Helen Hunt as
Cheryl Cohen
Greene and John
Hawkes as Mark
O'Brien in
The Sessions
d arning Oscar buzz is sc
Naomi Pfefferman
LA Jewish Journal
N
ine years before Mark O'Brien
died, the 36-year-old poet and
journalist, who was also a polio
survivor living in an iron lung, decided
he wanted to lose his virginity Until then,
he'd always been ashamed of his sexuality,
which he believed served no purpose save
to mortify him when he became aroused
during bed baths. So, like any true writer,
he recorded his thoughts: "I rationalized
that somebody who was not an attendant
... would be horrified at seeing my pale,
thin body with its bent spine, bent neck,
washboard ribcage and hipbones protrud-
ing like outriggers," O'Brien wrote in an
article titled "On Seeing a Sexual Surrogate'
O'Brien died of complications from
bronchitis in 1999, but five years after his
death, another polio survivor, filmmaker
Ben Lewin, chanced to read that essay and
was inspired to turn it into a film. The
result is The Sessions, which premiered ear-
lier this year at the Sundance Film Festival
under the title The Surrogate, where it won
both the Audience Award and the Special
Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting.
The film spotlights how O'Brien (played
by John Hawkes) hired a professional
surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen
Hunt), with the counsel of his priest
(William H. Macy). Along the way, the
poet and the surrogate forge an unexpect-
edly close relationship as O'Brien battles
Catholic guilt and Cohen Greene, who is
married to a Jew, converts to Judaism.
Lewin lives in Santa Monica, Calif.,
and is married and the father of three
children, ages 12 to 26. He came across
O'Brien's article at a turning point in his
own life. By 2006, he said, his television
career had waned and, feeling "desperate"
about providing for his family, he made
his living selling high-end watches. But he
continued to write and was penning a sit-
com, about a man who trades his disabled
person's parking placard for sex, when he
72 November 1 • 2012
duled to open newly renovated Maple Theater.
came across O'Brien's article.
"I was as affected by it emotionally as
anything I've ever read:' Lewin, 66, said at
home recently. Lewin, who wears a brace
on his left leg, was sitting at his dining
room table, his crutches next to him.
Like O'Brien, Lewin contracted polio
at age 6 and spent time in an iron lung: "I
have no memories of being able-bodied:'
he said. "Just a tummy ache the night I
became sick and fragmented memories
of being on a gurney. So there was that
personal level of, `OK, Mark and I had
been through some common experience:
but where I really embraced his story was
when I realized it was about everyone's
fear of sex. Mark, perhaps without know-
ing it, had expressed a kind of universal
journey."
The filmmaker also shares a kind of
caustic wit with the late O'Brien, a disabil-
ity activist who wrote articles with titles
like "Lifestyles of the Blind and Paralyzed!'
As Lewin did research for the film, he
tracked down the writer Susan Fernbach,
who was O'Brien's life partner for several
years at the end of his life. He also viewed
Jessica Yu's Oscar-winning 1996 short doc-
umentary, Breathing Lessons: The Life and
Work of Mark O'Brien, in which O'Brien
speaks of his triumphs and frustrations
while encased from the neck down in the
massive iron lung, where he spent most
hours of every day.
"Initially, I thought, it would be easy to
translate Mark's [surrogate] article into a
movie — and then it wasn't," Lewin said.
"The problem was, the article was very
sexually explicit, and while rereading my
first draft, I thought, 'I'm not sure I can
deal with all of these erections and ejacu-
lations — how can we deal with this?' But
then, as I expanded the character of the
priest, I found that the 'gory' details could
come out in the confessional!'
Another turning point came when Lewin
met Cohen Greene, who explained that a
sexual surrogate (now called a "surrogate
partner") works with sex therapists to help
clients suffering sexual dysfunction, using
methods such as sensual touch and often
intercourse, with verbal feedback.
"You could see that there was something
special between her and Mark:' Lewin
said. "She had never worked with someone
that disabled, or who had sent her poetry,
and I had a feeling that the relationship
had gone beyond merely the mechanical
aspects of how you have sex. So I devel-
oped the idea that it became a journey for
both of them, and Cheryl was comfortable
with that. I showed her the script before I
sent it anywhere else."
Lewin's own polio hit during the global
epidemic of the early 1950s, just three years
after his parents, Polish Holocaust survi-
vors, immigrated to Melbourne, Australia.
After attending a school for the disabled,
he mainstreamed and eventually became
a criminal attorney before officials in the
budding Australian film industry sent him
to film school in London in 1971. Lewin
went on to make films in England, Australia
and France and then moved to Los Angeles
to follow his Hollywood dream, directing
series such as Ally McBeal and Touched by
an Angel in the 1990s.
Lewin also made a series of public ser-
vice announcements about people with
disabilities, which was "like 'coming out'
for me, in a way:' he said. He was startled,
however, when a woman who had cared
for him when he had polio turned up as a
consultant on one of his films.
"It was quite a traumatic encounter;' he
said. "I don't know how the mind works,
but we immediately stopped the shoot
and called for the psychiatrist. ... I was
processing things I hadn't thought about
in a while."
On the set of The Sessions in Los
Angeles, Lewin's concern was how to
depict sex and disability without being
exploitative. "One thing I was determined
not to do was to have any kind of fantasy
sequence where Mark imagined himself as
able-bodied:' he said.
Hunt worked closely with Cohen Greene
Writer-director Ben Lewin and
actor William H. Macy on the set
of The Sessions
to get the surrogate sessions right: "A lot
had to do with the physical parts of it:'
said Cohen Greene, now vice president of
the International Professional Surrogates
Association. "With clothes on, I showed
her the kind of touch I used; she focused
intently on my movements:'
In the film, Hunt appears fully nude in
several sequences to bring a realistic qual-
ity to the surrogate sessions, Lewin said.
She initially had concerns about how those
sequences would be shot: "I told her they'd
be done just like the rest of the movie —
in a fairly banal, direct way, with no fancy
lights or music.
"Sex scenes can be very awkward:' he
added. "The crew tends to become very sol-
emn, and the first time Helen took off her
clothes, they were all on best behavior!'
The scene in question was to show
Cohen Greene immersing in a mikvah
during her conversion to Judaism, and
everyone was silent as Hunt disrobed.
Then Rhea Perlman (Taxi), who plays
the mikvah attendant, blurted out, "Wow,
what a body!"
"That not only added levity, it made a
difference for the rest of the shoot: Lewin
said. ❑
The Sessions is scheduled to open
at the Maple Theater in Bloomfield
Township on Friday, Nov. 2. (248)
855-9091; themapletheater.com .
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