ohn Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate scared the hell out of people—moviegoers and its studio alike. So daring, so creepy, so audacious and so damned prescient, it took years for it to be accepted as the classic tale of paranoia, suspense and political intrigue it really was. Now, Jonathan Demme, no slouch himself as a filmmaker, dares to re-envision The Manchurian Candidate for a new generation. Wisely, he's cast some of the best actors in the game: Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber. And Paramount Pictures, eager to tap into the zeitgeist, is marching the film into wide release in the heat of an election year.
Washington stars as Army major Bennett Marco, a Gulf War veteran who survived an assault that left two members of his unit dead. All these years later, Marco begins to believe he's been brainwashed—via implants—into remembering events a certain way, and he's not so sure that Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Schreiber), who won a Medal of Honor for saving much of the unit, really pulled off all the heroics for which he's been venerated. Now, with Shaw on the verge of attaining the vice presidency of the United States, Marco tries to unearth the truth. Out to protect Shaw at any cost, however, is his manipulative mother, Sen. Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Streep). And the race is on.
Streep, Washington, Demme and Tina Sinatra, who co-produced the remake and is the daughter of Frank Sinatra, the original film's co-star and co-producer, recently sat down to talk with Science Fiction Weekly about The Manchurian Candidate, which opened July 30.
Meryl Streep, what attracted you to this?
Streep: Ah. Oh, my God. Everything. Every element in it. Great director. Fantastic cast. And a script that just read like gangbusters. It hasn't really changed from the one that I read a year ago or two years ago, or whenever it was. Things have gotten sort of rearranged a little bit to help the narrative, and things have been shortened, but it's pretty much as I read it, which just blew me away. The introduction of this character is irresistible—how she comes in and kind of burns it up. I just loved it.
But she wants to take over the country ...
Streep: Yeah, and it wasn't her time. It wasn't time to be a woman president. So she ... lives through her kid and pushes that kid.
There's a story going around that the film was recut or re-edited. Can you clarify what happened?
Streep: You should go and search out that story, because I did yesterday. I was in an interview with Katie Couric and she mentioned it, too. It's easy to find. Go onto Google and you can find who this is. You would not want to be associated with this person. It's a crazy person who has a Web site in Los Angeles, and every reporter mentions it. Go there. I think it's a Web site called Deathtoliberals.com. Now this is your source. This is somebody who has an agenda to attack Hillary Clinton, and I just think it's amazing that every single reporter [asks about it].
But, really, your hairstyle and some of your vocal mannerisms and body language evoke Hillary Clinton. And this film certainly has something in it to offend both Republicans and Democrats.
Streep: I think we read in what we want.
What do you make of Manchurian Candidate coming out at such a politically charged and timely moment?
Streep: This movie is coming out at such a political time. Well, all I can say is that events have caught up with the script. You know how long it takes to make a movie, and all of a sudden, here we are. [But] there is a synchronicity of events which is bizarre, to say the least.
Denzel Washington, the concept of mind control and brainwashing is pretty SF in nature, isn't it?
Washington: No, mind control and brainwashing is not big science-fiction stuff. It's your television set. It's information. You know, people were running out and voting for Gephardt because the papers said he was going to be the vice-presidential candidate, so that's mind control. Times Square [in New York City] is mind control. Nestle's Crunch ... I ate a bar because I saw the sign in Times Square.
Meryl Streep is fond of saying that the script is the most important thing. Do you agree?
Washington: "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage" is an old saying. You know, I think script is first. It ought to be. Or, at the very least, a great idea is first.
So it's not "I really want to work with that person"?
Washington: You shouldn't think that way. If it's ... I was about to say a movie by name. There were two great actors in it, but it didn't help that they were both in it. That's actually a couple of movies I've been in. But no, it's got to be script first.
Some people question the justification for remakes and wonder why Hollywood can't come up with original ideas. What's your thinking on the matter?
Washington: Well, good material should be interpreted. I don't know where along the line people decided films were so precious they shouldn't be reinterpreted. Plays are interpreted all the time. Why not a screenplay? Not a big deal to me. Othello's been done 9 million times. That doesn't mean I shouldn't do it again. Olivier did it, and James Earl Jones and Paul Robeson, and why not? If it's something good, if it's a good story.
Jonathan Demme, we've heard you did extensive research when you went to rework The Manchurian Candidate. Were you frightened by anything you actually learned?
Demme: Yeah. I don't know if just in your private life any of you have come across a book called In Search of the Manchurian Candidate. It came out probably about eight or nine years ago. I can't remember the author's name, but it consisted of the writer's interpretation of files and records of CIA mind-altering experiments on unsuspecting people throughout the late '60s and '70s.
He got access through the Freedom of Information Act and wrote this up, because the CIA was actively trying—and still is, I'm sure—to figure out how to control minds and what have you, with sleep deprivation, drugs—they used a lot of LSD, all kinds of stuff. They would go into mental institutions and experiment on people who were under treatment in these places. Scientists would get the grants. "Yes, I'll take that money, and I will do your experiments for you. Great."
I find that frightening. You realize that there are no boundaries on what big, modern science will attempt to achieve. And there's always the cosmetic and the, in fact, upside. There's always a good reason. What if you could pick someone who has been profoundly traumatized and removed that trauma from their mind and they could lead happy, productive lives? But the trouble is that the guy around the corner is going to want to do something evil with that technology, and he's going to want to do it for money and power.
Your film is coming out in an election year. Do you think it will increase the paranoia already felt by some voters?
Demme: We hope that it won't relieve any of the paranoia. There's a lot to be paranoid about today.
There are rumors circulating that scenes were cut because Meryl Streep's role too closely resembled Hillary Clinton. Any truth to that?
Demme: No. That's something that came out in the newspapers, which I was happy to see because it sounds a little spicy. But no, there was nothing like that.
You open the film with a rather long poker game being played by several members of Marco's unit, and the music is deafeningly loud. What were you after with that sequence?
Demme: Like so many movies nowadays, we had to devote three minutes of screen time to credits. And because a sense of these soldiers being full-fledged human beings is very important in the movie, and because I had all this footage from just letting the camera roll, I decided to get to be in the room with the patrol for a while having fun would be—[even] if it ultimately risked a little tedium in the last couple of seconds of it, I thought that was OK—valuable. [And it's so loud] because guys like that play their stuff loud.
Why does Raymond get a brain probe as well as the implant in the shoulder?
Demme: Maybe that's what happened on the train. Or maybe they just did enough work on Marco for him to be the shooter, but they had to do a whole more work on Raymond for him to be vice president.
Tina Sinatra, is this film intended to make people think about conspiracy theories and politics and the like, or is totally pure entertainment?
Sinatra: Well, it is definitely a fictitious story that does have realistic parallels. That's for sure. When I hear the term "conspiracy theory" it doesn't hold the same connotation for me anymore like it did in the [past], like with Three Days of the Condor and Parallax View, which are all offshoots of the original Manchurian Candidate, which was the first of a genre, if you think about it. Conspiracy theory seems for me, right now, almost too much of a compartmentalization. I feel like it's bigger than that. It seems dated, that term, to me now, and I've not been asked that question before. I don't know why you're throwing me, but I just think isn't everything weird in the world? The parallels that you can draw, is that considered conspiracy? I think it's just big business. It's money and power and politics. They always go together.
Were there other endings filmed? There are reports of multiple endings.
Sinatra: None of that was true. We did have Denzel come back for a couple of close-up shots. It was coverage. Nothing was changed. The ending was the only ending. I swear on my mother's 87-year-old....
How ironic is it to make an anti-corporate movie and have it released by a studio that's part of an international corporation?
Sinatra: That's where the money is. Ain't it the truth? I couldn't have done it without them. Paramount is very motivated towards political thriller, and, really, let's be honest, this is what this is. It's supposed to be scary and make you think a little. But they've always done one or two political thrillers a year.
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