Foxcatcher has been been garnering accolades for the transformative performances of Steve Carrell and Channing Tatum since director Bennett Miller won best director at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. But even as Foxcatcher racks up piles of year-end top 10 list nods, its reputation might be about the take a major hit. Mark Schultz, the Olympic wrestler portrayed by Channing in the film, is saying that Tatum’s portrayal of him is a blatant misrepresentation of the real story surrounding Foxcatcher .
Mark’s sudden vitriol for the film is off-putting for a few reasons, the primary one being how much praise he has been heaping on Channing and Steve in the lead-up to awards season. Schultz went as far as to post on his personal Facebook that Tatum and Carell were clear victors for 2014’s male acting categories. The last post Mark wrote praising the two men went up on Sunday.
Something that happened in the last 24 hours seems to have changed Schultz’s tune significantly. Instead of talking up Channing and Steve, he’s going for the throat of Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller. Along with other complaints of factual inaccuracies, Mark is now saying that the director coaxed performances from Carell and Tatum that insinuated that there had been a sexual relationship between Schultz and his brother’s killer, John du Pont. Wednesday morning, Mark struck back.
YOU CROSSED THE LINE MILLER. WE’RE DONE. YOU’RE CAREER IS OVER. YOU THINK I CAN’T DO IT. WATCH ME.
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014
YOU THINK I’M GOING TO SIT BACK AND WATCH YOU DESTROY MY NAME AND REPUTATION I SWEAT BLOOD FOR. YOU AINT’ SEEN NOTHING YET DUDE.
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014
Everything I’ve ever said positive about the movie I take back. I hate it. i hate it. i hate it. I hate it. i hate it. i hate it. I hate it
— Mark Schultz (@MarkSchultzy) December 31, 2014
The above tweets are only a small sampling of the anger Mark heaps on Miller for the way Steve and Channing portray the characters on which the film is based. Though it is impossible to pinpoint why Schultz began to turn on the movie, one of his earliest complaints is about a scene that some reviewers interpreted as a discreet suggestion that Carell and Tatum’s character had been sexually intimate.
“I don’t know where the night library scene came from. When I asked Bennett to take it out he refused saying he needed a scene showing duPont’s increasingly invasive encroachment upon my privacy and personal space. Wasn’t like I could do anything anyway.”
Do you think Channing Tatum and Steve Carell distorted Mark Schultz’s story in Foxcatcher ?
[Image via Sony Pictures Classics ]
