Trust first came to life on stage at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago. Before it was a movie with an R rating, it was a play that sometimes affected the audience so deeply that people had to leave, especially during the scene where a 14-year-old girl is raped by a 35-year-old man she met on the internet.
The rape on stage is shown as if the perpetrator videotaped it for future viewing. In the movie, the audience sees only a suggestion of the actual event, in momentary flashbacks. The reality of its aftermath is what packs the emotional wallop.
David Schwimmer directed both versions.
Yes, that David Schwimmer, known to TV audiences as Ross, the moon-eyed romantic in "Friends," and to animated film fans as the voice of Melman the giraffe in Madagascar.
Serious drama is Schwimmer's first love. He has long been interested in directing. As one of the founding fathers of Lookingglass, he spent seven years developing the story line for Trust.
Schwimmer has a personal investment in the subject, serving for 14 years on the Board of Directors of the Rape Foundation in Santa Monica.
During the film's U.S. premiere week of April 1, 2011, he told CBS' Early Show that the main purpose of the play and film is to encourage people with children to be "a more present parent."
David Schwimmer set the example by being present to his actors in Trust
He takes a special interest in the young people he casts, wanting them to have a positive experience although the characters they portray are immersed in a negative and painful story. Liana Liberato, the 13-year-old who played 14-year-old Annie, was given full control by Schwimmer over who could be present for the rape scene.
"David wanted Liana to feel safe and comfortable during that very difficult piece of filming," noted Spencer Curnutt, a Roosevelt University student who was cast as Peter, the rape victim's brother, in the Lookingglass production. Curmutt auditioned for and won the role in the movie as well, with Schwimmer's encouragement.
Curnutt's grandmother, Darlyn Hughes, a nurse in Bradenton, Florida, told Suite 101 how impressed she has been with Schwimmer's nurturing of her grandson and the other young actors in the cast.
"He takes special care of them, emotionally, because these roles are not lightweight. If the audience finds Trust hard to bear, you can imagine how it might be for the cast."
Hughes and her husband drove to St. Petersburg to see Curnutt's performance on the big screen because Millennium's distribution of Trust has been limited to very few Florida theaters so far.
Spencer Curnutt, reached by phone on a break from touring in his current role as an ensemble member of Mary Zimmerman's production of Candide, expressed hope that the movie will have a wider viewership when it is released on DVD/Blu-Ray in July and opens in Europe then, too. In the meantime, it may receive considerably more exposure through its recent acquisition by Lionsgate.
Curnutt reflected on the powerful effect of the play, going beyond the usual fourth-wall limitations of theatre by having the perpetrator come out of the audience when the "Charley" character comes to meet Annie. "David did something similar when he left in the footage at the end of the film, where you can see that the rapist could be anybody - anybody's teacher, even a father himself."
When asked to explain the movie's R-rating, Curnutt reasoned that it came about not because of the sexual violence suggested in the film, but because of the conversational use of the F-word in the script.
Schwimmer refused to censor the very real tensions reflected in the dialogue, especially as Annie's father, portrayed by Clive Owen, goes off the deep end, attacking strangers he imagines are online sexual predators and interfering with the FBI's case by stealing evidence provided by Teen Talk, the fictional chat room where Annie met the man who signed himself ChRLeeCA.
The irony is that movies with much more sex and violence than Trust do not get R ratings.
Curnutt said the cast understood Schwimmer's artistic decision to keep the realistic language in the film. "It would sound silly if milder language were inserted, just for the sake of a PG rating."
Trust premiered to enthusiastic response at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2010.
The cast is strong all the way through, with Owen portraying Annie and Peter's father and two-time Oscar nominee Catherine Keener as their mother. Keener's Academy Award nominations were for Being John Malkovich and Capote.
The role of a social worker who provides a safe harbor as Annie's rape counselor is played by Viola Davis, whose 2008 part in Doubt involved another abused child.
Roger Ebert's pronouncement that "David Schwimmer has made one of the year's best films" has so far not been reflected at the box office.
Ebert's assessment of "Trust" as "powerfully emotional, yes, but also very perceptive" should continue to draw serious film buffs who relish a challenging cinematic experience.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children praised Schwimmer for trying to "awaken the nation and motivate America’s parents to learn more and do more to keep their children safe."
Sources
- Trust Is Described as a Frightening Call to Action that Every Parent and Teenager Need to See, Press Release, April 12, 2011, NCMEC, Alexandria, Virginia.
- Ebert, Roger. Trust Movie Review, March 31, 2011, Chicago Sun-Times.
- Conversation with Darlyn Hughes, Baywalk MUVICO, St. Petersburg, Florida, April 23, 2011
- Telephone interviews with Spenser Curnutt, April 26 and May 12, 2011.
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