1 of 3 | Michael Stuhlbarg (L) compares his on-screen relationship with Elisabeth Moss in "Shirley" to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Photo courtesy of Neon
LOS ANGELES, June 5 (UPI) -- Two movies and a Netflix series were based on Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House. The movie Shirley depicts Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) struggling to write her 1951 novel The Hangsaman.
The film is based on the novel Shirley, written by Susan Scarf Merrell. In the book, Scarf Merrell invented fictional characters Rose (Odessa Young) and Fred (Logan Lerman). Actor Michael Stuhlbarg plays Jackson's husband, Stanley Hyman, who invites the young couple to stay with them.
Screenwriter Sarah Gubbins adapted the book and played loose with Jackson and Hyman's documented history.
"The timeline is very different from what the true timeline was," Stuhlbarg told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
In real life, Jackson and Hyman had children during the time she was writing Hangsaman. Merrell and Gubbins completely omitted them.
The film focuses on Jackson's struggle with the acclaim she received from publishing The Lottery, without additional demands motherhood placed on the real Jackson.
"I think they just intended to remove the element of time altogether and the element of family to focus on the artistic temperament," Stuhlbarg said. "If one gets the attention perhaps that one longed for, and at the same time doesn't know how to deal with it, then what are you meant to do next?"
Jackson procrastinates and complains of ill health. Hyman invites his student, Fred, and his wife to stay in their house, ostensibly to keep tabs on Jackson. He hopes having guests might force her to sit at the typewriter, or at least socialize.
"I think he does what he can to help her get out of her own way," Stuhlbarg said. "Her gifts are not his and he can't help her do what she does."
Jackson is popular, so the couple hosts social gatherings at their house. The author seems to have a love-hate relationship with her guests. She has a way with words, so often can dismiss her admirers with sharp, pithy comebacks. In her own memoirs, Jackson expressed frustrations with her friends and neighbors.
"I think they were social people and they love their community, even as oddly as they may have commented upon it in their various writings," Stuhlbarg said.
Shirley is full of contentious dialogue between Jackson and Hyman as she resists his attempts to motivate her. Stuhlbarg likens their relationship to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the Edward Albee play adapted into a 1966 film about a married couple who hash out their marital troubles in front of a young couple.
"It was great fun," Stuhlbarg said. "There was never any sense that there was anything other than all of us really applying ourselves to what the circumstances were."
Stuhlbarg has played real figures in historical dramas before. He portrayed Edward G. Robinson in Trumbo, Macintosh software engineer Andy Hertzfeld in Steve Jobs, lawyer Paul Marshall in the Bobby Fischer film Pawn Sacrifice and mobster Arnold Rothstein in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, among others.
For Shirley, he researched the real Hyman. He was disappointed he could not find audio recordings of his voice, but read biographies, spoke with friends of Hyman and studied letters he and Jackson wrote to each other.
"As we were creating a fiction itself, I used all that information as kind of a jumping off point," Stuhlbarg said.
Shirley also finds Stuhlbarg stepping into another professorial role, after playing a teacher in A Serious Man and another professor in Call Me By Your Name. The connection between those otherwise very different roles amused Stuhlbarg.
"I love to learn," Stuhlbarg said. "I think that's what seems to be drawing a common parallel with the fact that some people think I could profess anything."
Stuhlbarg could find himself playing Mr. Perlman, his Call Me By Your Name character, again in a sequel. The film's director, Luca Guadagnino, said the cast is attached to a sequel. Author Andre Aciman wrote a sequel to his book, Find Me. Stuhlbarg says those talks are informal.
"I think everybody in the cast would be coming back if indeed something could be thought through in the best possible way," Stuhlbarg said. "I don't think [Guadagnino]'s interested or anyone is interested in necessarily rehashing old ground or taking the idea of a sequel for granted."
Stuhlbarg exercised his professorial voice again when he read the audio book for Find Me. So he already has a connection to the sequel.
"Those characters are wonderful and profoundly affected my life being a part of the filming of it," Stuhlbarg said. "So to be in that world again would be thrilling."
Shirley is available on video-on-demand, Hulu and at drive-in theaters Friday.
