USA: AMERICAN PREMIERE OF MOVIE "QUILLS" STARRING GEOFFREY RUSH ABOUT THE MARQUIS DE SADE

Record ID: 390455

  • Title: USA: AMERICAN PREMIERE OF MOVIE "QUILLS" STARRING GEOFFREY RUSH ABOUT THE MARQUIS DE SADE
  • Date: 16th November 2000
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (NOVEMBER 16) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) GEOFFREY RUSH SAYING OF SADE'S WRITING The material is pretty toxic and pretty depraved and it's pretty entertaining and there's been a real discovery again that he might actually be a much wittier and more absurd kind of satirist than people have recognized before. But he's always influence, it comes in and out of fashion. It was certainly there when I was at university 30 years ago. Everyone read him as a kind of counter-cultural icon.
  • Embargoed: 1st December 2000 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, US AND FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA7OI2MSBWJE386LKN4VNSIYICD
  • Story Text: Perhaps sadistically bathing in early talk of yet another Oscar nomination, Australian Geoffrey Rush turned out for the Los Angeles premiere of his latest film "Quills," in which he plays the notorious author the Marquis de Sade.
    Rush stars as the controversial late 18th century French writer who shocked post-revolutionary society with his explicit and outrageous tales of sexual perversity.
    "Quills"
    details the final years of his life, when he was imprisoned in Charenton Asylum outside Paris.
    As the film opens, the Marquis seems to have quite a favorable arrangement at the asylum. He has befriended the kindly priest who runs the place, the Abbe Coulmier, played by "Gladiator" star Joaquin Phoenix. As such, he is given luxurious accomodations, extravagant meals and all the materials he needs to continue his writing his ribald stories.
    Unbeknownst to the Abbe, Sade has also befriended a ravishing young laundress named Madeleine, played by two-time Oscar nominee Kate Winslet. In addition to doing his laundry, Madeleine also smuggles his completed manuscripts out of the asylum for publication.
    Sade's stories become the talk of Paris and the world beyond, and infuriate officials all the way up to Napolean himself.
    In order to clamp down on the author's scandulous tales, Dr. Royer-Collard is brought in to run the asylum and prevent Sade's musings from reaching the general public.
    Last year's Oscar winner Michael Caine takes on the role of the cruel and vengeful disciplinarian.
    As directed by Philip Kaufman, "Quills" is a full-fledged period drama interspersed with good doses of humor and horror. For Rush, all the trappings of a period film, from his elaborate costumes to his unique wig, helped him understand the Marquis in order to play him.
    However, for a good part of the film, Rush wears no costume whatsoever.
    The final third of the script requires him to be completely naked, and filmmaker Kaufman doesn't shy away from showing this on screen. But the actor didn't mind, saying it was easier then jumping up and down on a trampoline naked, which he did while filming his Oscar-winning role in "Shine."
    This isn't Kaufman's first foray into controversy.
    In addition to directing such films as "The Right Stuff"
    and "Rising Sun," he also adapted the controversial novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" into film and helmed the first movie to receive the adult NC-17 rating, "Henry and June," about the scandalous life of author Henry Miller.
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