The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
THE ‘WONDER’ YEARS
‘Professor Marston’ tells incredible story of the threesome behind the comic book superheroine
So great, that “Wonder Woman” movie. Second biggest box-office hit of the year, biggest film ever directed by a woman, empowering all around.
Did you know, though, how the third most enduring comic book superhero came to be? It’s an exhilarating story, too, but much more complicated than most people probably know.
Now writer-director Angela Robinson’s “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women” — in theaters Oct. 13 — tells that incredible tale.
The film stars British actors Luke Evans (“Furious 7,” “Beauty and the Beast”) and Rebecca Hall (“The Town,” “The Prestige”) as the psychologist, educator and inventor William Moulton Marston and his wife and co-developer of the lie detector test, Elizabeth, and Australian Bella Heathcote (“Fifty Shades Darker,” “The Man in the High Castle”) as his student turned both Marstons’ lover, Olive Byrne.
Already sexual pioneers in the Ivy League environs of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, the Marstons and Byrne were also as dedicated to feminism as they were to one another (Byrne was, respectively, the daughter and niece of birth control advocates Ethel Byrne and Margaret Sanger). They later discovered bondage, which dovetailed nicely with William’s DISC theory, that all human interactions were governed by some combination of dominance, inducement, submission and compliance. He fathered children by both women, and they lived together most of the time up until his 1947 death. Elizabeth and Olive remained domestic partners for 38 years after that.
While they endeavored to keep their polyamorous relationship on the downlow, the Marstons’ academic careers were ruined by it. Desperate to make some money (he apparently didn’t patent the lie detector) and inspired by the loving, brave and strong women in his life, William came up with the idea of an Amazon superheroine for the exploding new medium of comic books.
Wonder Woman debuted in late 1941 and has been published almost continually ever since; only her DC Comics stablemates Superman and Batman have stayed in print longer, while having many more movies and TV shows made about them than Princess Diana has.
A fan since childhood, when she was inspired by the 1970s Lynda Carter “Wonder Woman” television series, Robinson first learned about the Marstons and Byrne about a decade ago. As she saw more shows about the male Justice Leaguers appear while the “Wonder Woman” feature remained mired in development hell, Robinson became more determined to tell her own take on the story.
“It was an incredibly emotional experience to watch the ‘Wonder Woman’ movie,” Robinson, who has writing, producing and/ or directing credits on such series as “How to Get Away With Murder,” “True Blood” and “The L Word,” says of Patty Jenkins’ summer blockbuster. “Part of my impetus to start writing my film was this huge frustration that Superman has gotten multiple rebirths and television shows. And how many times have we seen Bruce Wayne’s parents get killed in an alley? You could go anywhere in the world and Wonder Woman was popular, but where was the movie?”
Packed with uncompromisingly brainy ideas and dialogue along with its political and erotic elements, “Professor Marston” took a while to find funding. For all of its historic and taboobreaking elements, though, the final product may be most impressive in its complex emotional credibility.
“Oh, man,” Heathcote exhales when asked about some of the shattering feelings she had to express as Byrne ... then couldn’t suppress a nervous chuckle. “You know, it felt a lot like your early 20s. Just very vulnerable. I tend to be open and sensitive to a fault, so I could relate to Olive on that level.
“I was just lucky I got to do that, I got to do it in the environment that I did,” the actress continues. “I felt really safe with Angela and Rebecca and Luke to go there. Also, they helped pull me out afterward; the levity that was on set was really lovely. It was just like being in any good relationship, basically; if you feel safe, you can be vulnerable.”
Acknowledging that William is still a deservedly controversial figure in feminist and psychology circles, Robinson made sure that Olive and Elizabeth constantly challenged him in the movie, even as they questioned their own feelings, behavior and the societal judgment of what they were doing.
“The actors were very actively playing through these exchanges of power and desire, and it was really important to me to get very micro about all of their dynamics and the exchange of consent,” the filmmaker explains. “And I wanted the audience to feel what it feels like to fall in love in a very organic way. At the end of the day, it’s a very organic love story between three people, without a lot of commentary or judgment.”
And with a lot of pointed, but crucially never snickering, humor (Elizabeth in particular exhibits a cutting wit reminiscent of the great female roles in Hollywood comedies of the film’s period). Yep, that all took some directing.
Now, about the lovemaking scenes. Robinson employed an old “L Word” trick of hers, blasting a playlist of music chosen by the actors during intimate takes. That suppressed inhibitions, and for the kinkier scenes she tried to emphasize the characters’ psychology over the acts that they were performing.
It all worked, despite initial skepticism.
“Angela sent me a note about how she liked to shoot sex scenes beforehand: ‘Just leave it up to me, I’ve done a bunch of them, you’re going to be fine, it’s gonna be fun,’ “Heathcote reports. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, right.’ Sex scenes are just what you grit your teeth through and try to pretend that you’re enjoying. But Angela made this great soundtrack that we kind of played our way through it, and it was probably the most I’ve enjoyed ever shooting scenes like that. I want to take a playlist into future projects; they’re just going to have to bear with me.”
With Wonder Woman now key to Warner Bros.’ efforts to raise their DC Extended Universe endeavor to the same high level Disney is enjoying with its Marvel comic book films (Gal Gadot’s adored role model hits theaters again next month in “Justice League”), we wondered if Robinson has been contacted by the studio in regard to what her independent production reveals about the valuable intellectual property. The filmmaker says she hasn’t heard a peep out of Burbank yet. Robinson added that, while an extensive legal process was gone through before the movie could be made, “I didn’t have to be granted rights to show what I did.”
Which, as far as Wonder Woman comics are concerned, is focused on the postwar censorship outcry over the strip’s sadomasochistic and lesbian imagery. The heroine’s fans — old and new, younger and not — shouldn’t let any of it keep them away from the new movie though, according to the wonder women who made it.
“I feel like if you loved ‘Wonder Woman,’ you would love our film,” Heathcote says. “It’s her origin, where she came from. I love the fact that she was created by a guy who was a feminist long before it was fashionable, and who dedicated his life and work to encouraging peace and love and acceptance.”
“Since I started as a fan, it’s important to me how much Wonder Woman means to people who love the character,” Robinson concludes. “I really wanted to be respectful to that. And now that she’s in this kind of renaissance after so many years, it’s the perfect time to go back and look at where she came from and the people whose ideas and ideals really actively inspired her. This is her real origin story, and Wonder Woman was the only superhero who was created to stop war and violence. That’s a really fresh message that the world can use right now.”