"Though it has its share of carnality, Bill Condon's wise and witty biography of the sex researcher Alfred C Kinsey is, above all, an intellectual turn-on." AO Scott NEW YORK TIMES "In a year where cinema played a crucial role in the Culture War, Kinsey is the only film to dig at the roots of both sides. Best film of the year. Without a doubt." Stephen Himes FILM SNOBS "A candid and beautifully crafted film." Jeanne Aufmuth PALO ALTO WEEKLY "A fascinating slice of social history and an unsettling look at our indomitable sexual natures." William Arnold SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER "Neeson and Linney are absolutely marvelous, and the entire supporting cast credible and terrific. Look for Oscar nominations throughout." Angela Baldassarre SYMPATICO.CA

"A fine, scintillating portrait of a trailblazer whose clear-headed approach to sex and its study can still shock in these supposedly more liberated times." Chris Barsanti FILMCRITIC.COM "Kinsey is one of the best movies of the year. It shows how far we have come, while the furor surrounding the movie also demonstrates how much more we need to travel." Bob Bloom JOURNAL AND COURIER "It's partly a scientific brief, partly a song of sex, and it's enormously enjoyable." David Denby NEW YORKER "Features brave and memorable performances by Liam Neeson and Laura Linney" Chris Carpenter CATHOLIC SUN "Beautifully directed from a very clever script, this film courts controversy as it echoes Kinsey's own refusal to moralise." Rich Cline SHADOWS ON THE WALL

The Inside Story

"Neeson essays a brave and often endearing portrait of Kinsey as an occasionally absent-minded and at times almost dangerously obsessed prof." ... Glenn Kenny PREMIERE MAGAZINE

One of the greatest delights associated with reviewing film is when you get a run of absolute gems. Recently I've been awash with emotion after seeing some wonderful performances in some truly entertaininf films. Let me list first some I've already given big wraps to. "Meet The Fockers", "Finding Neverland", "A Very Long Engagement," "The Phantom Of The Opera", "Garden State" and "Saw". Amongst those still to come that I've had a look at are "Closer" [starring Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Jude Law and a most brilliant Clive Owen], "Ray [starring Jamie Foxx] and "Million Dollar Baby" [starring Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood all of whom are absolutely superb]. Let me now add another film that I can highly recommend, and if your on this page you get a prize for guessing; "Kinsey", the remarkable film based on the life of Alfred C KInsey who studied human sexual behaviour. Please don't be alarmed by the subject material because this is not an educational film for would-be sex councellors. This is a film of discovery. Discovering ignorance and how one mans drive, his obsession became a quest to find out what makes people tick when it comes to sex. It is a film that will reveal itself through sadness, humour, frustration and triumph as we see how marriage and his clumsy attempts at first night sex led Kinsey to seek the help of his Doctor and opened his mind to the fact that most people of his time knew little about what was 'normal' when it came to sex. The film explores Kinsey's life, his studied, the way he coached his team of 'interviewers' right up to the monumental moment when on "January 5th 1948, American culture was irrevocably changed. That's the day Alfred Kinsey's "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" was published by the staid medical publisher, W B Saunders. In a sense, it's the day America started talking about sex." And the film doesn't stop there as Kinsey next sets out to discover what makes women tick. "Kinsey changed the way America thinks about sex and the way we talk about it," notes director and writer Bill Condon, "yet as a man he has mostly been forgotten. Behind all the breakthroughs and controversy, there was a basic idea that I'm not sure people heard too clearly at the time. Having spent twenty years collecting over a million gall wasps, Kinsey discovered that not one of these tiny creatures was identical to another. He took this biological concept of individual variation and applied it to human sexuality. It was Kinsey who first said that "each person's sexual make-up is unique, and that therefore the term 'normal' isn't relevant when dealing with human sexuality. There's only 'common' or 'rare.' It's still a radical notion today." What was it about Kinsey that drew Condon in? "What drew me to Alfred Kinsey was the intimate connection between his personal life and his scientific project. Kinsey's life and work are really one and the same." Condon knew that Kinsey was a controversial figure and took great care to be nonjudgemental when preparing the film. "I've found that the film acts as a sort of litmus test for one's own ideas about sexuality," he said. "Kinsey was a very complex man, in some way damaged beyond repair. I thought it was important to present it all, and let people form their own opinions." He then added, "There's the official version of Kinsey's life, which is less interesting, and then there's the fascinating personal story that Jonathan was able to uncover." That Jonathan is author Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy who wrote the book Sex The Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C Kinsey. At the time of writing, of the three research team members, only Clyde Martin and Paul Gebhard are still alive. "Gebhard's in his eighties now but absolutely sharp," says Condon. "He's a remarkable character. I had to ask him about some delicate things such as the open sex that went on among the team members, how it would happen, what the specifics were and he was as casual about that as he was about what he'd had for lunch." Condon didn't get the chance to meet Kinsey's wife Clara, as she had passed away back in 1982 but he was overjoyed to meet two of her granddaughters. "They have such a strong resemblance to her," he notes, "that I got a wonderful sense of her character through them. She really lives on through the stories they tell." After all his research, meeting these wonderful people was there a conclussion he'd come to? "To me, one of the most remarkable things about Kinsey is that he had a genius for getting people to open up about the most intimate aspects of their lives," he explained. "So I thought it might be interesting to use this interviewing technique as a way into Kinsey's personal biography." Of course what makes "Kinsey" so watchable is the stunning performances from a terrific cast. A measure of films such as this is their 'believability', their power to take you there and this is what the cast of "Kinsey" manage to do so effortlessly. Headed by Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, the cast includes Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker and Julianne Nicholson, and that's just the well known big name stars. Behind them are so many actors and actresses palying the interview subjects such as Doris Smith who plays an 80 year old woman who still experiences multiple orgams and Lyn Redgrave who appears as a business woman who was in love with her business associate and who, through Kinsey's book, gained the courage to tell her she loved her. What makes "Kinsey" even more remarkable is how it all fits together so matter of factly even though at the time Alfed C Kinsey's approach to sexuality was so revolutionary. I agree with producer Gail Mutrux that the major proportion of credit for the story certainly goes to Condon. "I loved that Bill's script presents a man who was so vital to American culture in a very even-handed way," she notes. "What's wonderful and rare about it is that the story doesn't make any final judgment about Kinsey or his work, but simply presents his life, and what was happening around him, letting the audience come away with their own feelings about the man and his effect on the world." Crew Bytes "KINSEY" was .......
directed by Bill Condon ["Sister, Sister", "Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh" and "The Man Who Wouldn't Die"]; screenplay by Bill Condon ["Human Experiments", "Strange Invaders", "Gods and Monsters", "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "Chicago"]; costume design by Bruce Finlayson ["Mad Dog Morgan", "The Devil's Playground", "Sister, Sister", "Lightning Jack" and "The Rookie"]; production design by Richard Sherman ["Sister, Sister", "No Place to Hide", "Gods and Monsters" and "Homegrown"]; edited by Virginia Katz ["Ulterior Motives", "Serpent's Lair", "Gods and Monsters" and "Her Majesty"]; director of photograhpy Frederick Elmes ["Eraserhead", "Reckless", "Ride with the Devil", "Trapped" and "The Hulk"]; original music by Carter Burwell ["Raising Arizona", "Doc Hollywood", "The Hudsucker Proxy", "The Chamber", "The Jackal" and "Adaptation"], produced by Gail Mutrux ["Donnie Brasco", "A Cool, Dry Place", "Nurse Betty" and "The Shape Of Things"]. Casting About "KINSEY" stars .......
Liam Neeson ["Schindler's List", "The Haunting", "Gangs Of New York" and "Love Actually"]; Laura Linney ["Lorenzo's Oil", "You Can Count On Me", "The House of Mirth", "The Mothman Prophecies" and "Love Actually"]; Chris O'Donnell ["Fried Green Tomatoes", "Scent Of A woman", "Batman & Robin", "The Batchelor" and "Vertical Limit"]; Peter Sarsgaard ["Dead Man Walking""Boys Don't Cry", "K-19: The Widowmaker", "Shattered Glass" and "Garden State"]; Timothy Hutton ["Ordinary People", "Made in Heaven", "The General's Daughter", "Sunshine State" and "Secret Window"]; John Lithgow ["Memphis Belle", "Cliffhanger", "Hollow Point", "A Civil Action" and "Orange County"]; Tim Curry ["The Ploughman's Lunch", "Pass The Ammo", "The Hunt for Red October" and "The Three Musketeers"]; Veronica Cartwright ["The Birds", "The Right Stuff", "The Witches of Eastwick", "Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh" and "Scary Movie 2"]; Lynn Redgrave ["Tom Jones", "Shine", "Gods and Monsters", "Spider" and "Peter Pan"]; Julianne Nicholson ["The Love Letter", "Dead Dog", "Seeing Other People" and "Little Black Book"] and Oliver Platt ["Married to the Mob", "Flatliners", "Lake Placid", "Bicentennial Man", "Don't Say A Word" and "Pieces of April"] as Herman Wells. What It's All About

"A riveting portrayal of a pioneer who quickly became a political and social target for opening up a hitherto unresearched area of human life." ... Jean Lowerison SAN DIEGO METROPOLITAN

Alfred C Kinsey has grown up in a house dominated by his father and good doses of religious moralising about the evils of sex. His puberty years are clouded by guilt brought on by the desire to masturbate. Finally he finds the courage to defy his father, informing him he won't be studying engineering and leaves to make his own way in life. He accepts a scholarship and studies zoology. Kinsey graduates from Harvard University in September 1919 and ten years later in 1929 is making his mark as a biology professor at Indiana University having written a book on the life of gall wasps. He meets and marries one of his students Clara McMillen. Their first attempts at sex are disastrous and leads to a personal talk with a doctor. Having no sex education and having found that books on the subject promote only a missionary approach to sex, Alfred and Clara are intrigued by the doctors suggestion that Alfreds rather large penis is the problem and that they need to approach the problem from a different angle. The newlyweds are soon enjoying their new found sexual freedom. The lack of understanding nags Alfred and in 1938 he accepts a position as the lecturer in charge of the universities new Marriage Counselling course. His methods are revolutionary and it seems everyone wants to be on the course. Sadly he realizes little is known about sex and so, Alfred C Kinsey decides to research the subject. Ten years later, with information gathered from 100,ooo interviews he publishes the defing book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Kinsey starts a sexual revolution. It is a highly controversial book, but it seems everyone wants to read it. The Verdict "Let's talk about sex? Well why not. Besides money it's most probably the one thing guaranteed to be on most peoples minds at least once a day. "Kinsey" talks about sex terribly well. Highly entertaining "Kinsey" takes us back to the start of the sexual revolution from a medical point of view. One can't help getting the feeling though, that at some point Alfred C Kinsey made a quantum jump from researcher to voyeur, to a man who was completely obsessed with sex. Solid performances by a terrific cast makes this a most watchable movie. Highly recommended." The Cast

Liam Neeson Laura Linney Chris O'Donnell Peter Sarsgaard Timothy Hutton John Lithgow David Harbour Judith JK Polson Leigh Spofford Jenna Gavigan Luke MacFarlane Tim Curry Oliver Platt Dylan Baker Julianne Nicholson William Sadler John McMartin Veronica Cartwright Kathleen Chalfant Heather Goldenhersh Dagmara Dominczyk John Krasinski Arden Myrin Katharine Houghton Mike Thurstlic Bill Buell Roderick Hill Peg Small Kate Jennings Grant Edwin McDonough Clifford David Lynn Redgrave

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Alfred Kinsey Clara McMillen Wardell Pomeroy Clyde Martin Paul Gebhard Alfred Seguine Kinsey Robert Kinsey Mildred Kinsey Anne Kinsey Joan Kinsey Bruce Kinsey Thurman Rice Herman Wells Alan Gregg Alice Martin Kenneth Braun Huntington Hartford Sara Kinsey Barbara Merkle Martha Pomeroy Agnes Gebhard Ben Emily Mrs Spaulding Kenneth Hand Dr Thomas Lattimore Clerical Worker Retired Teacher Marjorie Hartford Mr Morrissey Professor Smithson Final Interview Subject

The Crew Directed by Bill Condon Written by Bill Condon Produced by Gail Mutrux Original Music by Carter Burwell Cinematography by Frederick Elmes Film Editing by Virginia Katz Casting by Douglas Aibel & Cindy Tolan Production Design by Richard Sherman Art Direction by Nicholas Lundy Set Decoration by Andrew Baseman Costume Design by Bruce Finlayson Unit Production Manager Diana Schmidt Executive in charge of Production Mark Wolfe Run Time 119 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2005 - 20th Century Fox - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2005 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved