Now Showing: The Program from Captive Cinema [R13]

“THE PROGRAM” is Now Showing Nationwide
Distributed by CAPTIVE CINEMA. 

Poster from http://www.imdb.com/

Chris O’Dowd plays journalist David Walsh In The Program [R13]

Chris O’Dowd has become a bit of a disgruntled sports fan. His beloved Liverpool are in what seems like perpetual change and the arrival of Jürgen Klopp is far from a guarantee that the 25-year search for a Premier League title will end. At least he can’t blame Liverpool’s demise on other team’s cheating and that’s what’s really got his ire up. He’s been spending the past few months trying to work out the enigma that is Lance Armstrong, the cycling superstar who overcame cancer to win the Tour de France seven times. It was a unique achievement at arguably sport’s toughest endurance event. Then came the revelation that it was a house built on lies. 

In Stephen Frears’ The Program, O’Dowd plays journalist David Walsh, the man who refused to believe Armstrong’s lies, even when the cyclist successfully sued Walsh’s paper for libel, winning a multimillion-pound payout. O’Dowd has the same zealous belief that science and doping are making a mockery of sport. “For me as a sports fan, I have no interest in watching pharmacists and doctors competing to come up with the best concoctions,” says the Irish actor.

He has a similar disdain for Formula 1, because it relies so much on the technical prowess of the mechanics. O’Dowd’s main interest is the skill of the individual, which probably explains why he became an actor, being judged on his ability to mimic or bring a character to life, even when he’s part of an ensemble.

The 36-year-old is best known as a comic, a reputation that goes back to the flirting state patrol officer he portrayed in Bridesmaids. But he didn’t want to be known simply as the goofy comic. “Which is hard when it’s such a big movie,” he says of the 2011 hit. “And particularly stateside, when it’s probably what 90 per cent of the people know you from. But you always just want to find the best work. Not to tick a box. I ended up doing comedy by accident really. It’s not like it was a life plan or anything.”

O’Dowd was born in Boyle, County Roscommon. His father is a graphic designer and his mother a psychotherapist. He has brought many of his childhood tales to the screen in Moone Boy, the show he created for Sky TV. “I mean, we kind of look at it all... not through rose-tinted glasses, but certainly, I had a lovely childhood, so I wasn’t necessarily worried about dealing with issues from my past. There are moments when my family would be like, ‘That’s not how I fuckin’ remember it!’ But for the most part, the vast majority of it… relationship-wise it’s totally accurate to how I grew up. A lot of the stories kind of come and go. Some of them are based in reality and then you make them funnier in some way, or make them more interesting to watch.”

But he thinks the show’s now on its last legs. There are only so many stories he can tell about 11- and 12-year-old boys, although he has a Truffaut-esque desire to return to the characters when they are a bit older. One story he could put in, if he ever followed up that idea, is about a bike ride he went on, aged 14. “It was during the summer holidays. There was very little happening. I come from a very small place. I went with these two friends, John and Dermott. We cycled maybe 80 miles. It took two days. We pitched a tent. I’d forgotten about that. We pitched a tent and when we woke up we were in a traffic island.”

It didn’t put him off cycling, and when he was acting on Broadway in Of Mice and Men, opposite James Franco, he would cycle to work and back every night. On stage he became a big fan of his co-star. “James is great. I think he’s genuinely trying to do interesting things. Not everybody is. He takes a lot of flak for it, which I’ve never really understood. If he wasn’t so handsome, I think he’d be celebrated much more.”

But his recollection of playing a venture capitalist in the US drama series Girls is more down to earth. “It wasn’t an iconic show when I was doing it. It just felt like another kind of TV gig. You could tell that they’re all very smart, and it felt quite raw, which was nice… I’m kind of amazed to see it take off, and you don’t know that it’s going to be such a massive thing. But they really keyed into what people wanted.”

I’m left with the impression that giving people what they want is not O’Dowd’s objective. Otherwise he would be happily revelling in comic roles, rather than taking on meaty stage roles and playing journalists on a mission. He’s considered and serious and wants to challenge himself and people’s perceptions of him. Playing a journalist brings back memories of working on a student newspaper when he was young. “I wanted to be a journalist quite a lot when I was in school. And I didn’t get the grades to go to the journalism colleges… I don’t know how they were so hard to get into given the level of journalism generally.”

“Thanks,” I respond. To which O’Dowd lets out a hearty laugh. His wife, Dawn O’Porter, is a television presenter and they have just had their first child, Art. When he talks about Walsh, it’s in reverential tones: “He’s a great journalist with a lot of integrity.” And that’s how O’Dowd plays him in The Program

“THE PROGRAM” is released and distributed by CAPTIVE CINEMA.

SHOWING ON MARCH 2. NATIONWIDE!

Ben Foster wanted to be experience what it was to be Lance Armstrong in ‘The Program’ [R13]

The Program, director Stephen Frears's latest film, will likely go down as the most in-depth, uncanny depiction of the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong to date. Credit goes to actor Ben Foster, who went to insane lengths to become Lance, taking on intense months of training, riding the most treacherous legs of the Tour de France while filming, dramatically fluctuating his weight by 30 pounds to portray every point of his career, from the top of the podium to the battle with cancer, and even going on his own regimen of performance-enhancing drugs "to more deeply understand what this world was about," Foster says between screenings at the Zurich Film Festival. He did everything but speak with the film's subject man-to-man. "In so many words, Lance Armstrong was not interested in talking with me. I couldn't blame him at all. I wouldn't have wanted to talk with me either." 

Did playing Lance Armstrong give you a new found appreciation for cycling?

I appreciate the rigor it demands, but I have not been on a bicycle since we finished shooting because I've been pretty deeply traumatized. I hadn't cycled before and only had a limited amount of time to 

train. Simply said it was an aggressive training process.

What drew you to the project?

The interest for me was working with Stephen Frears. He's made so many kinds of movies. To my eyes I can't find a signature style of his. Lance, on the other hand, is very recognizable. To get the opportunity to explore a subject that I knew very little about while working with a master filmmaker was a rare opportunity.

Do you think people in the States are still hurt by Armstrong's story?

I do. From what I've heard and who I've talked to about it in North America, people get very emotional. They're upset about the subject. In Europe it seems that they've been able to process what Lance did, while in the U.S., we haven't done that yet. So far, I don't think Lance Armstrong has apologized in a way that is palatable to us.

What are your own thoughts on how his scandal played out?

My job is all about defending the people that I play. I had to rationalize what he did. Early on Stephen would half joke that he was going to call the film "The Stupid American." I thought that wasn't too generous a title. We had different views and I hope that actually translates in the movie, that there are always two sides to the story. It's a little more complicated than saying he's a liar and a doper. He's a man who raised a half billion dollars for cancer research. He won the Tour de France seven times in a row and he wasn't the only one doping, he was just better at it. He did everything better. He moved the needle in all aspects of the sport while also doing a lot of good. His bullying was bullying people who were threatening his empire, and that empire was saving lives. I think calling him just a gangster is ignorant.

What did you read and watch of his appearances to prepare?

I watched everything. He's so recognizable. Sitting that long on a bicycle, it's going to even change the way that you walk. What made his story so accessible was the way that he communicated. His rage was always pretty close to the surface. I was interested in both the persona and the man behind the persona. The loneliness that must occur with people like that who are at the top of their field. To answer your question, the joy of the job is to ask questions and then consider them in both an emotional and physical way. You find that he had certain mantras, speaking about the will to survive, the way to better yourself. I imagine that he was a guy who looked around the room and thought, "Nobody is working as hard as I am. Nobody is as determined."

Did you hear any stories that proved particularly insightful to who Lance Armstrong was as a person?

This isn't a biofilm. You hear anecdotal stories. I would have liked to have partied with Lance. He sounds like he was a lot of fun. He went hard. I'd be talking out of turn if I talked about some of the stories, but I was most touched by the work and attention he did give the cancer community. He'd call up people that he didn't know who were struggling with the disease and just talk to them for two hours. He would talk about the hope that you need to get better. His visits to the hospitals were very moving, my aunt started a foundation called Conquer Cancer"in Boston, Massachusetts. It's a subject that's important to a lot of people, and though right now he may be out of favor, it's important to return to the fact that he did put in the time. He did raise that money. It wasn't just a cancer shield. He tried to better the planet.

What kind of preparation did you do to re-create Armstrong's appearance and cycling?

I was in very good hands. I rode with people who had rode with Lance in the peloton during the Tour de France. They did their best to teach me how to look like he did. We had a computer program that had analyzed his position on the bike. Then we did the best to match my look and stats with his. I was also working with his nutritionist and his mechanic during his time on the Postal team. I worked with a wellness doctor who helped create a program of performance-enhancing drugs that I could do as safely as possible. I did that because I felt it was important for me to more deeply understand what this world was all about.

Cobbles are one of the more challenging aspects of the Tour. How did you face up with those?

We shot them in Belgium in the rain and mud. Insurance was not there on set that day, which was for the best because if you go down, you may break a knee, and then the film's not happening. But keeping the handlebars loose in the hand, and keeping your balance is the trick behind those. I really loved riding the cobbles though. It's brutal but fun.

The weight-changes were really impressive. How did you lose that much?

That was all me. That was a very grumpy me. I knew neither was going to last too long but I had about two weeks to go from one to the other. There wasn't the money to support a more gentle change. To start, I was lifting a lot of weights, then I had two weeks to basically cannibalize my body. Shooting in sequence would have been ideal, but we didn't have that luxury this go around. Weee! [Laughs.]

The first shot, of you at Alpe, d'Huez, is incredible. How did it feel to be there?

It was fucking scary. We are there shooting in the French Alps and I haven't told anybody about this but I have terrible vertigo. Terrible vertigo. I've dealt with it. I've done bungee jumping. I've done wirework, but it's a paralyzing fear. David Millar was one of our champions who made sure the details of the cycling were correct in the film. He was handling the opening shot. It was being filmed on a four-wheeler, with a steadicam on it. It was able to tilt and weave with us. They said, "Just head down the mountain." Then they were asking me to speed up! I was riding the brakes for the first few minutes, but finally I had this moment where I started passing the camera. The competition part of your brain starts to take over and you want to tear the mountain apart. It was those moments where I started to understand the drug of the sport. The first bit of intensity in my face, though, was not, "I'm going to win." It was, "I'm going to die."

What do you think that you got out of this experience that will be useful in the rest of your career?

Very little scares me now. Once you ride down a mountain like that and don't die, it's hard to be scared anymore.

“THE PROGRAM” is released and distributed by CAPTIVE CINEMA.

SHOWING MARCH 2. NATIONWIDE!