Exclusive: Nick Stahl in ‘Quid Pro Quo’
Posted: June 18th, 2009 | Author: Jamie | Filed under: 2008 | Tags: Interview, Premiere, Quid Pro Quo | No Comments »PREMIERE – JUNE, 2008
Nick Stahl talks exclusively with Premiere about his new film, ‘Quid Pro Quo,’ a dark thriller that explores a shadowy subculture of disability fetishists.
By Karl Rozemeyer
What is that makes a sexy, able-bodied blonde bombshell not only a devotee of paraplegic men but also determined to live out her own life in a wheelchair? This is just one of the many puzzling questions explored in the thriller Quid Pro Quo, which stars Nick Stahl as Isaac, a semi-paralyzed journalist, and Vera Farmiga as Fiona, a beautiful wheelchair wannabe with a thing for leg braces and corsets.
An anonymous tip from someone who calls herself Ancient Chinese Girl leads Isaac into a subculture of people who seek various forms of amputation and/or paralysis at any cost. In the course of his investigation, Isaac meets Fiona and finds himself lured into her strange world, perhaps aware that a deeply buried truth about his past is inexplicably connected to her dark desires.
Nick Stahl (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Sin City, The Thin Red Line) chats exclusively with Premiere about the subculture of disability fetishists, the psychological and physical challenges of playing someone in a wheelchair, and acting opposite the red-hot Vera Farmiga.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS INTERVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
PREMIERE: The film explores a subculture I didn’t know very much about before the film.
I didn’t either, until we started. I had heard of them because there was [a] documentary about these people that want to be amputees or paralyzed, and so I knew it existed.
Did you do any research about voluntary amputees or wheelchair users first? The film explores the different types of fetishists: devotees, pretenders, wannabes, and then Vera’s character puts herself in a totally different category.
Yeah. I didn’t do as much research into that as probably Vera did, because I’m the guy who doesn’t know [about] it in the movie. I didn’t need to do that kind of research. The research I did for the movie was kind of being in a wheelchair and all that stuff, getting used to the wheelchair. Because I was sort of the detective in the movie, I was kind of finding out all this stuff as I went along, and so I really didn’t want to do the research to learn about all that stuff.
So, was it more about the physicality of the role?
Yeah. Well yes, that was a big factor, psychologically too, just — which is what I do pretty much for every movie I do, just to get a solid idea for where the character is coming from, and the character’s background, history, what they want in life and things like that.
Did you spend a lot of time in a wheelchair before going on set?
I did. I had a couple weeks. I didn’t have too much time, but yeah, for two weeks I wheeled around Manhattan.
That couldn’t have been easy…
No, it’s not, it’s not at all. It’s exhausting. Not just the traffic of people and stuff, but it’s physically exhausting. And the streets — you think they’re flat, but they’re slanted. If you’re going down a sidewalk, and it’s slanted sideways, you’re using one arm to stay up. And then if it’s uphill, of course, that’s really hard. And then curbs and things like that, it can get difficult. I was just trying not to fall out of it because then people would have freaked out around me.
Aside from the physical aspect, can you discuss the psychological impact of being wheelchair-bound? Did you experience anything like people regarding you as “half of a man”?
I did. Yeah, you get a kind of pity. I found it common for people to look away — and maybe that’s just New York in general — not make eye contact. People seemed to shy away or not want to acknowledge you, or pretend you’re not there, because I think when they see people with disabilities it strikes fear in people, sometimes. They inevitably think, “What if that was me?” And then there were the people that were overly nice, trying to push me. And I was like, “No, that’s OK.” Or [they were] opening doors… compensating in the other direction. So it was really interesting to see those reactions, kind of get a feel, a sense, of what Isaac had been experiencing for so many years.
When did you first come across this script?
They approached me about it. This was years ago. And it was taking them a while to get off the ground, to get money. In the meantime I started doing this show for HBO [Carnivàle], so once they finally got their money to do it, I was unavailable. I couldn’t do it anymore… Years later, all the elements kind of came together, and I was available and Vera was available and they had their money and so we just did it.
So did you and Vera spend much time together in order to get that intense chemistry?
Yeah, we did. We got along well. We didn’t really have to, in a way… We definitely had a certain rapport, I think, friendship and similar sensibilities in some ways. So yeah, I was really thrilled to work with such a dedicated professional actress.
The introduction of the magic shoes later on in the movie introduces an element of fantasy, and then Vera’s character suggests that perhaps Isaac suffers from hysterical paralysis. What’s your take on his sudden ability to walk?
I think it was just something that he had suppressed, and the pain that he still had about his parents and his life was preventing him from coming to terms with it. It’s about growing up maybe in a way, his evolution. And I knew that that can occur: hysterical paralysis… Your mind is very powerful, and [if] you’re told that you’re never going to walk again, you kind of give up hope and your mind doesn’t allow for you to ever walk again. But really you might have that ability again, you don’t know. So I just thought that whole idea was really interesting.
And your take on Vera’s character, her desire to be paralyzed and lose the ability to walk?
Well, to me, I always saw her character as just racked with so much pain and guilt over what she had done to this family that she felt like she deserved it.
And that’s where the wires between guilt and sexuality and all sorts of other aspects begin to entangle?
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.