John has graciously allowed our cameras into his home

April 17, 2015 8:53 AM

The true crime film Foxcatcher (Trailer, FanFare) starred Steve Carell in an Oscar-nominated role as the self-aggrandizing, eccentric millionaire John du Pont. The plot features a video du Pont commissions to tout the Foxcatcher Farm wrestling team and himself as coach. Here is the real video.
posted by griphus (16 comments total)

I keep expecting him to start hissing Sizzzzzzler
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:58 AM on April 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

Wow, I have a new respect for Steve Carell's performance in that film. He captured the lonely, vacant weirdness of the actual person to a T.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:18 AM on April 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

Father of the triathalon? "dismissed as ludicrous within the triathlon community" and "a figment of someone's imagination"
posted by achrise at 9:32 AM on April 17, 2015

Talking about fishing has never been creepier.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:32 AM on April 17, 2015

achrise: noted in the second article you posted, the uninhabited island micronation The Kingdom of Redonda (Previously), was first mentioned by fantasy writer M.P. Shiel (1865-1947), its first king.
posted by larrybob at 9:53 AM on April 17, 2015

This is a story I grew up hearing in the 1980s from my father, a research ornithologist, and long before the murder that Foxcatcher chronicled:

In the early 1970's my dad was researching the effects of DDT, specifically its effects on eggshell thickness. His research involved measuring eggshell thickness of current wild birds as well as eggs from museum collections. The latter part had him traveling all over the country to measure eggs in public and private collections, which led him to the Delaware Museum of Natural History, founded by John du Pont. The museum was started using du Pont's private collection which included more than 100,000 eggs. When my dad and his colleague arrived at the museum, du Pont was there to greet them and was very interested in their work (du Pont himself being a Ph.D. level ornithologist).

One day while my dad and his colleague were working at the museum, du Pont came in and asked them what, as biologists, had they not seen that they really would like to see in nature. They talked it over and decided it would be really cool to see walruses in the wild. du Pont says "alright, let's go." And they loaded up in a plane, flew out to somewhere way north where walruses were, saw them, and flew back.

The main point of my dad's story was that du Pont was one hell of a weird rich dude.
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:03 AM on April 17, 2015 [33 favorites]

That whole trauma center convo was awkward ("the trauma business"? Really?) and I assume his name has been struck off the hospital?
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 10:46 AM on April 17, 2015

I feel a little weird about John du Pont. I saw Foxcatcher recently, and I did a little reading about du Pont and the whole sorry business afterwards. While I agree that Carell did a great job capturing du Pont's manner and appearance (which was, as far as I can tell, super off-putting), I was a little surprised that the film didn't address the idea that du Pont was likely suffering from serious untreated mental illness, and that changed my reading of the film a lot -- less "What a creep" and more "look how money and status contrived to ruin a bunch of lives, including du Pont's."
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:58 AM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

White balance is a helluva thing in those old video cameras.
posted by tunewell at 12:59 PM on April 17, 2015

I stopped by my mothers house right as my mother and sister started to watch Foxcatcher last weekend and stuck around for the whole thing, kind of watching a movie by ambush. It has stuck with me all week. The three male leads were all impressive performances. My mother and sister both have significant hearing loss and rely on subtitles, watching this with them made me aware of how much was conveyed by expression.

Also Vanessa Redgrave as John DuPont's mother was amazing. There's a look she gives her son that is both dismissive and alarmed.
posted by readery at 1:27 PM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

She couldn't have performed that role better if she were literally made of glass and ice. The line about the Rosemont case -- in which she calmly denies her adult son permission to put a thing on a shelf allows him to put it on a different shelf -- was crushing in the way it just utterly annihilated him.
posted by griphus at 1:50 PM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

I grew up in Pennsylvania and used to live in the Philadelphia area after college, which means it was basic common knowledge where I lived that John DuPont was seriously cray-cray. I seem to remember reading somewhere, maybe in the Philadelphia Inquirer, that he even paid some small country to have himself put on a stamp. I can't seem to find anything on it online, but I couldn't have just imagined this.
posted by jonp72 at 5:31 PM on April 17, 2015

I seem to remember reading somewhere, maybe in the Philadelphia Inquirer, that he even paid some small country to have himself put on a stamp. I can't seem to find anything on it online, but I couldn't have just imagined this.

See my second link above, and larrybob's comment two after.
posted by achrise at 7:47 PM on April 17, 2015

There are a lot of disastrous quotable quotes in this video. What a rich rich rich rich trainwreck of a narcissistic mannikin all dressed up and nowhere to go.

"I take my athletic tenacity and apply it against the fish and make it fierce competition except there's one catch to it. I win. They Lose."

*shudder*
posted by isopraxis at 8:01 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's GOLDEN Eagle to you, bub.
posted by St. Hubbins at 11:36 PM on April 17, 2015

Sad and weird.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:17 AM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]