About 5 to 10 percent of the population is supposedly susceptible to hypnosis. Only children are apparently more suggestible than the population at large, because they’re used to spending time alone. For some reason, actors, too, are generally more easily hypnotized.
Except when it comes to the cast of “Trance.”
The trippy new thriller from director Danny Boyle is about an art heist gone wrong and major plot elements hinge on hypnosis. To get the actors in the right state of mind, the production hired a London professor and clinical psychologist to demonstrate the technique on the cast, including James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel.
“We tried, but it didn’t really work,” says “Trance” producer Christian Colson.
“I was a bit gutted because I was keen to be regressed or turned into a chicken or something, but it didn’t happen,” McAvoy told TNT magazine. “I went with it for about 10 minutes but then I was like, ‘I need a pee and to scratch my leg. This isn’t working, mate. I’m sorry.’ ”
Real life aside, in “Trance,” hypnosis is a powerful tool.
Simon (McAvoy) is an art auctioneer who conspires with a criminal, Franck (Cassel), to steal a valuable Goya painting. During the robbery, Simon is hit on the head, develops amnesia and can no longer remember where he stashed the painting. So Franck drags him to a London hypnotist (Dawson), who tries to help him recover his memories.
In the process of digging in Simon’s head, reality and fantasy start to blend and relationships become strained as the past begins to be revealed. It’s a twisty, layered narrative full of secrets, and the filmmakers, at times, struggled with how much to conceal from viewers.
“You have to show it to [test] audiences,” says writer John Hodge. “Sometimes you’re surprised at how quickly they get things, and other times, you think, ‘Well, that’s really obvious,’ but it goes past people.”
Producer Colson remembers an argument that director M. Night Shyamalan had had with Disney over “The Sixth Sense” and whether to include the line from Haley Joel Osment, “I see dead people,” which would seem to give away the film’s twist ending.
“But not only was that line in the film, it was in every TV spot, and no one guessed the ending,” Colson says. “That became our mantra, that no one would guess it. So we added into the story a few more clues, which become Easter eggs on a second viewing.”
One scene that might get a second viewing from some is a shockingly, er, “bare” nude scene by Dawson that Variety says audiences “won’t soon forget.”
“I think Rosario decided before she even met for the role that she was going to be fine with that or she shouldn’t take the meeting,” Colson says.
Dawson has said she felt “insecure” in the buff and that everyone on set politely tried not to look at her, actually making things more awkward. (Though Boyle might have snuck a peek. The two were dating at the time.)
In the long run, it’s a minor miracle that “Trance” made it to screens when it did. The film was shot in the fall of 2011 while Boyle was busy preparing for last summer’s Olympic opening ceremonies. Each week, he’d spend two days on the opening and the other five shooting “Trance.”
The movie was put on the shelf for six months and not edited until after the Olympics had wrapped. The hiatus proved valuable.
“Oftentimes, you make a film and a year later, you go, ‘Ah, good film, but I wish we’d done that,’ ” Colson says. “The break gave us perspective on the film, because it’s complex.”
“Trance” is based on a 2001 British TV movie, and Boyle first raised the idea of remaking it in 2009 — the year when he was coming off the
Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire” and probably had the profile and the power to make any film he chose. What he chose was not a summer blockbuster or franchise film, but this $20 million thriller.
“I remember sitting with him around the [2009] Oscars, and I asked him what he was going to do next,” says Colson, who also produced “Slumdog.” “And he said, ‘I’m being sent all these $150 million movies.’ I said, ‘It’s funny, anyone will write you a blank check for $150 million, but what you really want is to be given $15 million 10 times and to be able to make the next 10 films as you choose.’ He laughed and said that was right.”
Up next for Boyle could be “Porno,” a sequel to 1996’s “Trainspotting,” about a group of Scottish heroin addicts. The director has affirmed he’s game for another installment, but Hodge — who wrote the original — says that he’s not currently working on a script.
“It’s getting everyone together in a room so that everyone can say I want to do this,” Hodge says. “Everyone, and I mean the cast, has to say they want to do it before it becomes worthwhile to expend our time and emotional energy in doing it. Neither of us wants to go down that path if, in the end, certain vital elements say, ‘Well, I’m not really that keen on doing it.’ It can’t be made without everyone.”
The big holdout appears to be Ewan McGregor, who fell out with Boyle after losing the starring role in 2000’s “The Beach” to Leonardo DiCaprio. Expect “Trainspotting 2” in the next year or two — or assume it has already left the station.