There are true events that are more shocking than anything an author could imagine. Horror movies and series based on true events are hugely popular despite, or perhaps because of, their disturbing content. Best example of this: Dahmer – Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer on Netflix. But the processing of real crimes for entertainment purposes is also repeatedly criticized.
Elliot Page, in his autobiographical book Page Boy: My Story*, reminisces about shooting a film that made him plunged into a deep crisis in the early 2000s that eventually became life-threatening. The reason: The true story behind the horror thriller just wouldn’t let him go. And it still seems incomprehensibly cruel almost 60 years later.
Trigger Warning: The following is about violence against children and eating disorders.
The horror thriller An American Crime is based on an incredibly disturbing true story
Elliott Page plays Sylvia Likens in An American Crime. Together with her sister Jenny, she is taken into the care of Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener), who is supposed to look after them while their parents are away on business. But Gertrude increasingly takes out her anger at her financial and personal problems on Sylvia. Until the situation escalates – and the temporary foster mother takes care of her charges with the help of her own children and the children of the neighbours tortured to death.
Elliot Page describes in his book how difficult it was for him to find his way back to his reality after filming the horrific scenes:
In my previous films, too, I had to shoot difficult scenes full of sex and violence that required absolute physical exertion. But this was different. There was those moments of unspeakable brutality. At the time I hadn’t learned to turn it on and off in a second. […] Knowing that all of this had really happened made it worse, the details even more disturbing.
An American Crime is based on a real-life crime that took place in the US state of Indiana in the 1960s and spread around the world for its incredible brutality. Author Jack Ketchum based his bestseller Evil* on the incident. The real Gertrude Baniszewski was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
Watch the long trailer of An American Crime starring Elliot Page below:
An American Crime – Trailer
Elliot Page ate (almost) nothing at all due to the hard shoot and had a “face like a skull”
Page made the film before his transition and says he suffered greatly at the time from living in an increasingly feminine body. The role of Sylvia in An American Crime seemed to exacerbate this problem. “To play a character who some starved to death allowed me to indulge fully in the desire to disappear, to punish myself”he writes in Page Boy.
The actor developed a severe eating disorder, barely ate and became completely lost in the traumatic story behind his role:
By the end of filming I had lost a significant amount of weight. And when I returned to Halifax, where I still lived for a while, things continued to go downhill. At one point I only weighed 42 kilos. […] There was no hiding it anymore, my face like a skull, the body skin and bones. I couldn’t escape the stress, this omnipresent concern. And I couldn’t shake Sylvia. I kept thinking about her.
Elliot Page began therapy and describes in his book how he slowly but surely fought his way back to life. And his next project also helped the recovery: the film Juno, Page’s ultimate breakthrough.
If you feel affected by the topic, contact the immediately telephone counseling . You can get help from advisors on the free hotline 0800-1110-111 or 0800-1110-222, who in many cases have been able to point out ways out of apparently hopeless situations.
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