Long before Chick-fil-A fried their way into the center of a gay rights firestorm, Compliance director Craig Zobel was searching for the right setting to tell his chilling tale of order and obedience gone terribly wrong at a fast food joint. ?In the back of my head, I probably could have told you that they were on the wrong side of history,? said Zobel, who rocked Sundance with the drama, based on incredible true events, in which a telephone prankster manipulates the manager of a fictional chicken restaurant into the increasingly dehumanizing treatment of one of her employees. "I just didn?t want to look at it."
The natural impulse to obey authority, and the all too-human imperative to ignore our own wrong behavior, pulsate through every (often) cringe-inducing moment of Compliance. Veteran actress Ann Dowd is tragically relatable as Sandra, the middle-aged "Chick-Wich" restaurant manager conned by a caller claiming to be a cop (Pat Healy) into detaining young cashier Becky (Dreama Walker) on suspicion of stealing from a customer; interrogation by proxy devolves into humiliation and worse as other reasonable-seeming employees and colleagues get involved.
It's an escalation of events you'd think most people would never fall prey to if it hadn't happened in real life in over 70 reported incidents in 30 states. The subject matter touches such a raw nerve that Compliance's Sundance screenings prompted walkouts and shouting matches in the audience; as recently as this week the same thing happened in New York.
Zobel talked with Movieline about the highs and lows of sparking controversy at Sundance, how the Stanford Prison Experiment and the work of psychologist Stanley Milgram led him to Compliance's incredibly true inspiration, why…
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