I’m still reeling from the Oscar nominations; among others, there is the distinct exclusion of Michael Fassbender. Maybe Shame isn’t the Academy’s style—it’s a relentless sex nightmare about one man’s existential emptiness—but word on the street is, Fassbender deserved a mention for his revelatory, uh, performance.
(And, well, you know, people did mention other things about Fassbender, but I still haven’t seen Shame; I am having trouble weighing how much I won’t enjoy the movie against how much I would enjoy looking at Fassbender. Heh, heh.)
Actor John Moraitis recently penned a column for The Guardian, “How I added sex noises to ‘Shame’,” and it is (ahem) eye-opening:
I’m an actor, and when I’m between roles, my bread-and-butter is something called ADR—additional dialogue recording—where I go to a studio and record background conversations for scenes from films in post-production. It’s often a restaurant scene. You stand at the microphone with another actor, watch a video of the sequence, pick two characters at a table in the background and improvise.
Last summer, I was invited to do ADR for Shame. At the time, we knew nothing about the film. My agent said: “It involves sexual sounds. Do you mind?” I said: “No, it’s just a job. It’s fine.”
The sound engineer kept the sexual stuff till the end. There’s a scene where Michael Fassbender’s character goes to a gay club. At the back of some shots, couples were at it. So I stood at the microphone with another guy and we improvised.
Illuminating!
I’d honestly love to reprint the entirety of the Guardian piece (it’s short! And possibly NSFW!), but I arrived at a moment where I was blushing too furiously to go on. Let’s just say that I can barely type “penis” without giggling; the idea of “evoking” a “penis sound” makes me totally unable to function.
You guys, I really probably shouldn’t even try to watch Shame at all, huh.
(Image via Collider.)