Saturday, October 30, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Gabriel Bryne Opens Up: The “In Treatment” Star on Scripts, Psychotherapy and Being Irish
By Amy Chozick
The Wall Street Journal: In the new season of “In Treatment” Debra Winger plays an aging actress who forgets her lines. Is that a storyline you can relate to?
Byrne: The biggest mistake I ever made was when I was doing “A Touch of the Poet” on Broadway and I learned the entire play before rehearsals. The language has to come out of spontaneity. Movement and language are intimately connected so when you learn something off by rote, in a way you’re learning it in abstract so whatever way memory works it’s connected to movement. It’s also connected to the other person. It was a big mistake and one I would never repeat again.
Do you worry about not being able to memorize your lines as you get older?
Memory is like a muscle. One of the great fears of an actor is the failing of memory. Two moments I remember in films, a moment in a [Francois] Truffaut movie “Day for Night” when the actress can’t remember her lines and it’s a very moving and uncomfortable moment. There’s a moment in the documentary [Ingmar] Bergman did about the making of “Fanny and Alexander” when the old actor can’t remember his lines. And it’s so sad. And the way Bergman deals with him is so beautiful. He takes him aside and reminds him of a great performance he gave. Memory is a very fragile thing. And memory is something you can’t really be conscious about. It’s as natural as a smile. You don’t think ‘Here I am in the act of memory,’ you just remember something. When you’re on stage and you know your brain has thousands of words in it, when you walk on stage, you think 'I hope all these words come out in the way they’re supposed to come out.' To forget your lines on stage is a truly terrifying experience for an actor. It’s happened to me. You forget your lines and you have no idea where you are or what the next line is so you’re furiously thrashing around in your brain trying to find where you need to be. [At the Abbey Theater in Dublin] on stage with an actor, it was just the two of us and it was a huge play, half way through he went back to the beginning and I couldn’t get him off the jag he was on. It was in Gaelic so it was really difficult. During “A Touch of the Poet,” I had many nights where in the same spot I forgot my line and the sweat rolled off my face down my back. When I’d come up to that moment, I’d think here’s the bit I usually don’t remember and as soon as that thought entered my head, the act of recall became almost impossible. Even when I got past it, I’d think I got past it and then I’d just freeze.
Is it easier with TV since you can have several takes?
With this particular series you do takes that go on for 12 and 13 pages. My record is a 26 minute take. But this [‘In Treatment’] is more about theater than it is about TV. It’s essentially two actors in two chairs.
Where do you go to read a script?
I always remember this interview Dustin Hoffman gave years ago. When he got a script, he’d read the first five pages. If it was really good, he’d put it down and walk around and do something else because he didn’t want it to be a disappointment. I like to hold a script as a treat, to read it in a café, to put it down. There’s a tremendously exciting feeling of reading a script and of it being compelling. You just can’t contain your excitement.
Did you feel that way when you read the script for “The Usual Suspects”?
Oh, God no. I thought how are they going to make this movie? This is ridiculous. The guy reads the plot on the wall and walks away at the end? Give me a break.
So which scripts you’ve gotten excited about? A particular episode of “In Treatment”?
No. I got excited when I read [Eugene O’Neill’s] “A Moon for the Misbegotten.” I got excited and scared when I read “A Touch of the Poet.” I got excited, I did a film called “Jindabyne” with Laura Linney. I got excited when I read that because I’m a huge Raymond Carver fan and thought it was a superb adaptation. It doesn’t happen like that terribly often, but then great things don’t happen so terribly often unless you’re George Clooney maybe and everything you get is tremendously exciting.
I let a script sit and I pick it up again with great trepidation and hope you’re not going to be disappointed. Reading something very exciting always produces an unsettling feeling in me. I want to walk or move or not be still…It produces some kind of, I suppose, chemical disturbance in you and the only way you can handle that is to walk fast and let the excitement subside but that rarely, rarely happens.
How do you first go about taking on a character?
What I tend to do with whether it’s a script or whether it’s an idea or whether it’s a problem, I’ve kind of taught myself to let it stew for a while, to let it sink in. Because I think every character is inside you and I suppose there are two ways you can go; you can disguise yourself in various ways which I’ve never really done or you can bring your own emotions and feelings to the role. And you can do a combination of both. I like to let things settle and sink in and then see what comes up inside me.
Was it a big decision to take on Dr. Paul Weston [the psychoanalyst in “In Treatment”]? You need to live with him for a couple years.
To me it’s an acting job. I don’t believe you take the character home. The character made me think about my own life and the lives of the people I know and the value or non-value of therapy, and the function of doing something worthwhile and reaching people. But it’s the hardest job I’ve ever done, the hardest work I’ve ever done, the schedule, the sheer volume of what you have to say and the fact you’re restricted in being in one physical position for so long and you’ve only really got your face, there’s nothing else. You have to convey everything in those moments of connection. It’s like doing a year’s run on Broadway with three matinees a week. That’s how intense I feel it is. So stuff like that isn’t necessarily enjoyable to do but it’s necessary to do. You have to do it.
How do you get the facial expressions down? Do you practice in front of a mirror?
God no. I don’t like mirrors. There’s a good essay by Joseph Brodsky called “Narcissus Leaves the Pool” about this. Mirrors are strange things. Some times they’ll reflect back what you want to see and other times those cruel mirrors suddenly appear in shops and doorways and elevators and you think ‘Oh suffering Jesus,’ you know, that kind of mirror. I’d be very self conscious making faces in front of a mirror unless you were doing it for a joke. The face has to come out of what you think or what you feel. You can’t say, here’s a sad bit, so I make a sad face. Here’s a bit he’s questioning thing, so I put on a questioning face. I’m fascinated looking at photographs of people. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Henri Cartier-Bresson’s portraits? Wow. Absolutely incredible. He captured something, in every one of these portraits, that if you look at them, was to me about the discontent of the artist. Martha Graham wrote a letter to Alice Miller, the choreographer, and in it she had a quote in there about why artists need to create and she said ‘If you do not do it, the world will not have it. Remember, there is no satisfaction whatsoever at any time, only a kind of queer divine dissatisfaction that keeps us marching ahead of all the rest.’ When I look at someone like Philip Roth who is compelled to keep writing those books and you wonder what is it in him that makes him compelled and I think of that phrase, ‘a queer, divine dissatisfaction,’ there’s no such thing as getting there and making it perfect. Any time I feel ‘oh, that was a good bit,’ you can be sure it’s a bad bit because it’s just like the mirror that lies to us.
That sounds very Irish, like the Yeats quote “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
It’s also a Jewish thing. It’s also a Russian thing. It’s not about ‘oh, a good thing happened so a bad thing has to happen,’ it’s about the fact that, hope this doesn’t sound too pretentious, the quest as an artist is for perfection and perfection cannot actually be obtained. You know, I met the woman who took care of Raymond Carver in his last days. She was a lovely woman I met in Florida a few weeks ago and I asked her what it was like being with Raymond Carver the nights before he died. He left the hospital with his wife, the poet, he knew he had two days left and all he said was ‘We’ve got work today, let’s go.’ Once I went to Madrid and saw [Francisco] Goya’s early paintings when he’s very optimistic, right up to the end with these horrific images and you realize he was an artist who kept developing and creating.
Actors have very limited lives. Very few actors escape the label and the stereotype. You have to look around for different ways to express your creativity. For me one of the most exciting things is to work with young people and realize the difference you can make in a person’s life. I tell then you can be really forthright and say don’t be afraid to fail, make your ambitions big. No one ever said that to me. I wished I had that experience. I never went to drama school, never knew you could even become an actor. The power of somebody who cares to say don’t be afraid, just do it is huge. Because, what’s the worst that can happen? So, I find teaching exciting [on a volunteer basis] fulfilling.
Does teaching help you in your acting? I’m thinking of last season’s storyline with April [a teenager who is suffering from cancer and goes to see Dr. Weston]?
In therapy, there’s a certain protocol you must adhere to. What I’ve always tried to do in that role is to push him [Dr. Weston] beyond being a conventional therapist…I had arguments in the first season on why I would not cross into that [the patient’s] space. To cross into someone else’s space is a very intimate thing to do so what would motivate me to do that is something I would think about a lot. With April, I’d like breaking the rules. I decided to amp up the emotion so he wasn’t a therapist any more, he was a concerned father. The deliberate heightening of the drama really worked because that protocol was forgotten and it became about someone who cared breaking the rules, who said I care about you enough to not adhere to the rules. I care enough about you that I’m going to shout at you. How Paul Weston deals with teenagers is an interesting exploration of the parental figure. You have to be firm with kids, and be compassionate and listen to them but you cannot emotionally react to them.
Did you talk to therapists when developing the role?
No. I did say to a therapist in L.A. ‘what do you do with really boring people?’ Not everybody comes in and says ‘You know, I want to talk about my sex life and it’s incredibly erotic’ or ‘I’m about to jump off Brooklyn Bridge.’ She said that she had to cut her nails because she was in danger of pushing her nails so hard into her hands that she’d actually draw blood. She’d say to the person, here’s your problem, here’s the answer, this is what you have to do and the next week they’d come in and say the same thing and he’s been there for years. A filmmaker went to Freud in 1927 and asked if they could film a real session and he said ‘no, it would be too boring.’ People say to me, ‘oh, you know, what preparation did you do for this role to become a psychotherapist?’ I didn’t do any research. How do you research a therapist? What do you do? What’s interesting to me is the therapist as actor. It’s not so much me becoming a psychotherapist. I’m much more interested in them being actors because that’s what they have to do. How invested are they really? And how much of it is pretense? How much are they really listening and how much do they take home?
Have you been in therapy?
No.
So, who’s that good listener for you?
We all need someone. Saul Bellow was a genius and his letters are about to come out. He wrote a letter to John Cheever and said ‘Do you realize we haven’t seen each other’s dear faces in over a year? I’ve seen you in the papers…We ought to do something about this, especially as it has not been a happy year. There aren’t many people to whom I can be so open.’ To me, what you pay for in a therapist’s office is a form of intimacy. It’s a bought form of intimacy but it’s an intimacy nonetheless that exists only in that room between those two people. And one of the definitions of intimacy outside a therapist's room is to have someone you can be open and honest and be yourself with, but I don’t think anyone is 100% themselves with another person. I don’t think that can ever be…Intimacy with another person means being absolutely truthful to the other persona and it’s a surrendering of power. You give away your power and you say this is who I am and I’m willing to accept your judgment of me because now I’ve told you who I am. People live together for 70 years who don’t have that so I always think of those sessions in terms of intimacy.
How do you prepare for a scene?
I never read the scripts in advance which puts me in a very dangerous position because I never have time to rewrite or talk about rewriting. You do 2 days with one character which is great because after 2 days with one character, you’ve had enough of them you never want to see the again. The difference between a real therapist and the one that I play is that they get to hear it once. I have to hear it 15, 20 times and each time you don’t know which take is the one they’re going to use so you have to be as involved on the 15th take as you are on the 1st so if don’t know what’s happening there’s the disadvantage that I can’t say ‘Well this doesn’t make sense.’ But the advantage is that it keeps you very much on edge. I always go for the first take and in some cases I say ‘That’s it, I’m not doing another take. Let’s go with that’ because if I don’t know what is coming out of their mouths really, then I’m in a position to be just a little bit more on edge because in life you don’t really know what’s coming out of another person’s mouth until they say it. You might have general idea but you don’t know from one moment to the next what somebody will say, whether they’ll go silent, whether they’ll crack a joke, whether they’ll remember something so you’re constantly watching them for those moments.
Why did you decide to become an actor?
We’re all actors. You walk down the street and you meet someone you don’t like and you have to say ‘Hi, it’s great to see you again. That’s fantastic.’ All those things we have to act all day long. We are actors and what actors do is they act acting. I was watching a kid the other day. She was on a bike and she was so full of joy skidding around on this bike and she was talking aloud to herself in an uninhibited way and she said ‘I’ll have my revenge on you Mr. Pigeon.’ She was talking out the drama of her way in an absolutely uninhibited way and I thought wow, you know. I saw Picasso do an interview on BBC television once and the interviewer said ‘Mr. Picasso will you just draw something for us while you’re here?’ and he drew something and she said ‘wow you did that so fast’ and he said ‘no, no it’s taken me my whole life to do that.’ His ambition as an artist was to learn to paint as a child. Dylan Thomas said it’s only when you start to think like a child that you can be a great poet. And when you’re an actor you look at that kid on the playground and you think could I become that involved in something that I would be that absorbed by? I watch a guy make a table and he’s utterly absorbed in the cut of the wood and the shaving and the saw and the hammer and then I look at an actor who has five different things going on in his head at the same time. ‘What’s my line? I have to move over here. That went okay. What’s that guy in the first row? Ok, now’s the part I have to go there.’ That’s all going on in your head and yet you have to give the appearance that you are utterly there. But you’re not that kid that is utterly absorbed in the moment. And as adults we lose that ‘I’ll get my revenge on you Mr. Pigeon’ moment and we become actors. I’m much less of an actor, I think, than I am an actor, if you know what I mean. That’s what I get paid to do but acting is pretending. A girl that worked in the props department on a movie I worked on made me a rosary bead and gave it to me at the wrap party. I said ‘Wow, that’s absolutely beautiful.’ And the director was standing beside me and he said ‘Well, he’d say that wouldn’t he?’ He said ‘He’s an actor, his job is to lie.’ And I thought, an actor’s job is to tell the truth, not to lie. What we spend most of our life doing is a form of lying. ‘Oh, where’d you get those shoes, they’re great? Oh, I love your hair.’ We’re lying to other people and we’re lying to ourselves so what you try to do is get as near as you possibly can to absorption in that moment and I don’t think I’ll never reach that, I really don’t.
You didn’t start acting until you were 30. Do you think life experiences have helped you, instead of being a child star?
I don’t think so. Look at all those fabulous young actors who are 17 or 18 years of age and give astonishing performances. Joseph Gordon Levitt, I saw him and I thought ‘my God where does this kid get that from?’ I left it too late, I think. I was 40 before I made my first film in America. Had I come to America when I was younger I mighta been like a Shia La Bouf or a Colin Farrell. I coulda been. I think he’s a terrific actor.
Do you ask friends’ advice before you take a new role?
I rely on honest friends when the decisions are never clear cut. You have to make a living and you have to make money and very few actors are in the luxurious position of saying no. I have the power to say no to a certain point but I know the prerequisites for a decision: Is it a compelling script? Is it a really interesting role? Some divisions would be: How long will it take me away from home? Where is it? Who’s the director? A compelling script will come with a great director. They say every actor has seven lives and you go through them. ‘Who’s Joe Smith? We need Joe Smith! We need a Joe Smith type. What happened to Joe Smith?’ Actors age. Actors go through different transitional periods. Movies are formulaic and independent movies are falling apart. It’s a cultural consideration, how important film is any more in terms of influencing the public. Are people really that influenced by film any more? I don’t know that they are. I think a new form of narrative is being born, I don’t know what it’s gong to be yet, but it could be some version of an interactive form of storytelling which isn’t new.
Do you find TV more intimate than film or theater?
I don’t like the way TV both uses and abuses the close up. If you look at a film like ‘Winter Light’ by Bergman, there’s one close up and it’s at the moment when the man say ‘I have doubts’ and the camera moves in. TV is about the statement of the obvious. I turned one day and said ‘Why do we need a close up of a phone? Don’t people know what a phone is and don’t they know it’s going to ring and you’re going to talk to someone on the other end?’ There’s more of an enigma in film in terms of your participation as an audience. I don’t like the way television sucks up your creative life with close ups.
What’s an average day like for you?
I get up usually around half past five. I embrace the day with as much optimism as I can. I salute the universal voice and then my day begins. Hair, makeup, is where I relax. We have a fantastic hair and makeup team. Then I go downstairs to read the script and go through it for things I find don’t work for me and don’t work for the story. That’s when I hear it for the first time. The writers have to go away and rewrite. Then I do 14 hours. 7am the day of it is the first time I see the script. We start shooting at 10am and finish at 8pm or 9pm.
That’s a long day. What do you do to blow off steam? A favorite bar?
Byrne: No pub. Life. Do you know what I mean? You go home and there are kids and things. You don’t get to do anything special because you’ve been in front of a TV camera. I do like to read mindless trashy gossip things. I like to read the British gossips. Some times I just relax for a few minutes you see amazing things that are just incredible and make you say my ‘God, human beings are astonishing.’ It’s not celebrity gossip but a guy whose wife came back to him in the form of a swan. I have to say that British newspapers are by in large much more interesting. The range of stuff they cover is much more versatile. They also mix a certain wit and cynicism in with the news that makes it not so predictable. I find The New York Times heavy at times. I know what it is and I appreciate it and hopefully it will never go away but I like a really good variety of subject matter.
Do the current events in Ireland—the economic problems or scandal in the Catholic church—influence the type of work you do?
One of the most exciting things that has happened to me in a very long time is that on 17th of March the Irish prime minister announced I’d be Ireland’s first Ambassador for Culture. I’m very passionate about that job. It’s a non-political appointment. That’s what I do with the time I don’t spend acting. Next year because of this new appointment it will be a very exciting year for Irish culture. That’s how I can use the experience I’ve had in film and TV. As far as I knew there are very few countries that have appointed a cultural ambassador and it says something about the way Ireland sees the role of culture. I’m especially interested in the connection between culture and business. I want to try to bring the artistic community closer to the business community. It’s not a new idea. It goes back to the old idea of the patron. I meet with businessmen and politicians and artists. We’re going to have a retrospective of Irish film from 1910 to 2010. That’s never happened before.
Did you read books to help you understand psychotherapy?
To be a great writer, you have to be a great analyst of human behavior. I read Philip Roth with abandon when I was younger because I hadn’t experienced anything he was talking about. Now it’s like looking into a very, very cruel mirror. I read Freud and found him absolutely fascinating as a character. What’s interesting about him is that he suffered from the most virulent form of mouth and jaw cancer and he’d only take an Aspirin. He got that jaw and mouth cancer from being utterly addicted to nicotine. He had many interesting theories about the oral fixation. He didn’t see that in himself though. At the outbreak of World War II he was living in Vienna and the Nazis were coming for the Jews and they took away his family. His best friends said get out now or you’ll die. Freud did not see the big picture. He was brilliant at the universality of life and behavior but he didn’t see it in terms of the reality around him. Isaac Newton said he’d spend his life on the seashore picking up pebbles and never saw the ocean that surrounded him. Hitler and [Joseh] Goebbels were interested in therapy. People think that therapy is a modern American thing coming out of Los Angeles, but it’s actually something that came out of a confluence of Catholicism and repression in 19th century Europe. Oh, and I love watching chat show hosts because they’re a version of that. Oprah is the nation’s therapist.
Any particular titles of books about Freud?
Byrne: I read a book about the end of Freud’s life [“The Death of Sigmund Freud” by Mark Edmundson]. I lived near Freud’s house in London and I used to pass it and think ‘Wow, Freud lived here.’ I could not take my eyes off that house. I just stood there for ages. I could almost see Freud in the garden walking up and down. You know [Carl] Jung’s father took him for a walk when he was three years of age and he told his Dad ‘Those mountains look like the inside of my head.’ His father realized the kid had made a connection between the inner landscape and the outer landscape at there years of age. I kept thinking about Jung making connections, and Freud being fearless. But, hey, it’s only a TV show.
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Therapist Will See You Now
by Maureen Ryan, posted Oct 25th 2010 5:00PM
Those of you with HBO may not be aware of the full array of benefits that you get when you subscribe to the pay channel.
For instance, you get therapy several times a week, in easily digested half-hour chunks.
'In Treatment' (9PM ET, HBO) is back, and it's as addictive as ever, especially now that Gabriel Byrne, who plays empathic shrink Paul Weston, has terrific actresses like Debra Winger and Amy Ryan to spar with.
If you're at all inclined to probe or analyze your own feelings or scrutinize the emotional arcs of your own life, it's impossible not to identify, at some point, with Weston or his patients, all of whom struggle with difficult truths and painful emotions. 'In Treatment' continues to prove, as it did in its first two seasons, that two people talking in a room -- provided those conversations are written and acted with consummate skill -- can be more engrossing than just about anything else on TV. Even shows that are more fanciful or stylized hold fast to the truth that the greatest revelations come from within our hearts and minds, not from space ships or smoke monsters (as much as we may love them).
This year, there are four half-hour episodes per week (two air on Mondays, two air on Tuesdays). The first three half-hours chronicle Paul's ongoing sessions with three different patients, and the final one allows the audience to see Paul's weekly sessions with his own therapist.
Even if you don't care for any of the other patients -- and it's impossible not to pick favorites every season -- at least try to check out Paul's weekly session with his new therapist, Adele. Amy Ryan, who plays Adele, and Gabriel Byrne are simply extraordinary together. This might be the best sparring we'll see on HBO until 'Game of Thrones' debuts.
'In Treatment' doesn't go in much for humor, aside from the occasional witty remark. But there is a great irony contained within this series: Paul is an acutely understanding and insightful therapist, and he often helps patients make connections and gain insights that they desperately need in order to move forward with their lives. Yet he himself is often a very difficult patient.
Paul's first visit to Adele is a gem; like the best 'In Treatment' episodes, it's a clever, emotionally acute, smartly written one-act play with a well-constructed beginning, middle and end. And it shows Paul at his worst: He's arrogant, peremptory, condescending and unable to accept the idea that his chronic sleep issues or his mixed-up relationship with his former therapist would benefit from a great deal more scrutiny.
In her own quietly determined way, Adele gives Paul as good as she gets, absorbing his gibes about her youth and letting his implied judgments about her lack of experience roll off her back. Slowly but surely, she crawls inside his head and gets him to wonder about some of the things he "knew" he had already figured out. Some of Paul's bluster masks a deep-seated fear about his own ineffectiveness. At 57, he's wondering how much, if any good he has done in his life. He's as much in need of reassurance as some of his patients, but his hero complex won't allow him to see that clearly.
Ryan's film and television characters have tended to be meek, indecisive or lacking in self-esteem, but Adele, who sits in a sunny, spacious office that is the opposite of Paul's earth-tone lair, is controlled, thoughtful and supremely intelligent. Patience and tenacity are Adele's chief weapons against Paul, who, as we see in little scenes here and there, is still dealing with the painful aftereffects of his recent divorce.
Debra Winger has the flashiest part as Frances, an actress who come to Paul when she begins to have trouble remembering her lines. As Paul later tells Adele, she's "about what [he] expected" -- narcissistic, a bit mannered, unable to resist playing the starring role. Other patients include a gay teen with promiscuity problems and a grieving Indian widower who is living in empty life in a spare room belonging to his son and daughter-in-law.
It's always too soon to tell in the first couple of weeks which patients stories will end up being the most gripping, but after two previous seasons of 'In Treatment,' some things are pretty safe bets. Byrne will continue to make reacting and listening interesting, the insights he shares about his patients at his own sessions will sometimes be surprising, and his evasions and conclusions about his own difficult life will be self-congratulating, engaging and sometimes quite moving.
With the smallest moments, Byrne can fascinate -- there's a moment in Paul's first session with Adele in which he pauses before answering a question, and it's as if he's sucked all the air out of the room. The sarcastic and confused Jesse becomes a different person for a few seconds after Paul, at one key point, tells him quietly but forcefully not to speak to him disrespectfully.
It's a masterful performance, as ever. And season 3 promises equally rich performances from this year's promising cast.
Follow @MoRyan on Twitter.
Those of you with HBO may not be aware of the full array of benefits that you get when you subscribe to the pay channel.
For instance, you get therapy several times a week, in easily digested half-hour chunks.
'In Treatment' (9PM ET, HBO) is back, and it's as addictive as ever, especially now that Gabriel Byrne, who plays empathic shrink Paul Weston, has terrific actresses like Debra Winger and Amy Ryan to spar with.
If you're at all inclined to probe or analyze your own feelings or scrutinize the emotional arcs of your own life, it's impossible not to identify, at some point, with Weston or his patients, all of whom struggle with difficult truths and painful emotions. 'In Treatment' continues to prove, as it did in its first two seasons, that two people talking in a room -- provided those conversations are written and acted with consummate skill -- can be more engrossing than just about anything else on TV. Even shows that are more fanciful or stylized hold fast to the truth that the greatest revelations come from within our hearts and minds, not from space ships or smoke monsters (as much as we may love them).
This year, there are four half-hour episodes per week (two air on Mondays, two air on Tuesdays). The first three half-hours chronicle Paul's ongoing sessions with three different patients, and the final one allows the audience to see Paul's weekly sessions with his own therapist.
Even if you don't care for any of the other patients -- and it's impossible not to pick favorites every season -- at least try to check out Paul's weekly session with his new therapist, Adele. Amy Ryan, who plays Adele, and Gabriel Byrne are simply extraordinary together. This might be the best sparring we'll see on HBO until 'Game of Thrones' debuts.
'In Treatment' doesn't go in much for humor, aside from the occasional witty remark. But there is a great irony contained within this series: Paul is an acutely understanding and insightful therapist, and he often helps patients make connections and gain insights that they desperately need in order to move forward with their lives. Yet he himself is often a very difficult patient.
Paul's first visit to Adele is a gem; like the best 'In Treatment' episodes, it's a clever, emotionally acute, smartly written one-act play with a well-constructed beginning, middle and end. And it shows Paul at his worst: He's arrogant, peremptory, condescending and unable to accept the idea that his chronic sleep issues or his mixed-up relationship with his former therapist would benefit from a great deal more scrutiny.
In her own quietly determined way, Adele gives Paul as good as she gets, absorbing his gibes about her youth and letting his implied judgments about her lack of experience roll off her back. Slowly but surely, she crawls inside his head and gets him to wonder about some of the things he "knew" he had already figured out. Some of Paul's bluster masks a deep-seated fear about his own ineffectiveness. At 57, he's wondering how much, if any good he has done in his life. He's as much in need of reassurance as some of his patients, but his hero complex won't allow him to see that clearly.
Ryan's film and television characters have tended to be meek, indecisive or lacking in self-esteem, but Adele, who sits in a sunny, spacious office that is the opposite of Paul's earth-tone lair, is controlled, thoughtful and supremely intelligent. Patience and tenacity are Adele's chief weapons against Paul, who, as we see in little scenes here and there, is still dealing with the painful aftereffects of his recent divorce.
Debra Winger has the flashiest part as Frances, an actress who come to Paul when she begins to have trouble remembering her lines. As Paul later tells Adele, she's "about what [he] expected" -- narcissistic, a bit mannered, unable to resist playing the starring role. Other patients include a gay teen with promiscuity problems and a grieving Indian widower who is living in empty life in a spare room belonging to his son and daughter-in-law.
It's always too soon to tell in the first couple of weeks which patients stories will end up being the most gripping, but after two previous seasons of 'In Treatment,' some things are pretty safe bets. Byrne will continue to make reacting and listening interesting, the insights he shares about his patients at his own sessions will sometimes be surprising, and his evasions and conclusions about his own difficult life will be self-congratulating, engaging and sometimes quite moving.
With the smallest moments, Byrne can fascinate -- there's a moment in Paul's first session with Adele in which he pauses before answering a question, and it's as if he's sucked all the air out of the room. The sarcastic and confused Jesse becomes a different person for a few seconds after Paul, at one key point, tells him quietly but forcefully not to speak to him disrespectfully.
It's a masterful performance, as ever. And season 3 promises equally rich performances from this year's promising cast.
Follow @MoRyan on Twitter.
All Ears
How Gabriel Byrne turns listening into eloquence on HBO’s In Treatment.
It’s the most natural thing in the world to smile,” says Gabriel Byrne, frowning at an array of Gabriel Byrnes—digital photos shot moments before. “It’s the most unnatural thing to fake a smile.” He gazes at the screen for a good long time. As he walks away, he asks, “Is there anything worse than looking at your own face?”
It’s a cold fall afternoon as we stroll from the studio to the Angelika cinema’s café. Byrne and I chat about the peculiar immediacy of modern technology, how it both deforms and expands identity. He tried Twitter for a full two hours, he tells me, before his daughter, Romy (one of his two children with ex-wife Ellen Barkin), made him stop. His first tweet: “Regret not the past, fear not the future. Percy B. Shelley.”
Still, it’s clear Byrne’s heart beats faster for older styles of communication. He cherishes his fountain pen. He adored a recent visit to Governors Island: silence, no cars allowed. He marvels at the sweetness of early photography, when people posed with “a stiltedness and an awkwardness and a shyness.” In the eighties, when he lived in London, Byrne collected hand-embroidered postcards from World War I. “In the banalities people wrote to each other, there were all kinds of stories,” he says, and performs a lilting imitation: “We’re having a fine time here at Tremore. Gertie says she feels better today. The sea air is doing her good, I’m sure. Well, that’s all for now.”
In their pith and semi-public display, he points out, postcards might be the grandfather of Twitter. “And of course, there were the ones that flighty girls could send to timorous men,” he adds, using his hands to draw a postcard in the air, one designed so a woman could press her lipstick to an outline. “If you were a man receiving that, it must have been highly erotic.” He smiles. “That’s one thing you can’t get with Twitter.”
At 60, Byrne—an Irish-born actor best known for Miller’s Crossing and The Usual Suspects—is dashing in a dark-blue coat and burgundy cravat. With his shaggy hair and fans of laugh lines, he can come across as a schoolgirl’s fantasy of a Byronic professor, or perhaps a particularly literary rock star. He wears a Claddagh ring, the heart pointed inward. He speaks fluently and fluidly. He presses his hands between his knees, smiles crookedly, quotes poetry. It’s not difficult to comprehend why, when I search his own name on Twitter, I find strangers posting about stalking the man through the streets of New York.
Part of this allure, of course, derives from what has become his signature role, Dr. Paul Weston, the analytic hero of the HBO series In Treatment, now in its third season. The show, based on an Israeli series (see here), is one of the most subtly experimental dramas on television, using Byrne’s sooty charisma to tremendous effect. In Treatment consists of little but dialogue yet manages to be as suspenseful as 24, romantic and agitating in surprising turns. The third season features three new patients: an Indian widower (Slumdog Millionaire’s Irrfan Khan), a narcissistic actress (Debra Winger), and an acerbic gay teenager (Dane DeHaan). The first dozen episodes blew me away.
Still, all that listening is a brutal weight for an actor. The show runs in two-day sequences, with two episodes each night. During the first three, Paul wrestles with the angel of other people’s suffering—alternately challenging his patients, soothing them, and riding the flow of transference. On the fourth, the episode devoted to Paul’s sessions with his new therapist (Amy Ryan), Dr. Weston becomes himself again: an uglier and smaller man. He is depressive, rancorous, sardonic; he rages paranoically against his own mortality. Over the show’s three seasons, the character has gone through a divorce, his father has died, and he’s left his original therapist (Dianne Wiest). Where most shows either celebrate therapy (à la Tell Me You Love Me) or damn it (as The Sopranos did very effectively by the series finale), In Treatment takes an original approach. Never coming down on one side or another, neither glamorizing nor demonizing, the series turns its structural conceit—a quartet of theatrical, seductive, repetitive conversations—into a near-musical meditation, exploring a greater existential theme: What kind of relationship is this?
“It’s a very hard thing to constantly listen,” Byrne says of the role. “To really listen. I mean, what do you go to therapy for? I suppose you go so you can actually face who you really are. To be in a room that’s sacred, in that what’s said there can never be really used against you. You’re in a relationship of absolute trust where you are removing the mask. It must be wonderfully liberating.”
And yet Byrne doesn’t go to therapy himself—and never has. I ask him why this is, given that he’s been open about his own struggles, including depression and years of binge drinking. He grew up poor in Ireland, the son of a cooper and a nurse. Earlier this year, he spoke about having been molested, when, as a vulnerable boy, he was sent to a seminary to train for the priesthood. (He has mixed feelings about having spoken out about this experience, but says he did so to help reduce the shame and silence for others. “Those scars are still there, but at least I recognize them now. And know where the pain is coming from, whereas for a long time I didn’t.”)
“I don’t really know the answer to that,” he says after a long pause. “I tend to talk to friends. You can learn so much from what your friends say—and don’t say. I think women are better at cultural support, at getting together and rabbiting on about anything and everything. It’s more difficult for men to reveal their vulnerability.” He is no longer a believing Catholic and considers himself an atheist. “I could be wrong in that I haven’t gone to therapy. As I said, I really do admire the profession—I just don’t know how I would go about finding one.”
I tell him I admire the way the series dramatizes one of the odder aspects of analysis: the way therapy itself is a form of performance.
“Yes, I’m much more interested in the psychotherapist as actor than in the actor as psychotherapist,” says Byrne eagerly. “People will say to you sometimes, ‘Acting! How do you do that? It’s a really difficult job.’ But the reality is, we act all the time. True individual moments of intimacy throughout the day, when are they? So when a man is in a chair and he has to listen to somebody else’s story—I often wonder how much of that story we take on.”
Byrne describes a funeral he attended in Florida. He found himself speaking to the woman whose job it was to show loved ones the funeral plots. The cheapness of the system outraged him, its callous pretense, the $5 required for an extra folding chair for an elderly guest. “My God! Do you know that you have to pay $45 to have your loved one’s hair combed? Unbelievable. It was one of the most—this is the thing …”
He pauses, then collects himself and comes to the subject we were skirting earlier. “This is the thing I have a problem with. Can you pay for true empathy? True intimacy, true empathy, true compassion. I have a problem saying, ‘Can I pay for that?’ Should I pay for that? Shouldn’t I be finding those things in my life with people I know? Maybe that’s why I haven’t gone to therapy.”
The funeral worker drove Byrne through the Florida plots in a golf cart. “She was telling me about the value of underground real estate,” he says, with faint disgust. “Which is what graveyards actually are. And she—acted. You know, what’s meant to be the most real moment in life.” Byrne asked the woman if she brought the work home. She said simply, “No. When it comes to five o’clock I go home.”
Byrne longs for something more primal, more genuine, something he remembers well from his own childhood: the raucous, weeping, singing traditional Irish wake, where the presence of the dead body is not sanitized. “Because by looking at the body, you’re looking at your own life. You’re looking at the absence. And the ritual was there for a purpose. And what it was saying was: ‘You have life. So live life.’ ”
 |
(Photo: Jeff Riedel; Hair by Diana Sykes; Grooming by Sheri Kornhaber) |
It’s the most natural thing in the world to smile,” says Gabriel Byrne, frowning at an array of Gabriel Byrnes—digital photos shot moments before. “It’s the most unnatural thing to fake a smile.” He gazes at the screen for a good long time. As he walks away, he asks, “Is there anything worse than looking at your own face?”
It’s a cold fall afternoon as we stroll from the studio to the Angelika cinema’s café. Byrne and I chat about the peculiar immediacy of modern technology, how it both deforms and expands identity. He tried Twitter for a full two hours, he tells me, before his daughter, Romy (one of his two children with ex-wife Ellen Barkin), made him stop. His first tweet: “Regret not the past, fear not the future. Percy B. Shelley.”
Still, it’s clear Byrne’s heart beats faster for older styles of communication. He cherishes his fountain pen. He adored a recent visit to Governors Island: silence, no cars allowed. He marvels at the sweetness of early photography, when people posed with “a stiltedness and an awkwardness and a shyness.” In the eighties, when he lived in London, Byrne collected hand-embroidered postcards from World War I. “In the banalities people wrote to each other, there were all kinds of stories,” he says, and performs a lilting imitation: “We’re having a fine time here at Tremore. Gertie says she feels better today. The sea air is doing her good, I’m sure. Well, that’s all for now.”
In their pith and semi-public display, he points out, postcards might be the grandfather of Twitter. “And of course, there were the ones that flighty girls could send to timorous men,” he adds, using his hands to draw a postcard in the air, one designed so a woman could press her lipstick to an outline. “If you were a man receiving that, it must have been highly erotic.” He smiles. “That’s one thing you can’t get with Twitter.”
At 60, Byrne—an Irish-born actor best known for Miller’s Crossing and The Usual Suspects—is dashing in a dark-blue coat and burgundy cravat. With his shaggy hair and fans of laugh lines, he can come across as a schoolgirl’s fantasy of a Byronic professor, or perhaps a particularly literary rock star. He wears a Claddagh ring, the heart pointed inward. He speaks fluently and fluidly. He presses his hands between his knees, smiles crookedly, quotes poetry. It’s not difficult to comprehend why, when I search his own name on Twitter, I find strangers posting about stalking the man through the streets of New York.
Part of this allure, of course, derives from what has become his signature role, Dr. Paul Weston, the analytic hero of the HBO series In Treatment, now in its third season. The show, based on an Israeli series (see here), is one of the most subtly experimental dramas on television, using Byrne’s sooty charisma to tremendous effect. In Treatment consists of little but dialogue yet manages to be as suspenseful as 24, romantic and agitating in surprising turns. The third season features three new patients: an Indian widower (Slumdog Millionaire’s Irrfan Khan), a narcissistic actress (Debra Winger), and an acerbic gay teenager (Dane DeHaan). The first dozen episodes blew me away.
Still, all that listening is a brutal weight for an actor. The show runs in two-day sequences, with two episodes each night. During the first three, Paul wrestles with the angel of other people’s suffering—alternately challenging his patients, soothing them, and riding the flow of transference. On the fourth, the episode devoted to Paul’s sessions with his new therapist (Amy Ryan), Dr. Weston becomes himself again: an uglier and smaller man. He is depressive, rancorous, sardonic; he rages paranoically against his own mortality. Over the show’s three seasons, the character has gone through a divorce, his father has died, and he’s left his original therapist (Dianne Wiest). Where most shows either celebrate therapy (à la Tell Me You Love Me) or damn it (as The Sopranos did very effectively by the series finale), In Treatment takes an original approach. Never coming down on one side or another, neither glamorizing nor demonizing, the series turns its structural conceit—a quartet of theatrical, seductive, repetitive conversations—into a near-musical meditation, exploring a greater existential theme: What kind of relationship is this?
“It’s a very hard thing to constantly listen,” Byrne says of the role. “To really listen. I mean, what do you go to therapy for? I suppose you go so you can actually face who you really are. To be in a room that’s sacred, in that what’s said there can never be really used against you. You’re in a relationship of absolute trust where you are removing the mask. It must be wonderfully liberating.”
And yet Byrne doesn’t go to therapy himself—and never has. I ask him why this is, given that he’s been open about his own struggles, including depression and years of binge drinking. He grew up poor in Ireland, the son of a cooper and a nurse. Earlier this year, he spoke about having been molested, when, as a vulnerable boy, he was sent to a seminary to train for the priesthood. (He has mixed feelings about having spoken out about this experience, but says he did so to help reduce the shame and silence for others. “Those scars are still there, but at least I recognize them now. And know where the pain is coming from, whereas for a long time I didn’t.”)
“I don’t really know the answer to that,” he says after a long pause. “I tend to talk to friends. You can learn so much from what your friends say—and don’t say. I think women are better at cultural support, at getting together and rabbiting on about anything and everything. It’s more difficult for men to reveal their vulnerability.” He is no longer a believing Catholic and considers himself an atheist. “I could be wrong in that I haven’t gone to therapy. As I said, I really do admire the profession—I just don’t know how I would go about finding one.”
I tell him I admire the way the series dramatizes one of the odder aspects of analysis: the way therapy itself is a form of performance.
“Yes, I’m much more interested in the psychotherapist as actor than in the actor as psychotherapist,” says Byrne eagerly. “People will say to you sometimes, ‘Acting! How do you do that? It’s a really difficult job.’ But the reality is, we act all the time. True individual moments of intimacy throughout the day, when are they? So when a man is in a chair and he has to listen to somebody else’s story—I often wonder how much of that story we take on.”
Byrne describes a funeral he attended in Florida. He found himself speaking to the woman whose job it was to show loved ones the funeral plots. The cheapness of the system outraged him, its callous pretense, the $5 required for an extra folding chair for an elderly guest. “My God! Do you know that you have to pay $45 to have your loved one’s hair combed? Unbelievable. It was one of the most—this is the thing …”
He pauses, then collects himself and comes to the subject we were skirting earlier. “This is the thing I have a problem with. Can you pay for true empathy? True intimacy, true empathy, true compassion. I have a problem saying, ‘Can I pay for that?’ Should I pay for that? Shouldn’t I be finding those things in my life with people I know? Maybe that’s why I haven’t gone to therapy.”
The funeral worker drove Byrne through the Florida plots in a golf cart. “She was telling me about the value of underground real estate,” he says, with faint disgust. “Which is what graveyards actually are. And she—acted. You know, what’s meant to be the most real moment in life.” Byrne asked the woman if she brought the work home. She said simply, “No. When it comes to five o’clock I go home.”
Byrne longs for something more primal, more genuine, something he remembers well from his own childhood: the raucous, weeping, singing traditional Irish wake, where the presence of the dead body is not sanitized. “Because by looking at the body, you’re looking at your own life. You’re looking at the absence. And the ritual was there for a purpose. And what it was saying was: ‘You have life. So live life.’ ”
Boston Herald Review
‘In Treatment’ will keep you glued to the couch
By Mark A. Perigard
“IN TREATMENT”:
If a physician makes the worst patient, what does a psychiatrist become once on someone else’s couch?“IN TREATMENT”:
The unsettling answer anchors the relaunch of HBO’s “In Treatment,” in perhaps its darkest, most demanding season to date.
The series about a therapist (Gabriel Byrne) meeting with his patients was based on a hit Israeli drama and recycled stories from the original’s two seasons.
Having exhausted those scripts, executive producers Anya Epstein and Dan Futterman have created new stories and characters, and drafted some impressive talents: Oscar nominees Debra Winger (“Terms of Endearment”) and Amy Ryan (“Gone Baby Gone”), and Irrfan Khan (“Slumdog Millionaire”).
The format has changed as well; rather than a half-hour episode each weeknight, the series airs two half-hour episodes Monday and Tuesday nights.
The highlight, for week one anyway, is watching Bryne’s Dr. Paul Weston clash with his new therapist, Adele (yan, best known for her TV work on “The Wire” and “The Office”) tomorrow at 9:30 p.m.
He expects her to scribble off a new prescription for Ambien. She has a few questions.
Reluctantly, he gives up his family history. “There’s really nothing more for you to contribute to that,” he says dismissively.
Meanwhile, to her - and to viewers - Paul’s many issues start to blink like a construction marker warning of a 200-foot drop-off.
Paul is dating a woman 20 years his junior but mourns the end of his marriage. He seems to be afflicted with symptoms of Parkinson’s, the disease that killed his father.
He’s frustrated by his new patients, including Sunil (Khan), who is dragged to therapy by his son (Samrat Chakrabarti) and nasty daughter-in-law (Sonya Walger) tonight at 9.
Sunil is a retired math professor and a recent widower, forced to relocate from Calcutta to his son’s home, where he is treated like a burden.
Pressed to talk about his loss, Sunil says, “I do not understand the need to quantify the process of grieving, this need to count the years and months. I was a math professor, but this is the furthest thing from math. It is only a feeling. And sometimes, it is only a blankness.”
At 9:30, Winger plays Frances, an ex-star trying to make a comeback (art imitating HBO?) and puzzled by memory problems.
“I haven’t been here five minutes and already I’m a parody of myself,” she jokes.
Tomorrow at 9, Paul has his hands full with 16-year-old Jesse (Dane DeHaan), a sexually active gay teen with attention-deficit disorder who has received a voice-mail that could capsize his family.
Of the cast, Winger seems to be the weakest link, brittle and uncertain, but it’s too soon in her arc to write her off. The series is like a mystery novel, but the crimes of the heart here are ones the patients unwittingly inflict upon themselves and the lengths they’ll go to hide from the truth. Watching Byrne’s sullen shrink match wits with Ryan’s cool therapist is the best reason to book an appointment with “In Treatment.”
LA Times - Monday, October 25th
Gabriel Byrne analyzes HBO's 'In Treatment' as Season 3 begins
By Melissa Maerz, Los Angeles Times
October 25, 2010
Debra Winger is among the new set of patients for Byrne's character, Paul Weston.
Reporting from New York — — Happiness is overrated. At least, that's what Gabriel Byrne believes. "There's too much pressure to be happy in this culture," insists the Irish star ofHBO's therapy drama "In Treatment." "We're constantly told that happiness is so accessible, but life isn't like that. Life is a gradual process of acceptance. Once you understand that, you can find some measure of contentment."
As he lounges on an old sofa at HBO headquarters in New York — the kind of couch that Freud could've read a lot into — there's a sadness about Byrne, perhaps because he's led the kind of life that's primed for psychoanalysis. Born in Dublin, he moved to England at age 11 to study in a seminary where, he admitted earlier this year, he was sexually abused by a priest. In interviews, he's been open about the struggles with depression and alcoholism that followed.
Now 60, Byrne looks like he's lived a few hundred more lifetimes than, say, that guy who plays Dr. McDreamy. But then, that's what makes Paul Weston, the well-intentioned but flawed therapist he plays on "In Treatment," feel so human.
"We expect our healers to be perfect, but Paul isn't perfect," Byrne explains. As the show enters its third season, which premieres Monday, Dr. Weston is back in his signature chair, reckoning with what it means to be, as Byrne puts it, "a man of a certain age."
"He's going through a divorce," says Byrne. "He's questioning whether he's taken the wrong job. He's angry with life. In the Woody Allen film 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,' there's this line about a man who wakes up at 2 in the morning, sees eternity stretched out before him, and never sleeps again. When I saw that, I thought, 'That's Paul.'"
Paul's patients can relate. This season, they're all trying to reconcile who they once were with the person they're quickly becoming. Frances ( Debra Winger), an aging stage and screen star who may need to undergo a masectomy, wonders how she'll be viewed without her famous body. Sunil (Irrfan Khan), who lost his wife in Calcutta and has moved in with his son's family in Brooklyn, can't accept that he's now a widower and in a strange land. Jesse (Dane DeHaan), a gay, adopted 16-year-old who's just been contacted by his birth mother, worries that learning his real backstory might change who he is. And Paul, who's having some not-so-professional feelings for his new therapist, Adele ( Amy Ryan), is coming to terms with the idea that someone else might play doctor better than he does himself.
Anya Epstein, who executive produced this season with her husband, the screenwriter and actor Danny Futterman ("Capote"), explains that, for the first time in the show's history, all of the characters are original: past seasons were adapted from "Be Tipul," the Israeli version of "In Treatment." "We were very aware that this was the first truly American season of the show," she says, "so we wanted to talk about issues that felt very American. And for us, that meant having these characters ask, 'Who am I, really?'"
Television's been pondering that question ever since Tony Soprano first propped up his feet on Dr. Melfi's couch, if not before. But Epstein and Futterman didn't want "In Treatment" to feel like just another therapy drama.
"I wanted to explore the idea that it's almost like watching a cop show," says Futterman, whose mother is a psychoanalyst. (He's also married to a therapist-in-training: Epstein's working toward a psychology degree at Pepperdine University.) "There's a real detective quality to how the episodes are written," he says. "Paul's always digging for evidence in a compressed amount of time and making connections to what happened in the past."
"Paul's just doing the same thing people have been doing for thousands of years, whether it's talking to village elders or talking to priests in confession," says Byrne. "He's asking essential questions about life: 'What do you want? What are you prepared to give up in order to achieve what you want? What's your definition of contentment?' To me, the value of the show would be if those questions started to leak into your own consciousness and make you look at your own life."
For Futterman, it's already getting personal. "When I told my mother about this project, she said, 'Do you think I should be a constultant on the show?'" he says, laughing. "And I said, 'No, that would be a recipe for another five years of psychotherapy.'"
melissa.maerz@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
By Melissa Maerz, Los Angeles Times
October 25, 2010
Debra Winger is among the new set of patients for Byrne's character, Paul Weston.
Reporting from New York — — Happiness is overrated. At least, that's what Gabriel Byrne believes. "There's too much pressure to be happy in this culture," insists the Irish star ofHBO's therapy drama "In Treatment." "We're constantly told that happiness is so accessible, but life isn't like that. Life is a gradual process of acceptance. Once you understand that, you can find some measure of contentment."
As he lounges on an old sofa at HBO headquarters in New York — the kind of couch that Freud could've read a lot into — there's a sadness about Byrne, perhaps because he's led the kind of life that's primed for psychoanalysis. Born in Dublin, he moved to England at age 11 to study in a seminary where, he admitted earlier this year, he was sexually abused by a priest. In interviews, he's been open about the struggles with depression and alcoholism that followed.
Now 60, Byrne looks like he's lived a few hundred more lifetimes than, say, that guy who plays Dr. McDreamy. But then, that's what makes Paul Weston, the well-intentioned but flawed therapist he plays on "In Treatment," feel so human.
"We expect our healers to be perfect, but Paul isn't perfect," Byrne explains. As the show enters its third season, which premieres Monday, Dr. Weston is back in his signature chair, reckoning with what it means to be, as Byrne puts it, "a man of a certain age."
"He's going through a divorce," says Byrne. "He's questioning whether he's taken the wrong job. He's angry with life. In the Woody Allen film 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,' there's this line about a man who wakes up at 2 in the morning, sees eternity stretched out before him, and never sleeps again. When I saw that, I thought, 'That's Paul.'"
Paul's patients can relate. This season, they're all trying to reconcile who they once were with the person they're quickly becoming. Frances ( Debra Winger), an aging stage and screen star who may need to undergo a masectomy, wonders how she'll be viewed without her famous body. Sunil (Irrfan Khan), who lost his wife in Calcutta and has moved in with his son's family in Brooklyn, can't accept that he's now a widower and in a strange land. Jesse (Dane DeHaan), a gay, adopted 16-year-old who's just been contacted by his birth mother, worries that learning his real backstory might change who he is. And Paul, who's having some not-so-professional feelings for his new therapist, Adele ( Amy Ryan), is coming to terms with the idea that someone else might play doctor better than he does himself.
Anya Epstein, who executive produced this season with her husband, the screenwriter and actor Danny Futterman ("Capote"), explains that, for the first time in the show's history, all of the characters are original: past seasons were adapted from "Be Tipul," the Israeli version of "In Treatment." "We were very aware that this was the first truly American season of the show," she says, "so we wanted to talk about issues that felt very American. And for us, that meant having these characters ask, 'Who am I, really?'"
Television's been pondering that question ever since Tony Soprano first propped up his feet on Dr. Melfi's couch, if not before. But Epstein and Futterman didn't want "In Treatment" to feel like just another therapy drama.
"I wanted to explore the idea that it's almost like watching a cop show," says Futterman, whose mother is a psychoanalyst. (He's also married to a therapist-in-training: Epstein's working toward a psychology degree at Pepperdine University.) "There's a real detective quality to how the episodes are written," he says. "Paul's always digging for evidence in a compressed amount of time and making connections to what happened in the past."
"Paul's just doing the same thing people have been doing for thousands of years, whether it's talking to village elders or talking to priests in confession," says Byrne. "He's asking essential questions about life: 'What do you want? What are you prepared to give up in order to achieve what you want? What's your definition of contentment?' To me, the value of the show would be if those questions started to leak into your own consciousness and make you look at your own life."
For Futterman, it's already getting personal. "When I told my mother about this project, she said, 'Do you think I should be a constultant on the show?'" he says, laughing. "And I said, 'No, that would be a recipe for another five years of psychotherapy.'"
melissa.maerz@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
Sunday, October 24, 2010
New York Times Review - IT Season 3 - Sunday Oct. 24th
The Doctor Is Back in Session on HBO
By Alessandra Stanley
October 24, 2010
Therapy is out of fashion and almost off the air.
Tony isn’t discussing his dreams on “The Sopranos” anymore. “Huff,” a Showtime shrink played by Hank Azaria, is long gone, and “Head Case,” a send-up of psychiatry on Starz, was also canceled. HBO shut down “Tell Me You Love Me” after one season. All of Toni Collette’s multiple personalities are on hiatus until next year. Neurotics and sociopaths are still rampant, of course, from a serial killer on “Dexter” to a teacher turned drug kingpin on “Breaking Bad,” but for the most part television characters carry on without counseling or medication.
Except on In Treatment. Monday’s season premiere on HBO picks up Paul Weston, the moody therapist played by Gabriel Byrne, pretty much where he was left off: fragile, chastened, but still in the business of healing.
This is the third season and the first that relies on original scripts instead of adaptations of episodes from the hit Israeli series “Be’ Tipul.” The first seasons were faithful adaptations and, remarkably, it took only a few minor adjustments to transpose the psychic pain in Tel Aviv to Maryland and Brooklyn.
When it began, the American version was praised for not seeming like a knockoff of the Israeli series. Now it’s a compliment to say that Season 3 does: Paul’s relationships with his new patients are as finely etched as before. The writing may seem a little less sophisticated — each session offers incremental insights about the patient that can seem a bit pat or forced — but over all “In Treatment” is still an absorbing dramatization of psychotherapy.
The show was structured as a series of weeks in the life of a therapist; each half-hour episode featured patient sessions with Paul, and the last of the week was Paul’s session with his own mentor and therapist, Gina. In her presence Paul dropped his wise, benign veneer and quickly turned as defensive and querulous as his patients. The format put the viewer in the somewhat godly position of psychiatric supervisor, observing as doctor and patient bandied words across layers of discontent and self-delusion. It was intense, claustrophobic and oddly gripping, each episode a whodunit in which the clues are repression, transference and counter-transference.
This season viewers are privy to fewer patients. Sunil (Irrfan Kahn), a Bengali professor, is a depressed widower living with his son and American daughter-in-law. Jesse (Dane DeHaan) is an adopted gay teenager struggling with all sorts of crises, including the discovery of his birth mother. And in a rare television role, Debra Winger plays Frances, a former movie star having trouble with her lines, her age and her family.
Paul has stopped seeing Gina, who retired and wrote a well-received novel. Paul views one character in Gina’s book as a thinly veiled version of himself and all his personal and professional inadequacies. That brings him to the waiting room of Adele (Amy Ryan), a younger, less experienced therapist.
The show’s producers recruited the novelist Jhumpa Lahiri (“The Namesake”) as a cultural consultant for Sunil’s story line, and whatever the reason, he is the most interesting patient. It helps that Mr. Kahn, who played the father in the film version of “The Namesake,” is deft and compelling in the role of a grieving Indian émigré struggling to retain his dignity in an alien culture. Sunil is brought to Paul’s office by his son Arun (Samrat Chakrabarti) and Arun’s wife, Julia (Sonya Walger). Julia, an attractive, brittle literary agent, finds her father-in-law’s withdrawal hostile and unnerving. Sunil refuses at first to speak to her or Paul directly; instead he responds in Bengali and relies on Arun to translate.
Once his minders leave the room, Paul puts Sunil at ease, and the patient begins to reveal glimpses of his isolation and alienation in American society, not without wry humor. “She named her daughter after a company that makes bottled water, Naya,” Sunil says of Julia. “Perhaps the next child will be called Ipod”.
Mr. DeHaan is equally persuasive as Jesse, the gay teenager with a quicksilver temper and charm that just barely conceals his insecurities and rage at his adopted parents and the birth mother he hasn’t met.
Oddly, it is Ms. Winger who has the hardest time with a role that seems tailor made, namely as a former movie star trying to make a comeback. Frances comes to see Paul because she finds herself forgetting her lines in a revival of “The Night of the Iguana,” and it soon becomes evident that there are deep-rooted reasons for her sudden memory lapses.
Frances, like most patients, is a liar, armored in defenses and self-delusion. Actors live a lie for a living, which adds an extra layer of falsity. Perhaps because Ms. Winger’s strength as a performer was baring the inner truth of her characters in movies like “Terms of Endearment” and “Rachel Getting Married,” she seems uncomfortable with Frances’s facility for deceit. Resistance is an inevitable part of psychotherapy, but in this case it seems more like the actress is resisting her role.
It doesn’t matter. “In Treatment” is still bracing. Reality television teems with celebrity shrinks like Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew who provide make-believe therapy. “In Treatment” is fictional, but it carries a stronger whiff of truth.
A version of this review appeared in print on October 25, 2010, on page C1 of the New York edition.
By Alessandra Stanley
October 24, 2010
Therapy is out of fashion and almost off the air.
Tony isn’t discussing his dreams on “The Sopranos” anymore. “Huff,” a Showtime shrink played by Hank Azaria, is long gone, and “Head Case,” a send-up of psychiatry on Starz, was also canceled. HBO shut down “Tell Me You Love Me” after one season. All of Toni Collette’s multiple personalities are on hiatus until next year. Neurotics and sociopaths are still rampant, of course, from a serial killer on “Dexter” to a teacher turned drug kingpin on “Breaking Bad,” but for the most part television characters carry on without counseling or medication.
Except on In Treatment. Monday’s season premiere on HBO picks up Paul Weston, the moody therapist played by Gabriel Byrne, pretty much where he was left off: fragile, chastened, but still in the business of healing.
This is the third season and the first that relies on original scripts instead of adaptations of episodes from the hit Israeli series “Be’ Tipul.” The first seasons were faithful adaptations and, remarkably, it took only a few minor adjustments to transpose the psychic pain in Tel Aviv to Maryland and Brooklyn.
When it began, the American version was praised for not seeming like a knockoff of the Israeli series. Now it’s a compliment to say that Season 3 does: Paul’s relationships with his new patients are as finely etched as before. The writing may seem a little less sophisticated — each session offers incremental insights about the patient that can seem a bit pat or forced — but over all “In Treatment” is still an absorbing dramatization of psychotherapy.
The show was structured as a series of weeks in the life of a therapist; each half-hour episode featured patient sessions with Paul, and the last of the week was Paul’s session with his own mentor and therapist, Gina. In her presence Paul dropped his wise, benign veneer and quickly turned as defensive and querulous as his patients. The format put the viewer in the somewhat godly position of psychiatric supervisor, observing as doctor and patient bandied words across layers of discontent and self-delusion. It was intense, claustrophobic and oddly gripping, each episode a whodunit in which the clues are repression, transference and counter-transference.
This season viewers are privy to fewer patients. Sunil (Irrfan Kahn), a Bengali professor, is a depressed widower living with his son and American daughter-in-law. Jesse (Dane DeHaan) is an adopted gay teenager struggling with all sorts of crises, including the discovery of his birth mother. And in a rare television role, Debra Winger plays Frances, a former movie star having trouble with her lines, her age and her family.
Paul has stopped seeing Gina, who retired and wrote a well-received novel. Paul views one character in Gina’s book as a thinly veiled version of himself and all his personal and professional inadequacies. That brings him to the waiting room of Adele (Amy Ryan), a younger, less experienced therapist.
The show’s producers recruited the novelist Jhumpa Lahiri (“The Namesake”) as a cultural consultant for Sunil’s story line, and whatever the reason, he is the most interesting patient. It helps that Mr. Kahn, who played the father in the film version of “The Namesake,” is deft and compelling in the role of a grieving Indian émigré struggling to retain his dignity in an alien culture. Sunil is brought to Paul’s office by his son Arun (Samrat Chakrabarti) and Arun’s wife, Julia (Sonya Walger). Julia, an attractive, brittle literary agent, finds her father-in-law’s withdrawal hostile and unnerving. Sunil refuses at first to speak to her or Paul directly; instead he responds in Bengali and relies on Arun to translate.
Once his minders leave the room, Paul puts Sunil at ease, and the patient begins to reveal glimpses of his isolation and alienation in American society, not without wry humor. “She named her daughter after a company that makes bottled water, Naya,” Sunil says of Julia. “Perhaps the next child will be called Ipod”.
Mr. DeHaan is equally persuasive as Jesse, the gay teenager with a quicksilver temper and charm that just barely conceals his insecurities and rage at his adopted parents and the birth mother he hasn’t met.
Oddly, it is Ms. Winger who has the hardest time with a role that seems tailor made, namely as a former movie star trying to make a comeback. Frances comes to see Paul because she finds herself forgetting her lines in a revival of “The Night of the Iguana,” and it soon becomes evident that there are deep-rooted reasons for her sudden memory lapses.
Frances, like most patients, is a liar, armored in defenses and self-delusion. Actors live a lie for a living, which adds an extra layer of falsity. Perhaps because Ms. Winger’s strength as a performer was baring the inner truth of her characters in movies like “Terms of Endearment” and “Rachel Getting Married,” she seems uncomfortable with Frances’s facility for deceit. Resistance is an inevitable part of psychotherapy, but in this case it seems more like the actress is resisting her role.
It doesn’t matter. “In Treatment” is still bracing. Reality television teems with celebrity shrinks like Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew who provide make-believe therapy. “In Treatment” is fictional, but it carries a stronger whiff of truth.
A version of this review appeared in print on October 25, 2010, on page C1 of the New York edition.
Another Season 3 Review
Review: HBO's 'In Treatment' returns for season three
Published on Sunday, Oct 24, 2010 8:30 AM Alan Sepinwall
Gabriel Byrne in "In Treatment."
Credit: HBO/Paul Schiraldi
That's kind of how I feel about "In Treatment" season three, which debuts Monday and Tuesday at 9 and 9:30 p.m. on HBO. After liking the first season and loving the second, I dove into the third and felt like something was off. Maybe it was the slight change in format, from five episodes a week (Paul with four patients, then Paul with his own shrink) down to four (three patients plus Paul in therapy). Maybe it was the rhythms of new showrunners Dan Futterman and Anya Epstein, who took over for Warren Leight, who himself took over for Rodrigo Garcia. (Both the amount and nature of these episodes understandably proves exhausting.) Or maybe it was that Futterman and Epstein were traveling without a road map, since this is the first season where the stories and characters weren't adapted from the Israeli series "Be'Tipul."
Whatever the reason, something wasn't quite right about the new episodes. Byrne was still there, still fantastic as Paul, still making the art of listening seem like the most exciting form of acting there is. And the production team (including head director Paris Barclay) had surrounded him with possibly the best cast yet: acclaimed Indian actor Irrfan Khan as Sunil, a depressed Bengali widower chafing at life in the home of his Americanized son and blonde daughter-in-law; three-time Oscar nominee Debra Winger, in her meatiest role since she emerged from semi-retirement a couple of years ago, as Frances, an aging movie star struggling to remember her lines as her Broadway play nears its debut; relative unknown Dane DeHaan as Jesse, a self-destructive gay teen battling with his adoptive parents; and the versatile and always-impressive Amy Ryan as Adele, who takes the place of Dianne Wiest's Gina as the psychiatrist to whom Paul unburdens himself at the end of each long week.
So great cast, same elegantly simple format (each episode is essentially a one-act play), many of the same directors/writers/producers, and same cable channel willing to subsidize a nichier-than-niche concept. The show is not for everyone, but it was definitely for me. So all should be perfect, right?
Yet as I went through the opening installments of season three, "In Treatment" began to feel like work in a way it hadn't in the past.
In fairness, "In Treatment" has never been an easy show to watch. This isn't made for casual viewing. As much is revealed by what the patients don't want to say to Paul, or by how he reacts to them, as in the dialogue itself. It engages a part of my brain that a lot of other shows don't, and the viewing gets tougher when there are a lot of other challenging shows at the same time.
The first season came along at the tail end of the TV writers strike of '07-'08, and for a while there wasn't anything remotely as complex to challenge for my attention. Season two aired in a slightly busier period ("Lost" season five and "Breaking Bad" season two overlapped it), but still nothing quite as crowded for quality TV as this fall. I was watching the screeners for the first three weeks of season three while I was also dealing with the final episodes of "Mad Men" and "Rubicon," new episodes of "Boardwalk Empire," "Sons of Anarchy," "Terriers," "Friday Night Lights" and AMC's zombie epic "The Walking Dead," to name just a few. As a non-professional TV watcher, you may not watch most, or any, of those other shows, but by the time I got into "In Treatment," my brain was definitely trying to tell me "Enough already! Can't we put on 'Man V. Food' instead?"
Beyond that, though, was the sense that even though the patients, their problems and even Paul's own therapist have changed, the concept begins to feel repetitive after a few seasons. Frances' problems are her own, but there's some commonality between her give-and-take with Paul and the relationships he had with previous patients like season one's Amy (Embeth Davidtz) and season two's Mia (Hope Davis). Similarly, Paul becomes more protective when he's in sessions with Jesse than with his adult patients, just as he was in the past with suicidal gymnast Sophie (Mia Wasikowska) or cancer victim April (Alison Pill). And though the issues that send Paul to see Adele - sleeplessness, fear of a bad medical diagnosis and his estrangement from Gina - aren't the same that he talked about with Gina in seasons past, his inescapable feelings of misery remain the same.
Now, this is all honest. Though each season of "In Treatment" covers a short period (nine weeks the first season, seven weeks ever since) in which Paul is able to get at the root cause of his patients' problems, even if he isn't able to solve them all, actual therapy can take much longer to achieve a positive outcome, if one ever comes at all. Of course Paul wouldn't suddenly be happy go lucky. And since the patients are really there to reflect the problems in Paul's life - Jesse, for instance, ties into divorced dad Paul's feelings of estrangement from his kids - of course they would have some similarities to previous ones.
Still, it took me a while to overcome the "been there, analyzed that" feelings I had in the opening episodes, as Paul and his patients began the familiar dance, wherein they talk about only what they're comfortable talking about while Paul, like a good detective, tries to solve the mystery of what's really bothering them. For the first two weeks, it was only the closing episodes with Adele - where Paul is on less than solid ground, dealing with a complete stranger he can't figure out and/or manipulate - that felt truly engaging.
Then I got to the third week, and began to embrace the show's rhythms again. By this point, the set-up is over. We know, and Paul knows, the basic problems of each patient (including Paul himself), and now it becomes a question of whether they're willing to accept the truth of what he's telling them, and whether there's anything more hiding beneath the surface. Once in the flow, I began to appreciate the nuances of the various duets: the way Paul learns to let Sunil take his time and fish around in his pockets for candy or tobacco or his journal as a stall tactic, or how Paul lets Jesse push his buttons only so far. And I began to really admire the performances, particularly by Ryan, who as the in-control Adele has to reveal even less of herself to Paul than Paul reveals himself to his own patients.
I'll wait until the second half of the season to decide whether I want to continue with this particular therapy. Season one also had an uneven beginning and then routinely knocked me for a loop in its closing weeks; the nature of therapy, and this show, means there has to be a lot of exposition before we can get to the good stuff. But I'm also open to the possibility that I've gotten as much out of this relationship with Paul Weston as I'm likely to get, and that after this round it may be healthier if we go our separate ways.
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Another Review
"In Treatment's" darkest season yet
The third season of HBO's smart drama presents three lost souls and a therapist on the brink of a breakdown
Remember the '90s, when we all thought we were crazy? Everyone ran out and got a shrink (New Yorkers got analysts — not just for Woody Allen anymore!). Couples' therapy became a widely chosen ritualistic precursor to divorce, aimed at clarifying for each party exactly when and how their spouse became reprehensible. The middle-aged departed on healing retreats en masse to learn about centering and recovering their inner child. The most fragile souls wound up in stuffy hotel conference rooms under the banner of Werner Erhard's Forum, where an authoritarian patriarch urged them to simply sweep away their "rackets" like so many dust bunnies.
Back then, everyone pathologized themselves and each other. We pointed our fingers at each other and proclaimed, "narcissist," "borderline," "bipolar," "passive-aggressive," "sex addict," then unloaded our anxiety over the demons flying around our heads in our allotted 50-minute sessions. Why were the people who weren't paying $150 an hour to be showered in unconditional positive regard so damn confused?
These days, the war of the sane versus the insane has usurped the political stage, both sides refusing to politely listen for another second, swapping out any agreement to disagree with an overarching proclamation that the other side is simply unhinged (and deeply stupid, to boot). With the globe in peril and abject lunatics threatening to take over the asylum, it seems we no longer have the luxury of dissecting each other's colorful assortment of dysfunctional tics.
Maybe that's why HBO's "In Treatment" (premieres 9 p.m. Monday, October 25 and 9 p.m. Tuesday, October 26) feels like such an anachronism. While other dramas hurtle forward with action sequences and rapid-fire dialogue, a dizzying barrage of fisticuffs and witty quips and deep confessions flying past our heads every minute, this show unfolds with the patience and restraint of a play. We sit in the office of psychotherapist Paul Westin (Gabriel Byrne) and witness these thoughtful half-hour journeys into each patient's psyche, grappling with defense mechanisms and reflexive lies and reactive emotions along the way. Rarely do any of Paul's patients want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth about themselves. Instead, they digress, beat themselves up, push back, roll their eyes, attribute intentions to third parties that doesn't exist, and generally avoid the heart of the matter at all costs.
Back then, everyone pathologized themselves and each other. We pointed our fingers at each other and proclaimed, "narcissist," "borderline," "bipolar," "passive-aggressive," "sex addict," then unloaded our anxiety over the demons flying around our heads in our allotted 50-minute sessions. Why were the people who weren't paying $150 an hour to be showered in unconditional positive regard so damn confused?
These days, the war of the sane versus the insane has usurped the political stage, both sides refusing to politely listen for another second, swapping out any agreement to disagree with an overarching proclamation that the other side is simply unhinged (and deeply stupid, to boot). With the globe in peril and abject lunatics threatening to take over the asylum, it seems we no longer have the luxury of dissecting each other's colorful assortment of dysfunctional tics.
Maybe that's why HBO's "In Treatment" (premieres 9 p.m. Monday, October 25 and 9 p.m. Tuesday, October 26) feels like such an anachronism. While other dramas hurtle forward with action sequences and rapid-fire dialogue, a dizzying barrage of fisticuffs and witty quips and deep confessions flying past our heads every minute, this show unfolds with the patience and restraint of a play. We sit in the office of psychotherapist Paul Westin (Gabriel Byrne) and witness these thoughtful half-hour journeys into each patient's psyche, grappling with defense mechanisms and reflexive lies and reactive emotions along the way. Rarely do any of Paul's patients want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth about themselves. Instead, they digress, beat themselves up, push back, roll their eyes, attribute intentions to third parties that doesn't exist, and generally avoid the heart of the matter at all costs.
This makes watching "In Treatment" a little bit rigorous, like solving a mystery alongside our fearless detective. As Paul tries to guide each client gently through his or her rough emotional terrain, we're presented with clues as to where the areas of resistance – and the answers – lie. Is Sunil (Irrfan Khan), a Bengali man brought to New York from Calcutta by his son after his wife died, paralyzed by a longing for his wife, or has he receded into an alienated state out of repressed envy of his son and daughter-in-law's freewheeling Western lifestyle? Clearly gay teenager Jesse (Dane DeHaan) is struggling with his sexuality, his identity, his anger at his adoptive parents and countless other issues. But does Paul have any chance of steering him away from a pattern of blaming those who love him, while leaning on and confiding in those who only want to use him? There's an undercurrent of violence and rage with these two patients that makes their interactions much more tense than usual.
In contrast, Frances (Debra Winger), a former famous actress, alternates between sweet smiles and moments of exasperation and self-doubt. She wrestles with her sister's cancer diagnosis and her daughter's abandonment, but doesn’t take any steps to repair either of those relationships. Instead, she's funneled her frustration into her work, forgetting her lines in rehearsals for a play for the first time in her career. Despite this evidence of how our avoidance can create odd side effects, Paul himself is convinced that he's developing Parkinson's disease, just like his father, which we learn in his own sessions with his new therapist, Adele (Amy Ryan). Far from the matriarchal figure and professional advisor he found in Gina (Dianne Wiest) in the first two seasons, Adele is patient but clearly skeptical of Paul's self-diagnosis, and she's resistant to his constant tests to make sure she's a therapist worthy of his time. (In their second session, when Paul demands that Adele tell him whether or not she understands his reference to Bartleby, I'm just dying for her to answer, "I prefer not to!")
Paul's shift from gentle professional to arrogant, resistant patient was always a little bit jarring, but it underscores the complexity of "In Treatment's" perspective on therapy. Instead of offering us some illusion of the ideal, nurturing therapist – an illusion that anyone who's actually been in therapy has embraced at some point – this narrative delves into the gaps in Paul's understanding as vigorously as it does with any of the other characters. Similarly, far from celebrating the work of therapy as a straightforward adventure to the last frontier of a patient's psyche, the show serves up a running critique of the therapeutic process. Paul often confuses Jesse with his son, and assumes that Jesse requires the same unconditional love and patience, to the point where Jesse, however hurt he might be by his circumstances, begins to look capable of abuse. It doesn't occur to Paul that what Jesse is crying out for, more than love, is open confrontation and clear boundaries. Jesse's mother and Paul may share an urge to avoid the darkness that Jesse continuously shoves in their faces.
If all of that seems like heavy lifting, well, it is. And as entertaining as "In Treatment" can be at times, the third season may be the most grueling of them all. It's tough to see how any of these characters will find anything remotely resembling a sense of happiness before the season is over. Unfortunately, this season may also be the most simplistic so far. While it was never even close to obvious after three episodes what characters like Mia (Hope Davis) or Alex (Blair Underwood) really needed in their lives or what emotions they were meant to sort through in order to make progress, Sanil, Jesse and Frances don't seem as mysterious or as complexly rendered. Sanil has some battle against his own desires that devolves quickly into a cliché of superego versus id, cultural repression versus indulgence, while Jesse and Frances quite obviously need to break down their defenses, open up their hearts and love a little.
It's tough to tell if it's the acting or the writing, but with Frances' scenes in particular, we're awkwardly aware of an actress performing a role, and this prevents us from viewing Frances as a real person. Granted, Frances is an actress, and maybe her therapy sessions feel like a performance, even to her. But it's tough not to feel frustrated with the very surface-level conversations she has with Paul during the first three episodes.
Frances: Ava Gardner played the part in the movie. Did you see it?
Paul: Are you worried about being compared to Ava Gardner?
Frances' remarks and Paul's responses feel predictable, and offer none of the almost furious blurring of boundaries and emotions that occurred in Mia's segments last season. With Mia, and with Sophie and other brilliant character portraits of the first two seasons, it was impossible not to become utterly engrossed in the setbacks and triumphs of their struggles for happiness.
What's also strange is that all of the characters, Paul included, are less likable and harder to empathize with this season than in seasons past. Sanil is occasionally poetic and funny but mostly a little flat, Jesse is so sarcastic and bratty, checking his cell phone and pouting and storming out, that it's hard to sit through his sessions at all, and Frances feels at once familiar and uninteresting. Paul's current fixation on Parkinson's doesn't lead anywhere intriguing either – eventually he'll either figure out that it's psychosomatic, or he'll have to deal with his diagnosis, but either way this battle isn't something that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. I almost wish that the show would go back to having four patients, not three, so that there were another character in the mix who might offer the same layers of inner conflict we've come to expect here.
Instead, during much of the first few episodes, we feel just like Paul does when he tells his new therapist, Adele, "Listen to you! You sound like a textbook."
Wonderful new Interview with Gabriel Byrne.
I stumbled over this, and like Gabriel himself, began reading and then got a dose of the jitters, it was so exciting for me. The man is a captivating craftsman and I found it fascinating to hear about how he does 'it' on "In Treatment".
Comfortable But Not Too Familiar by Amy Chozick
Some excerpts:
"On a recent afternoon, Mr. Byrne, 60, couldn't get comfortable. He climbed off the plush sofa at the HBO headquarters and opted to sit for an hour-and-a-half interview on the hard, carpeted floor. He speaks with a Dublin accent and has a warm, familiar manner that feels more like that of a favorite professor than a movie star."
"For "In Treatment," Mr. Byrne doesn't look at a script until the morning a scene is shot. He wakes up at 5:30 a.m., gets a first glimpse of the script at 7:00, goes to hair and makeup and then reads over his lines. He discusses any changes with the writers and starts shooting by 10."
"To him, playing Paul Weston is a job, not high art. He doesn't deeply immerse himself in the role and doesn't bring the character home with him. ("Bring Paul home with me?" He cringed at the thought.) He said he is motivated by what the choreographer Martha Graham called a "queer, divine dissatisfaction"; he feels propelled to take on new roles even though he knows his performances will never reach perfection."
With grateful thanks to Iamuneek.
I'm having a really tough time waiting for Season Three.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Season 3 Character Pages
With season 3 starting up on Monday, etopt and I have now made available a character page for each patient/session. It is our hope that everyone will enjoy these pages as a place to discuss, dissect and analyze what promises to be a fantastic season of our favorite show. (Oh, and to drool a little over that handsome therapist, too.....)
We've waited a long time for Season 3. In 3 short days, our wait will be over and the brilliant show we all love will be back. It was the discussions of the past two seasons about the show that drove us to make this blog, so we look forward to it continuing with season 3.
Each page has their own character video on it, to give us a small sample of what we're to expect. Check them out.
We've waited a long time for Season 3. In 3 short days, our wait will be over and the brilliant show we all love will be back. It was the discussions of the past two seasons about the show that drove us to make this blog, so we look forward to it continuing with season 3.
Each page has their own character video on it, to give us a small sample of what we're to expect. Check them out.
"So what are ya here to talk about?"
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Some IT Season 3 news.....
Cast:
HBO’s
In Treatment season III
Paul Weston- Gabriel Byrne
Frances- Debra Winger
Wendy- Susan Misner
Jesse- Dane Dehaan
Sunil- Irrfan Khan
Adele- Amy Ryan
Marisa- Dendrie Taylor
Wendy? WENDY??? Does Paul have a girlfriend this season??? Could it be????
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
“It’s Almost Time!!!!”
The premiere of Season 3 of the best show on television is just two weeks away!
Unfortunately, this Blog site doesn’t give us “unlimited” space and no unlimited “actions” to post and comment. Because of the plans we initially had for the site, we had no “extra” pages, but in response to a request, we used, on a temporary basis, one of the pages for “miscellaneous discussions” since the season premiere was still several weeks away.
On Monday, October 18th, the “Misc. Stuff” page will come down, to be re-used as part of our final design of the site. We wanted to alert you about this change now, so you will have time to save anything on that page that you might want to keep.
Should the design plans change, or we work out a way to add an additional page for general and miscellaneous discussions, we will do so.
Thank you for your understanding,
etopt and LHL
Monday, October 11, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
New Ad in November issue of Vogue Magazine
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Another IT 3 Trailer
Here is the trailer that was taken down from Youtube last week. Hopefully this one will stay up....
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Gabriel Byrne to appear on ABC's The View 10/15/10
Great find Neek. This is just awesome news. Set your DVRs for Friday, October 15, 2010.
This is almost full circle for me. I was watching The View way back in March of 2008 when Barbara Walters was talking about IT. She was all gaga over GB and the show. She kept saying she wanted to have him on the show. The other ladies were ribbing her over the way she was acting. I think we can all say we all know why she was like she was. I was home for a while recovering from a surgery, so I checked out the show. The rest, they say, is history.....
This is almost full circle for me. I was watching The View way back in March of 2008 when Barbara Walters was talking about IT. She was all gaga over GB and the show. She kept saying she wanted to have him on the show. The other ladies were ribbing her over the way she was acting. I think we can all say we all know why she was like she was. I was home for a while recovering from a surgery, so I checked out the show. The rest, they say, is history.....
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Home Page Posts
Because of the limitations of this particular site, on the other pages, you cannot make "POSTS", but you can place your info as a "comment." It also doesn't allow us to post links, but you can type the link into the comment, and others can copy and paste into their browser if they want to read an article, etc.
All comments, as they are posted, appear on the right hand side of the page, so you can quickly find what you're inerested in.
We'd like to keep this blog mostly IT and GB related. We think that other information about family, other movies, etc. can be found on other informative sites.
We thankyou for your cooperation with this.
In Treatment 3 - Patient Overview
A more in depth look at season 3 with interviews with the actors, writers, and directors.
Season 3 Air Dates
I can't find the season three thread..lol
Anyway will post it here you can move it if you want..
These are the air dates...
October's episodes:
Episode #79: "Sunil - Week One"
Debut: MONDAY, OCT. 25 (9:00-9:30 p.m. ET/PT)
Other HBO playdates: Oct. 26 (8:00 p.m.) and 27 (midnight)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (1:45 a.m.), 28 (5:30 p.m., 11:00 p.m.), 29 (10:00 p.m.), 30 (8:00 p.m.) and 31 (11:00 a.m.)
Accompanied by his son Arun (Samrat Chakrabarti) and daughter-in-law Julia (Sonya Walger), Sunil (Irrfan Khan), a retired math professor and recent immigrant from Calcutta, reluctantly visits Paul (Gabriel Byrne). He is pushed to discuss the death of his wife six months earlier, his subsequent displacement to the U.S., and the tensions he's experienced living with his son's family, particularly his attractive yet unwelcoming daughter-in-law.
Written by Adam Rapp; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #80: "Frances - Week One"
Debut: MONDAY, OCT. 25 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Oct. 26 (8:30 p.m.) and 27 (12:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (2:20 a.m.), 28 (6:00 p.m., 11:30 p.m.), 29 (10:30 p.m.), 30 (8:30 p.m.) and 31 (11:30 a.m.)
Frances (Debra Winger), a well-known stage and screen actress whose sister was treated by Paul 18 years earlier, begins therapy to discover why she is "blanking out" during rehearsals for a major Broadway revival. Paul forces her to confront the fact that her sister now has terminal breast cancer - and the implications this might have for her own health.
Written by Alison Tatlock; director, Paris Barclay.
Read more: Breaking News - Emmy(R)- and Peabody-Winning HBO Drama Series "In Treatment" Kicks off Third Season, Oct. 25, Debuting Episodes Monday and Tuesday | TheFutonCritic.com http://thefutoncritic.com/news/2010/10/06/emmy-and-peabody-winning-hbo-drama-series-in-treatment-kicks-off-third-season-oct-25-debuting-episodes-monday-and-tuesday-588403/20101006hbo02/#ixzz11brGjHjP
Written by Alison Tatlock; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #81: "Jesse - Week One"
Debut: TUESDAY, OCT. 26 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Oct. 27 (1:00 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (2:55 a.m.), 28 (6:30 p.m., midnight), 29 (11:00 p.m.), 30 (9:00 p.m.) and 31 (noon)
Jesse (Dane DeHaan), a gay 16-year-old high-school student, has been seeing Paul after being caught peddling prescription drugs to classmates. He talks about his troubling "pattern of promiscuity," his unsettled family life with his adoptive parents, and a recent alarming voicemail.
Written by Sarah Treem; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #82: "Adele - Week One"
Debut: TUESDAY, OCT. 26 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Oct. 27 (1:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (3:30 a.m.), 28 (7:00 p.m., 12:30 a.m.), 29 (11:30 p.m.), 30 (9:30 p.m.) and 31 (12:30 p.m.)
In order to get a new prescription for sleeping pills, an exhausted Paul visits Adele (Amy Ryan) and is surprised by her youth and coolly incisive intelligence. She compels Paul to confront deep-rooted fears about his health, divorce, patients and all-encompassing relationship with former therapist Gina Toll.
Written by Anya Epstein & Dan Futterman; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #83: "Sunil - Week Two"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 1 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 2 (8:00 p.m.) and 3 (midnight)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (1:10 a.m.), 4 (6:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m.), 5 (10:00 p.m.), 6 (8:00 p.m.) and 7 (10:30 a.m.)
Episode #84: "Frances - Week Two"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 1 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 2 (8:30 p.m.) and 3 (12:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (1:45 a.m.), 4 (6:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m.), 5 (10:30 p.m.), 6 (8:30 p.m.) and 7 (11:00 a.m.)
Episode #85: "Jesse - Week Two"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 2 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 3 (1:00 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (2:20 a.m.), 4 (7:00 p.m., midnight), 5 (11:00 p.m.), 6 (9:00 p.m.) and 7 (11:30 a.m.)
Episode #86: "Adele - Week Two"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 2 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 3 (1:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (2:55 a.m.), 4 (7:30 p.m., 12:30 a.m.), 5 (11:30 p.m.), 6 (9:30 p.m.) and 7 (noon)
Episode #87: "Sunil - Week Three"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 8 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 9 (8:00 p.m.) and 10 (midnight)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (1:45 a.m.), 11 (4:30 p.m., 11:00 p.m.), 12 (11:00 p.m.), 13 (6:00 p.m.) and 14 (11:30 a.m.)
Episode #88: "Frances - Week Three"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 8 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 9 (8:30 p.m.) and 10 (12:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (2:20 a.m.), 11 (5:00 p.m., 11:30 p.m.), 12 (11:30 p.m.), 13 (6:30 p.m.) and 14 (noon)
Episode #89: "Jesse - Week Three"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 9 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 10 (1:00 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (2:55 a.m.), 11 (5:30 p.m., midnight), 12 (midnight), 13 (7:00 p.m.) and 14 (12:30 p.m.)
Episode #90: "Adele - Week Three"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 9 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 10 (1:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (3:30 a.m.), 11 (6:00 p.m., 12:30 a.m.), 12 (12:30 a.m.), 13 (7:30 p.m.) and 14 (1:00 p.m.)
The second season of IN TREATMENT inspired resounding critical praise, with the New York Times hailing the show for "powerful acting and well-wrought dialogue," while the Los Angeles Times said the "well-drawn and compelling performances are uniformly terrific." The Chicago Sun-Times called the series "fascinating" and Newsday termed it a "fine and absorbing show."
Earlier this year, IN TREATMENT received a Peabody Award. In addition to a Golden Globe for Gabriel Byrne, the first season of the show received two Emmys(R), for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Dianne Wiest) and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Glynn Turman).
The executive producers of IN TREATMENT are Stephen Levinson, Mark Wahlberg, Anya Epstein, Dan Futterman, Paris Barclay and Hagai Levi; consulting producer, Eric Overmyer; co-executive producer, Noa Tishby; supervising producer, Sarah Treem; producers, Sarah Lum and Mark Baker.
Anyway will post it here you can move it if you want..
These are the air dates...
October's episodes:
Episode #79: "Sunil - Week One"
Debut: MONDAY, OCT. 25 (9:00-9:30 p.m. ET/PT)
Other HBO playdates: Oct. 26 (8:00 p.m.) and 27 (midnight)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (1:45 a.m.), 28 (5:30 p.m., 11:00 p.m.), 29 (10:00 p.m.), 30 (8:00 p.m.) and 31 (11:00 a.m.)
Accompanied by his son Arun (Samrat Chakrabarti) and daughter-in-law Julia (Sonya Walger), Sunil (Irrfan Khan), a retired math professor and recent immigrant from Calcutta, reluctantly visits Paul (Gabriel Byrne). He is pushed to discuss the death of his wife six months earlier, his subsequent displacement to the U.S., and the tensions he's experienced living with his son's family, particularly his attractive yet unwelcoming daughter-in-law.
Written by Adam Rapp; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #80: "Frances - Week One"
Debut: MONDAY, OCT. 25 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Oct. 26 (8:30 p.m.) and 27 (12:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (2:20 a.m.), 28 (6:00 p.m., 11:30 p.m.), 29 (10:30 p.m.), 30 (8:30 p.m.) and 31 (11:30 a.m.)
Frances (Debra Winger), a well-known stage and screen actress whose sister was treated by Paul 18 years earlier, begins therapy to discover why she is "blanking out" during rehearsals for a major Broadway revival. Paul forces her to confront the fact that her sister now has terminal breast cancer - and the implications this might have for her own health.
Written by Alison Tatlock; director, Paris Barclay.
Read more: Breaking News - Emmy(R)- and Peabody-Winning HBO Drama Series "In Treatment" Kicks off Third Season, Oct. 25, Debuting Episodes Monday and Tuesday | TheFutonCritic.com http://thefutoncritic.com/news/2010/10/06/emmy-and-peabody-winning-hbo-drama-series-in-treatment-kicks-off-third-season-oct-25-debuting-episodes-monday-and-tuesday-588403/20101006hbo02/#ixzz11brGjHjP
Written by Alison Tatlock; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #81: "Jesse - Week One"
Debut: TUESDAY, OCT. 26 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Oct. 27 (1:00 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (2:55 a.m.), 28 (6:30 p.m., midnight), 29 (11:00 p.m.), 30 (9:00 p.m.) and 31 (noon)
Jesse (Dane DeHaan), a gay 16-year-old high-school student, has been seeing Paul after being caught peddling prescription drugs to classmates. He talks about his troubling "pattern of promiscuity," his unsettled family life with his adoptive parents, and a recent alarming voicemail.
Written by Sarah Treem; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #82: "Adele - Week One"
Debut: TUESDAY, OCT. 26 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Oct. 27 (1:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Oct. 26 (3:30 a.m.), 28 (7:00 p.m., 12:30 a.m.), 29 (11:30 p.m.), 30 (9:30 p.m.) and 31 (12:30 p.m.)
In order to get a new prescription for sleeping pills, an exhausted Paul visits Adele (Amy Ryan) and is surprised by her youth and coolly incisive intelligence. She compels Paul to confront deep-rooted fears about his health, divorce, patients and all-encompassing relationship with former therapist Gina Toll.
Written by Anya Epstein & Dan Futterman; director, Paris Barclay.
Episode #83: "Sunil - Week Two"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 1 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 2 (8:00 p.m.) and 3 (midnight)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (1:10 a.m.), 4 (6:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m.), 5 (10:00 p.m.), 6 (8:00 p.m.) and 7 (10:30 a.m.)
Episode #84: "Frances - Week Two"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 1 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 2 (8:30 p.m.) and 3 (12:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (1:45 a.m.), 4 (6:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m.), 5 (10:30 p.m.), 6 (8:30 p.m.) and 7 (11:00 a.m.)
Episode #85: "Jesse - Week Two"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 2 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 3 (1:00 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (2:20 a.m.), 4 (7:00 p.m., midnight), 5 (11:00 p.m.), 6 (9:00 p.m.) and 7 (11:30 a.m.)
Episode #86: "Adele - Week Two"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 2 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 3 (1:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 2 (2:55 a.m.), 4 (7:30 p.m., 12:30 a.m.), 5 (11:30 p.m.), 6 (9:30 p.m.) and 7 (noon)
Episode #87: "Sunil - Week Three"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 8 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 9 (8:00 p.m.) and 10 (midnight)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (1:45 a.m.), 11 (4:30 p.m., 11:00 p.m.), 12 (11:00 p.m.), 13 (6:00 p.m.) and 14 (11:30 a.m.)
Episode #88: "Frances - Week Three"
Debut: MONDAY, NOV. 8 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdates: Nov. 9 (8:30 p.m.) and 10 (12:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (2:20 a.m.), 11 (5:00 p.m., 11:30 p.m.), 12 (11:30 p.m.), 13 (6:30 p.m.) and 14 (noon)
Episode #89: "Jesse - Week Three"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 9 (9:00-9:30 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 10 (1:00 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (2:55 a.m.), 11 (5:30 p.m., midnight), 12 (midnight), 13 (7:00 p.m.) and 14 (12:30 p.m.)
Episode #90: "Adele - Week Three"
Debut: TUESDAY, NOV. 9 (9:30-10:00 p.m.)
Other HBO playdate: Nov. 10 (1:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: Nov. 9 (3:30 a.m.), 11 (6:00 p.m., 12:30 a.m.), 12 (12:30 a.m.), 13 (7:30 p.m.) and 14 (1:00 p.m.)
The second season of IN TREATMENT inspired resounding critical praise, with the New York Times hailing the show for "powerful acting and well-wrought dialogue," while the Los Angeles Times said the "well-drawn and compelling performances are uniformly terrific." The Chicago Sun-Times called the series "fascinating" and Newsday termed it a "fine and absorbing show."
Earlier this year, IN TREATMENT received a Peabody Award. In addition to a Golden Globe for Gabriel Byrne, the first season of the show received two Emmys(R), for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Dianne Wiest) and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Glynn Turman).
The executive producers of IN TREATMENT are Stephen Levinson, Mark Wahlberg, Anya Epstein, Dan Futterman, Paris Barclay and Hagai Levi; consulting producer, Eric Overmyer; co-executive producer, Noa Tishby; supervising producer, Sarah Treem; producers, Sarah Lum and Mark Baker.
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