Production Companies Fox Searchlight Pictures, Hollywood Partners Munich (as Hollywood Partners), Industry Entertainment, Walrus & Associates (as Walrus & Associates Ltd.)
Studio Fox Searchlight, Hollywood Partners, Industry Entertainment, Walrus & Associates
Another of Childs' favorite creations for QUILLS were the chilling dungeons of Charenton, where Dr. Royer-Collard tries out his cruel "cures" on the Marquis de Sade, among others. Oscar®-winning set decorator Jill Quertier hunted down historical medical equipment that did indeed seem to occasionally cross the line into, well, sadism. Although Royer-Collard's "calming" chair, a metal contraption into which a patient was strapped securely then dunked backwards into a tank of frigid water, was born in the imagination of Doug Wright, similar monstrosities were all the psychiatric rage of the day. In fact, the filmmakers hunted up an 1811 engraving from the Philadelphia Medical Museum of a chair known, ironically, as "Rush's Tranquilizing Chair," which was reputed to "assist in curing madness." "It binds and confines every part of the body," the chair's creator wrote. "By keeping the trunk erect it lessens the impetus of blood toward the brain... and favors the easy application of ice. It acts as a sedative to the tongue and temper. . . in some cases the most refractory patients have been composed." Fortunately, there's no evidence to suggest Geoffrey Rush's forbears had anything to do with this device.
Over all, the effect of Childs' Charenton design was to create "an interior that could exist in the universe's lower depths," observes Kaufman. Kaufman and Childs worked closely together to keep the physical and emotional spaces of QUILLS utterly intertwined. Models and storyboards helped to carefully plot out the action, especially the extraordinary scene in which Sades writes one of his final, and most devastating, stories via an elaborate game of "telephone" through holes in the cell walls.
Other locations in QUILLS include the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England, which serves as a room within the Palace of Versailles where Napoleon himself becomes familiar with the literature of Sade. Here, Childs and his crew were struck by the overwhelming sense of history, in a place designed by Christopher Wren and where King Henry VIII signed Queen Anne Boleyn's death warrant. In addition, Mentmore Towers, built by the Rothschild family in the 18th century French style, became the mansion of Dr. Royer-Collard and his child-like bride, Simone.
But one issue persisted throughout the production: how to create Revolutionary Paris in the middle of England? "We had thought we'd have no problems finding the big stones used in French buildings of the era but everything in England was brick!" comments Kaufman. "Finally, in Oxford we were able to piece together exterior France. Martin brought in wonderful craftsmen, including a painter who had a magical brush stroke that could instantly antiquify a building." Later, a larger-than- life guillotine was assembled on Oxford Street for the shocking opening sequence of the film. In a rare coup, the production scored an unusual find for the scene — the model head cast from the actual head of Marie Antoinette, loaned out by Madame Tussaud's waxworks in London, which sits in the basket of aristocratic victims.
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