HE’S A REAL DOLL Carell stars in ‘Marwen,’ a loving story of surviving hate
Steve Carell’s new movie “Welcome to Marwen” brings to life much more than a cast of dolls and action figures.
The drama also introduces a larger audience to the story of Mark Hogancamp, a Kingstonarea man who was brutally beaten in a 2000 attack after telling his assailants he was a cross-dresser.
Amid his recovery, Hogancamp constructed a detailed model of a fictional town called Marwencol filled with figurines meant to represent real people in his life as a way of therapy.
His fascinating story was initially told in the critically acclaimed 2010 documentary “Marwencol.”
“Welcome to Marwen” — which premiered Friday and stars Carell as Hogancamp — centers on Hogancamp’s remarkable recovery and his creation of Marwencol, though some details of his story were changed for the movie.
The true story is that Hogancamp was beaten to the brink of death by five men outside a bar one night. He was in a coma for nine days and in the hospital for 40.
Hogancamp’s fictional town — which is set in Belgium during World War II — features Nazi soldiers to represent his attackers.
In the movie, Carell’s character is only interested in wearing women’s shoes, and while shoes are the focus of the real Hogancamp’s attention in the documentary, he does reference cross-dressing beyond shoes as well.
The film also depicts at least one of his actual attackers as having a swastika tattoo, though that’s not a detail that’s covered in the documentary.
In real life, Hogancamp created a fluid narrative involving all of his figurines — who were based on people like himself, his friends, his neighbors and his mom. Only women lived in his town until Hogancamp’s action figure arrived, and it was eventually inhabited by many more figurines of both genders.
The movie, meanwhile, depicts Marwencol as a place where only Hogancamp and a handful of female dolls live.
Hogancamp lost nearly all memory of his past life after the horrific attack. He didn’t remember having a wife in the past, nor did he recall why he had over 200 pairs of women’s shoes in his closet, the documentary revealed.
He was a talented artist before the attack, but the injuries he sustained stripped him of his ability to draw the same way. He turned to photography, with the subject of his pictures being Marwencol, and he eventually showed his art at an exhibit in the city — which was covered in both the documentary and the movie. Hogancamp struggled with alcohol before he was hospitalized, but upon waking up from his coma had no desire to drink anymore and quit completely.
Much of the new movie centers on Hogancamp’s figurine resisting an evil bluehaired Belgian witch named Deja, and it is later revealed that she’s meant to represent his struggle with an addiction to painkillers.
That’s a storyline — and an addiction — that was not addressed in the documentary, however, although Deja was a part of his figurine collection. She is not conveyed to be evil in the doc.
In real life, the name Marwencol is contrived from “Mark, Wendy and Colleen.” Colleen was Hogancamp’s neighbor, while her doll was the love interest of Hogancamp’s figurine in his storyline.
The movie, meanwhile, introduces Wendy as the bartender who discovered Hogancamp in the street after the attack. There’s nobody named Colleen in the movie, but rather a neighbor named Nicol (played by Leslie Mann) whom Hogancamp falls for.
In the movie, Marwencol is originally named Marwen — hence the title “Welcome to Marwen” — until he meets Nicol and adds the last three letters of her name to the end.
Carell said during a talk at the Upper East Side’s 92nd Street Y on Thursday night that Hogancamp enjoyed the movie and is doing well these days.
“I got an email from him a few days ago that he’s starting to draw again,” Carell told the audience. “He’s getting more dexterity back in his hands. He’s starting to illustrate, and he’s packed away Marwencol. He packed the town away, so he doesn’t need that specifically to process these things. He’s moved on to other vignettes.”