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‘Sessions’ director strives for emotional realism in true story

BY GEORGE LANG | Published: November 23, 2012

Writer-director Ben Lewin was randomly surfing the Web, looking for stories worth telling, when he found a late-1980s magazine article titled “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate” written by Mark O’Brien, a quadriplegic journalist and poet who spent much of his adult life in an iron lung after contracting polio as a child. Lewin, a polio survivor, said he was deeply moved by the story, and soon began the process of making his latest film, “The Sessions.”

photo - John Hawkes stars in “The Sessions,” a film about Mark O’Brien, who spent much of his adult life in an iron lung after contracting polio as a child. The film is directed by Ben Lewin, a polio survivor.Fox Searchlight Pictures Photo

John Hawkes stars in “The Sessions,” a film about Mark O’Brien, who spent much of his adult life in an iron lung after contracting polio as a child. The film is directed by Ben Lewin, a polio survivor.Fox Searchlight Pictures Photo

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“I guess I was just really using a gut instinct,” Lewin said in a recent phone interview. “If it could reach me in the way it had, so unexpectedly and intensely, that it would do the same...
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