We've all heard of movies where the cast and crew dealt with tough, grim subject matter by keeping the atmosphere on the set light and playful, or by blowing off steam at the end of the day.
"Rabbit Hole," John Cameron Mitchell's understated, quietly gripping drama about a couple (Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart) dealing with the death of their young son, was not one of those movies.
"I don’t think I went out to dinner once while I was making this movie," Eckhart told theWrap's Sharon Waxman during a Q&A that followed theWrap Screening Series presentation of "Rabbit Hole" at the Arclight Sherman Oaks on Monday.
"My kid is dead. Why do I want to give that up? I went to keep that close to me. I want to go to bed, get up in the morning and go right back to that place.
"If I go to the store and see a woman pushing a baby carriage, that's not just a woman with a baby. You think, oh my God, that's the baby I don't have. Everything becomes a point of entry into the film."
Actress Sandra Oh, who plays a woman who's been in a counseling group for parents who've lost children, agreed that the atmosphere was charged and serious – following the tone set by Kidman, who starred in the film and also served as one of its producers.
"The subject matter is difficult," said Oh. "You have to be there for 14 hours, and Nicole does it in a very controlled way. There was lots of quiet."
Added Eckhart, "Nicole didn't make too many jokes on this movie. I tried to get in her face and make jokes sometimes."
To research his role as a father trying to cope with debilitating grief, Eckhart says he went to grief counseling, scoured the Internet ("the best tool ever for actors") for video diaries, and remembered a friend of his who'd accidentally run over his young son.
"I don't want to say that it ruined his life, but it drove him inside, into the dark," said Eckhart. "He got a divorce, he struggled with alcoholism, he went through the guilt and the self-hatred and all that stuff."
"Rabbit Hole" began as a Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play by David Lindsay-Abaire, who was inspired to write it following the birth of his first child, when he remembered a Julliard writing teacher's challenge to write about what scares you the most.
Mitchell, the director of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Shortbus," had dealt with a premature death in his own family: "His brother died when he was four years old," said Eckhart, "so he had a personal relationship with loss and grief."
Eckhart himself became involved fairly late in the process, when Kidman called him and asked if he was interested. The actor was in Puerto Rico shooting "The Rum Diaries" with Johnny Depp at the time, and was intrigued by the prospect.
