JULIAN SCHNABEL LEARNS FROM THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

The director of Before Night Falls learned about love and compassion by making the film.

At the age of 43 French Elle editor Jean-Do Bauby had the world in front of him leading an exciting and glamorous life creating the famous fashion magazine until a sudden stroke left him paralyzed from the waist down and only able to communicate through one eye.

Through the help of speech pathologists Bauby overcame his despair and learned to blink out the letters of the alphabet composing the international best-selling memoir The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. Before Night Falls director Julian Schnabel was inspired to make the film by his own father.

“My father was 92 years old when he died. He’d never been sick in his life. He was married to my mother for 60 years. She died when she was 89 ½. Most people would sign up for that life but at the end he was terrified of death. And I thought if I could save him from that fear I’d be a good son. I think I failed him because he died before the film was made but he certainly had an effect on me making the film and I think that Jean Dominique Bauby was not scared to die. I think that he actually found a reason to live in the situation that he was in and a reason for this book to exist.”

Julian shot the film in the same hospital in France where Jean-Do received his treatment 10 years earlier which brought an even more personal element to it.

“I think ultimately what it ended up being was a movie about love and compassion. And I know that sounds like big topics but when you go to a hospital and you see these people, and the first person you actually see is Virginia his real nurse. The guy who holds him in the swimming pool is Daniel his physiotherapist. These people are selfless. I mean they have committed themselves to helping people that hardly do anything but the people have a soul and a heart and a mind and there’s a value to that. So I think the compassion that you see and all these people giving this kind of feeling to this character, it rubs off on you and I think it changes people so I learned something there.”

Schnabel won the Director’s Award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival for The Diving Bell and The Butterfly which is currently playing in theaters.