hunt, the film was directed by Australian, Ben Lewin who had polio as a child and lost the use of his legs. At the Q&A after the premiere of the film at Sundance, Lewin– who approached the stage on crutches – and Hawkes received a rapturous standing ovation.


The film is based on the story “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate” by Mark O'Brien, the Berkeley journalist, author and poet whose life in an iron lung was captured in an Academy Award winning documentary, “Breathing Lessons.” He died at the age of 49 in 1999. Sandy Close, executive editor of the Pacific News Service, which bought some of Mr. O'Brien articles, called him ``an inspirational voice in the movement of disabled people to lead independent lives.''

The Wall Street Journal reported that Fox Searchlight has already picked up the rights to that film for $6 million, making it the biggest sale of the festival thus far. Other films, like Bradley Cooper's "The Words" and Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg's "Celeste and Jesse Forever" have sold for $3.5 million and $2 million, respectively.

 

Reprint from FilmMaker, the Magazine of Independent Film:

By Dan Schoenbrun in Sundance, Sundance Features

Filmmaker: How did you first come across Mark O’Brien’s story. . .What inspired you to adapt it?

Lewin: I stumbled across Mark’s article “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate” on the internet. I felt that if I could do on film what he had done to me with his writing, then I could potentially deliver something powerful.

Filmmaker: What kind of research did you do into O’Brien’s medical history? And how closely did you work with people who knew him personally

Lewin: I am very familiar with polio from my own experience and felt I understood Mark’s medical condition pretty well. I worked very closely with Susan Fernbach, Mark’s partner during the last few years of his life, and of course, Cheryl Cohen Greene, the surrogate.

Filmmaker: John Hawkes is a very versatile actor, but this role seems like quite a departure from the work he’s garnered acclaim for. What made you think he was right to play O’Brien?

Lewin: I was deeply impressed with the fact that John Hawkes strove to embrace the real Mark O’Brien as much as he possibly could.  It went beyond delivering a great performance. It became personal. I think he genuinely wanted to do this for Mark.

Filmmaker: Considering the obvious physical limitations, how did you work with John Hawkes and Helen Hunt to develop their on-screen chemistry?

Lewin: I was just there.  They created the chemistry themselves from their intense connection with the script and their determination to hold nothing back.  I think my major contribution was to edit their performance to maximum effect.

Filmmaker: What do you hope audiences take away from “The Surrogate”?

Lewin: One of the things I would like audiences to feel is that they have never seen anything quite like this before, and that their window into the experience has been both authentic and rare.