A WEIGHT OFF HER SHOULDERS
Filmmaker’s real-life battle with anorexia inspired her newest movie
WHEN writer and director Marti Noxon met her “To the Bone” star Lily Collins, they bonded over a dark shared past: Both suffered and recovered from devastating eating disorders.
“She read the script and told me, ‘Whoever was involved in writing this went through it, because it’s so specific to my own experience,’ ” Noxon tells The Post. “And I was like, ‘Yeah. That was me.’ ”
Out on Friday, the Netflix film stars Collins as Ellen, a 20-year-old aspiring graphic artist with a morbid sense of humor and an eating disorder that’s whittled her down to a skeletal frame. In a desperate bid to save her, Ellen’s stepmother (Carrie Preston) finds her a doctor (Keanu Reeves) who takes an unorthodox approach to treating patients. Eventually, Ellen moves into a halfway house and begins to confront her disorder, a process fraught with difficulties.
“We didn’t feel like this gets shown in a realistic light very often,” says the director, who had Collins work with a nutritionist to lose weight in the safest possible way for the role.
Project Heal, the recovery organization that partnered with Noxon on the film, says anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders affect approximately 10 percent of the population and collectively have the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. Even so, they’re infrequently covered in popular culture, which tends to glorify weight loss.
“I think people often mistake this for an issue of vanity,” says Noxon, “and don’t really relate to it being in the spectrum of mental illnesses.”
If anyone could get at the gritty reality of a disease that predominantly affects young women, it’s Noxon: The 52-year-old mother of two has long dwelled in the realm of the uncomfortably honest and darkly funny, often with an eye toward the particular challenges faced by women. After writing for and producing TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” she captivated a nation of reality-show addicts with “UnREAL,” a satire of shows like “The Bachelor.”
Noxon defends the trailer for “To the Bone,” which has been criticized as “triggering” — potentially upsetting to people with similar issues — by depicting Ellen’s anorexia so vividly.
“This was my story, and we tried to tell it in a really sensitive, thoughtful way,” she says. “We had it vetted by people before we even shot it. And we made some changes and removed some things. I hope if people are in recovery, they may be able to say, ‘I’m not ready for that.’
“Also, you can get so concerned about any potential outcome that you don’t tell your story at all,” Noxon says.
And she’s adamant about telling hers, with fictionalized details but a fundamental core of truth.
“It started when I was 14, and went on for a lot of years,” says the director, who in her senior year in high school weighed 69 pounds.
“I went to college with my illness — we went together,” she adds with a bleak laugh.
She says her friends tried to intervene, with mixed success.
“There were times in my life when people sat me down and said, ‘I don’t know if you identify this as a problem, but I see you and it seems like you’re suffering. And I’m here if you need me.’ A lot of times my initial reaction was anger — like, how dare you.”
Finally, she says, the disorder became so severe that she had a stark moment that she re-creates in the film.
“I had an out-of-body experience. I could see myself,” she says. “And I had a lot of compassion for myself, which I hadn’t had before. I chose to live, and that made all the difference.”
Ultimately, Noxon wants viewers — whether or not they’ve had firsthand experience with eating disorders — to walk away from her film with hope.
“The most powerful thing the real doctor taught me is that life is beautiful, but you have to be brave,” she says. “He used to say, ‘Run toward the things that scare you.’
“Here I stand,” says Noxon, “a healthy woman with a life beyond my wildest dreams.”