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And then, hopefully, you have a greater understanding of how terrible that environment is. "What we are asking with Christine is to spend two hours in the company of someone who doesn't have those tools. I might not like it, but I can deal with this.’ There’s a moment in the film when she says to Christine: ‘When I feel sad, I eat some ice cream and sing a song.’ In essence, she’s saying: ‘I have the tools to carry on surviving. “There’s a parallel with the character Jean in the movie, who is a woman working in the same pressurised environment. “I think this is an important exercise in understanding people,” says Hall. That's the whole movement in a nutshell." You think that the way to get ahead is by talking louder than the other guy. When the journalist raises concerns about the news becoming increasingly lurid, her boss's response is appalling, but not atypical of her 1970s office environment: "What's your problem, Ms Chubbuck? You're a feminist. Yet the sexism faced by Chubbuck was far more monolithic. The actor is hardly unaware of or untouched by misogyny. Last summer, screenwriter Shane Black revealed that Hall's original role as the villain in Iron Man 3, was pared back due to "merchandising concerns". “I felt a huge responsibility to the real person.” “If I feel something for a character, then I feel responsible that I should probably try and make other people feel something,” says Hall. The tragic journalist’s mood disorder is not depicted as a flat-line slump but, rather, a nuanced account of depression in which Christine can giddily look forward to a date with her handsome co-anchor (Michael C Hall), engage in girl-talk with a colleague, Jean, and end up in screaming matches with both her mother (J Smith-Cameron) and her station boss (the indomitable Tracy Letts). Hall’s portrait of Chubbuck is a remarkable thing: a counterweight to such dismissive terms as “senseless suicide”. She has subsequently proven her thespian clout across a variety of dramas ( Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Frost/Nixon, The Town), blockbusters ( Iron Man 3, The BFG), comedy ( Everything Must Go), and a cache of award-winning theatrical productions. Hall, the daughter of opera singer Maria Ewing and theatre director Sir Peter Hall, made her screen debut in 1992, at the age 10, in the miniseries The Camomile Lawn. But I’m proud to say that I think we did it.” “If you can make a film that is about sensationalism without being sensational, then you’re really on to something. She was literally exploiting her own suffering in front of the world. But against that, the things she did have to be contextualised as a sort of primal scream against a world that was becoming more exploitative. Of course, she was suffering from a horrible, horrible mental illness, and this is the end result of that. There’s an endless circular irony to the things she did. “I didn’t know why you would make this film. Indeed, Hall’s first reaction was to hide the screenplay from herself: who would ever want to see such a macabre project? Hall had never heard of Chubbuck when she first met with director Antonio Campos (who directed Simon Killer) and screenwriter Craig Shilowich. The second of these, simply titled Christine, has earned strong reviews for actor Rebecca Hall, who provides a forensic account of Chubbuck's final weeks. Thousands of viewers witnessed her on-air suicide. 38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver from the bag in which she kept puppets – used to give shows at a local hospital for intellectually disabled children – and shot herself behind her right ear. I felt a huge responsibility to the real Christine Chubbuck.” Rebecca Hall in Christine: “If I feel something for a character, then I feel responsible that I should probably try and make other people feel something. There followed a moment of dead air until Chubbuck returned to her script: “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living colour,” she said, “you are going to see another first: an attempted suicide.” The programme aired, as usual, at 9.30am, but within minutes the team hit a technical snag when the prerecorded VT failed to roll. None of Chubbuck's colleagues (a technical director, her male co-anchor and two camera-women) saw any reason to question her decision to change the running order of her show, Suncoast Digest, which would now open with a report on a local shooting rather than an interview. "She was in extraordinary good spirits," wrote Sally Quinn in a Washington Post article the following month. On the morning of July 15, 1974, Christine Chubbuck, a 29-year-old television presenter, arrived at Channel 40, the local Florida TV station where she worked.
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