Measuring Movie Miracles
In 1998, John Crowley learned that two of his three children, Megan and Patrick, were afflicted with Pompe disease—a brutal, incurable and always fatal condition.
Hope was only a suggestion. Crowley, who worked at the pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, knew that Pompe could, perhaps, be treated one day: Enzyme therapy held promise that kids might survive the disease. They wouldn't be cured, but perhaps they might at least live to see adulthood.
Treatment was too far away for Megan and Patrick, though. That's what John was told.
So he did what any father might: He sped the process along.
Extraordinary Measures (released to theaters Jan. 22, 2009) is based on Crowley's quixotic but ultimately successful quest to save his children. Starring Brendan Fraser as John and Harrison Ford as the cantankerous-but-brilliant scientist, Dr. Robert Stonehill, the film is part medical thriller, part heartwarming family drama. And though the story itself is unique, it bears witness to a universal expression of the love and devotion parents have for their children—whether they're gravely ill or not.
Plugged In had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Fraser, as well as Crowley himself via a later phone interview. The conversations shed extraordinary light on both the story and what happens when art and life collide.
With Brendan Fraser
Paul Asay: Brendan, what attracted you to this role?
Brendan Fraser: I haven't had a chance to play a living, breathing, live person. [Fraser's most famous for his starring turns in George of the Jungle and The Mummy movies.] Characters are characters. They're amalgamations, fictional. They just don't exist. They're functions of a story, really.
There are aspects of this story that are fictional, created so that we could make a movie out of it. And while this material is based on actual facts … you still need to find a way to dramatize it so that it doesn't wag its finger at an audience or make them feel condescended to, or have that pedigree that you should pay attention to this because it's good for you, like eating your vegetables or something. This is an entertainment, first and foremost—as a piece of cinema should be. But it has elements that—and this is a personal view—I think are illuminating about the human condition.
Asay: It's a pretty remarkable story.
Fraser: It's astonishing. It's astonishing what he [John] did. The front page story in the Wall Street Journal [by Geeta Anand, on which the film is based] was all about "how did this guy do this?" But the real question is, why? Well, the answer is he's got two kids who would almost certainly not live past the age of 4.
Asay: You mentioned that this was a great opportunity to play a real-life character, and I know you've gotten to know the real John Crowley pretty well. What's he like?
Fraser: He's a great guy. He's one of the most principled individuals I ever have met. … For all the accomplishments he has today, with all sincerity he will say that the one person who deserves all the medals is Aileen, his wife. If that doesn't speak to you about what kind of guy he is, I don't know what else does. He loves his kids. What parent wouldn't do whatever it takes to make it right? That's human nature.
Asay: Still, playing a real person, doesn't that give you, in a sense, a greater responsibility? What kind of obligation did you feel toward John as you were creating a fictional John for onscreen?
Fraser: To not put quotation marks around anything. To not make stuff up about him. If [we had him do things] in a way that he just never did in his life, for the benefit of the film (to have him go off and do something awful or dramatic), that's just not fair to him or his family.
That was vetted out early on long before I came aboard. But even so, I still had an obligation—look. I'm just an actor, OK? It's my job to create an amalgamation of the spirit of who he is, and [combine that with] who I am and what I would do. Actors draw from their own experience, too, and I felt a sense of kinship with him. Look, I've got three kids, they're 7, 5 and 3 years old. I know the feeling.
Asay: It's a parent's worst nightmare.
Fraser: Right. You get it. You know the rest. But the point is: This is about how a family succeeds. It's the story of how they did it.
With John Crowley
Paul Asay: John, what was it like having Brendan Fraser play you?
John Crowley: Oh, it was great. I think there are a lot of great actors who could've played the role, but Brendan played it so beautifully … and as a dad of three young boys, I think he can relate to it and empathize on a level that a lot of other actors couldn't.
Asay: Now, any "true story" done onscreen is bound to take some dramatic liberties with what really happened. Watching your own true story unfold in movie form, would you say it was reflective of what you went through? Did it feel true to what you experienced?
Crowley: It was 100% true to the spirit and to many, many of the events that we lived through. The family scenes in particular—everything that's depicted with respect to our family dynamics—reflected true events. If anything, quite honestly, I think real life was tougher. When Aileen and I saw the movie for the first time, one of her first comments was, "Wow, it looked kind of easy."
Asay: How did you find the strength to get through that time in your life?
Crowley: How do you not? I mean, what do you do? Quit? Give up? Go home? Sometimes I wanted to. A lot of times. But, you know, I think kids are the best inspiration [to keep going] anybody could ever have.
Asay: You really had to walk out on faith, didn't you?
Crowley: We pretty much made it up as we went along. That's pretty much the beauty of being young and naive. We didn't know how things were supposed to be. I knew what the problem was, and I knew that it needed to be solved. I didn't know how. But I think what we lacked in experience or money or resources or connections, we more than made up for in passion and determination, and we had help from some of the greatest people.
Asay: In one of the film's most moving scenes, your character looks into his daughter's eyes after a really horrible medical scare. According to the film, it was the moment when you decided you were going to do whatever it took to save your children's lives. Is that scene true to life?
Crowley: That was the fall of 1998. Megan had gotten very, very sick with pneumonia, and then I was in the hospital with her overnight. And then at about four in the morning, she just crashed. She had aspirated—she threw up and swallowed it down her lungs—and she just stopped breathing. It was the middle of the night and all these alarms started going off, and I just started screaming in the hallway, "I need help!" And they took her away and for six hours, they wouldn't let us see her and they kept telling us that she wasn't going to live.
And then the doc came back—just like in the movie—and said, "She's going to survive this episode. I've got her on a lot of heavy medicines. … I don't want her pulling at the tubes or anything, so I've got her kind of paralyzed, and the only thing that can move is her eyes. You can see her now." When we came in, her eyes locked on Aileen and then me—we just saw that tough determination. And in real life, she was only 20 months old. Tough little kid.
Asay: Wow. During this whole saga, did you ever feel like you had hit a dead end? That you wouldn't find a treatment?
Crowley: Or that it wouldn't work in time. Yeah, there were plenty of times. You'd wait for a month to see extensive lab studies and they'd come back disappointing, and you realize that you're no further along than you were 60 or 90 days earlier. … But likewise, there were plenty of moments where we were elated. It was a very hyper-emotional couple of years. The highs were higher than any job you could imagine, and the lows were tougher than most.
Asay: One thing I think the movie could've done a bit more of was showing you with your wife, and showing what she was going through.
Crowley: You could make a whole movie just about her. I was gone about 70% of the time. It was tough. Tough for the kids, tough on me, tough on Aileen, tough on all of us. But that was the balance we struck. And I think that's part of the lesson when it comes to marriage: It really has to be that division of labor. Aileen and I both agree, I would suck at her job full time, and she would not be so great at mine. But it works out to be a really great balance. And she was really the foundation.
Asay: In the film, your character wonders aloud whether he made the right decision—whether he should've spent all that time away from home chasing a cure when he could've just enjoyed his children for the precious time they had left. Was that a question you really asked yourself?
Crowley: Absolutely. In fact, that scene is very, very true to real life. Brendan just … says, "What am I doing? I should've stayed home. I've been chasing miracles." I ended up making that the title of a book I wrote, Chasing Miracles. And the title really has a double meaning, the more Aileen and I thought about it. Yes, chasing miracles is about finding treatments and cures and all that. But also, the kids themselves are a miracle, and life itself is a miracle. And we try to live and enjoy each day. So just like I go out and chase treatments and cures, I also try to just be with Aileen and our family. I go out and chase the miracle of living life every day.
Asay: How are your kids doing now?
Crowley: They're good. They're happy. Megan is in seventh grade; Patrick's in sixth grade; our oldest son, John, is in eighth … and they go to school every day, except they go in a wheelchair and they each have a nurse. Their hearts are fixed, and now we and others have to keep pushing science to find new and better treatments so eventually they won't just be improved, and their lives won't just be saved, but they'll become stronger over time. That's the next job.
Read Plugged In's review of Extraordinary Measures.