Psoriasis hits the silver screen in "The Singing Detective"
Fall release planned for film
First posted March 18, 2003
Last updated Sept. 16, 2003
This fall, New York and Los Angeles will be the first locations to see "The Singing Detective," a new film starring Robert Downey Jr. as a writer hospitalized with severe psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.
"The Singing Detective" is tentatively set to premiere Oct. 17 in a limited release in those two cities, with expected expansion to other cities later. Paramount purchased the rights following the film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2003. It was one of the most anticipated debuts at the festival, generating a healthy amount of "buzz."
The story
"The Singing Detective" is an American version of Dennis Potter's highly regarded six-part BBC television series of the same name. The main character, a detective writer named Dan Dark, is played by Downey in his first movie role since his legal troubles associated with drug addiction led to a jail stint and time in rehab.
The writer—immobilized by psoriasis, his hands fused into fists by arthritis—escapes his misery with elaborate fantasies about a 1950s detective story (starring himself) and paranoid visions that his wife (played by Robin Wright Penn) is attempting to double-cross him out of a screenplay he's written. Plus, Dark has painful recollections of traumatic episodes in his youth.
Sound confusing? It is, to some degree. Potter, a prominent British writer, was known for constructing interwoven, elaborate plot lines. He also played with genre, and "The Singing Detective" abruptly shifts gears from extreme drama as the writer struggles with his disease, to a shadowy film noir detective tale, to elaborate musical numbers lip-synched by hospital staff and other characters, to humor and clever wordplay.
Potter also knew of what he wrote: he suffered from severe psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Before he died in 1994 from pancreatic cancer, he rewrote the original TV series, updating it and setting it in America.
After years of languishing unmade, the screenplay was purchased by Mel Gibson's production company, Icon. Gibson asked his friend Downey to play the leading role. Director Keith Gordon, a self-described "huge fan" of Dennis Potter and "The Singing Detective" TV series, was tapped to make the movie.
"I always thought he was a great writer with great imagination and great wit," Gordon said in an extended interview with National Psoriasis Foundation staff members at the Sundance Festival. "It's like getting to work with one of my heroes."
How psoriasis is handled
Psoriasis is portrayed very graphically right away, with an extreme close up (filmed three inches away) of Downey's face, covered with scaling, flaking and sores.
"The idea was that people would go through that initial shock and upset and revulsion and then hopefully start to get past that and start to wonder what's underneath that," Gordon said. "The whole point of anybody with a disease that is outwardly disfiguring is, OK, yes that looks different, now get to the person underneath. Now underneath that is a person with a heart and feelings and a mind and all the stuff that you've got, with a slightly different exterior."
Later, Dan Dark's whole body is shown, and he has psoriasis from head to toe. "I cannot stand this anymore," Dark tells the doctors. "I'm a prisoner inside my own skin." Later, he calls himself a "human pizza."
Comments like that, and also when Wright Penn's wife character calls it a "disgusting disease," are not intended to be the "editorial voice" of the film, according to Gordon.
It took up to four hours to apply the full-body psoriasis make-up. Gordon said the make-up crew reviewed many photos of psoriasis to be sure that they were showing the disease accurately.
The production crew also frequently called on the Psoriasis Foundation for help in researching psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and the impact of these diseases on people and their loved ones. Gordon was very grateful for the assistance, and the Psoriasis Foundation is acknowledged in the movie's credits.
"My assistant was constantly on the phone [with the Psoriasis Foundation] asking, 'How would this affect emotions? How would emotions affect this? How would it affect your sex life? How often would it come and go? When would it get better?'," Gordon said. "It was an endless stream of information that was incredibly valuable to funnel to Robert so he would understand what his life would have been like and what the ebbs and flows would have been like. And for me to understand in telling the story."
No mention of psoriasis
Interestingly, the word "psoriasis" is never mentioned in "The Singing Detective"—an omission noted by Gordon, but something he decided not to change in deference to Potter. As a result, even with psoriasis clearly mentioned in media materials, some of the articles written about the film have mislabeled the disease as eczema or simply called it a skin condition.
The movie is not explicitly about psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis and what it's like to live with these diseases. They are metaphors for the inner emotional struggles of Downey's character, and any chronic illness might have worked. Potter himself said "The Singing Detective" was not autobiographical; he chose psoriasis as the character's illness because that's what he knew.
However, the visible aspects of psoriasis are tied back to Dan Dark's internal turmoil in several places.
Dan Dark is sent to a psychotherapist because, as one doctor notes, "You will never get on top of your condition until you get on top of your bitterness. Reassemble yourself."
The therapist Dr. Gibbon, played by a nearly unrecognizable Mel Gibson, strikes a similar chord: "Chronic illness is a shelter...a cave in the rocks."
Dr. Gibbon further alludes to the psychological aspects of psoriasis when he tells Dark, "The skin is a very personal thing. It is tempting to believe that the poisons of the mind have erupted on the surface of the skin."
The therapist helps Dark work through the painful, guilt-ridden memories of his childhood. In the process, Dark's skin improves and the pain and stiffness of his arthritis diminishes. The film clearly associates the improvement with Dark's confrontation of his own inner demons, guilt and painful memories-not directly with successful medical treatment.
Earlier in the film, the audience is told that Dark will try one of the "new retinoids," or oral vitamin A derivatives. (Soriatane is the brand name of the retinoid now approved for treating psoriasis.) The list of treatments he's tried is also rattled off by a doctor: tar, topical steroids and steroid injections, methotrexate, occlusive dressings, anti-inflammatories, PUVA and more.
Although "The Singing Detective" is not about how doctors treat psoriasis, Gordon said they strived to be accurate.
"Obviously, ultimately we're telling a story, but we wanted to be as truthful as we could," he said.
Audience reaction
The film entered the Sundance Film Festival with a lot of buzz and high expectations, but reviews were decidedly mixed and audiences were reportedly split in their reaction. "The Singing Detective" is definitely not mainstream—the plot is challenging, the genre changes are unconventional and the sexual content is fairly explicit.
Many of the articles focused on Downey's comeback. His performance has received strong praise, as has Gibson's.
Roger Ebert described it this way, in a Jan. 20 review after the Sundance premiere: "Gordon directs unblinkingly, with closeups of the suffering hero, but the film is curiously resilient and not as depressing as it sounds—a brave spirit's defiant thumb in the eye of disease. Downey's performance is remarkable in the way it works with the physical condition. At times his voice is choked and harsh, because it hurts to move his lips, and yet at other times he gets laughs with perfectly timed looks and grins and grimaces."
As director Keith Gordon described it, in a post on an internet movie Web site: "It's all very funny and playful and odd. Potter smashed together various genres and styles (musical, film noir, naturalistic drama, slapstick comedy) as a way of getting audiences to look at story and character in new ways. He'd both poke fun at cliches, yet still use their inherent emotional power at the same time. He had a love/hate relationship with much of popular culture (music, film, literature) and used those elements to explore how our culture makes us who we are.
"In terms of recent film, some of Charlie Kaufman's writing has some of that same playful use of genres and style ('Adaptation', 'Being John Malkovich'), if not the same use of music."
The Psoriasis Foundation is hoping the publicity around the release of "The Singing Detective"—with stars like Gibson and Downey involved—will prove an opportunity to increase public awareness about psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.
"We are very pleased to have made a contribution to the making of this film," said Molly Marshall, Psoriasis Foundation director of marketing and public relations. "It will only help in our efforts to raise public awareness and ensure that people understand the physical and emotional toll that psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis can take."
The Psoriasis Foundation will also be working to make sure that the portrayal of psoriasis in the film results in accurate information being relayed to the public. The severity of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis affecting Downey's character is the exception rather than the norm. It is rare for people to develop psoriasis as bad as that, and hospitalization for treatment is rare these days.
Stay tuned to this Web site and other Psoriasis Foundation materials for updates on "The Singing Detective" in the coming months.
For those interested in the BBC's original "Singing Detective", the six-part videotape series can be purchased through several online multimedia stores. Also, a three-disc DVD version of the series became available on April 15. It includes a special documentary on Potter, commentary tracks by director Jon Amiel and producer Kenneth Trodd, and other features.
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