Better not mess with Chastain
Actress aces her high-stakes role in Sorkin’s adaptation of memoir
Aaron Sorkin is ribbing Jessica Chastain.
“I’m going to short you,” he says. “That means I’m going to buy stock and I’m betting against you.”
“Don’t ever bet against Chastain,” she replies levelly.
“I’m shorting you,” he repeats. “That’s the big short.”
“I had five — no seven films come out in 2011.” She pauses to let that sink in. “Never bet against Chastain.”
In Sorkin’s defence, only Take Shelter, Coriolanus, The Tree of Life, The Help, Texas Killing Fields and The Debt had a wide release that year; Wilde Salomé only played the Venice film festival. But Chastain is not someone to trifle with, and neither is the reallife character she plays in Molly’s Game, one of only three films she starred in this year.
Molly Bloom is a former Olympic skier who started hosting highstakes poker games after an accident knocked her out of the sport. She was scrupulous about keeping the games legal — until she took a commission to help insure her against losses, which ran her afoul of the FBI.
Her memoir, Molly’s Game, was adapted and directed by Sorkin. He and Chastain are discussing the film at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it premiered. I ask why he wanted to make this his directing debut.
“I didn’t know that I did,” he said. “But I felt like it was possible to tell the wrong story, or tell a different story than the one that I wanted to tell. There are so many shiny objects in this movie — the glamour, the decadence, the money, Hollywood, sex — that I was worried that it was going to overwhelm what I thought was a better, more emotional story that was going on, set against the backdrop of all these shiny objects.” So when the producers offered him the chair, he took it.
Chastain relished the challenge of taking on a real-life character; even better, the real Bloom was there to guide her. “She was excited about the film, and no question was off limits. One thing I was really touched by is she made excuses for a lot of people. When bad things were happening, she wasn’t someone who was quick to belittle someone. She always would make excuses for why they behaved the way they did.”
Chastain would mark up sections of her screenplay with notes from their conversations: “How many years have passed, what has happened, how much of herself has she given away? Because it was very important for me to see her play the rules that someone else had established, and then at the end say, ‘I’m not going to do that any more. This is what I want and this is what I’m going to do. No one’s gong to stop me from being who I am.’”
As a screenwriter, Sorkin is known for having an ear for argot, whether from the world of technology (Steve Jobs, The Social Network) sports (Moneyball, Sports Night) or politics (The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). For Molly’s Game, he says it was important to get the poker terminology right.
“So when she’s describing something to the audience, she is very comfortably able to toss off this kind of lingo,” he says. “That having been said, I still maintain that it is not a poker movie, and the reason why is that at no time are we ever asked to care who wins or loses the hand of poker. We’re asked to care about Molly. Molly’s not playing. We’re asked to care if Molly is winning or losing her life at that moment.”
Sorkin nods. This is why he wanted the reins of the movie; he didn’t want another director to decide that the poker players mattered. “Because once you’re doing that, once you’re rooting for this person versus that person, Molly is an extra in the scene, she is at best a giver of exposition ... and you are making a movie about someone else. I was worried that it was so easy for that to happen.”