Watch: Real splendor of 'Foxcatcher' estate
How impressive was John Du Pont's palatial estate as depicted in Foxcatcher?
Even Nancy Schultz, who lived on the real 800-acre Pennsylvania estate, was blown away with director Bennett Miller's detailed film stand-in.
"It was so similar to the Foxcatcher estate that it was almost alarming when I arrived on the set," Schultz tells Paste BN.
This video clip, part of the extras of Foxcatcher's Blu-Ray and DVD release, gives a sense of scale for the project.
Bennett's team found an estate outside of Pittsburgh to recreate Du Pont's estate (outside of Philadelphia) to tell the tragic tale of wrestling coach David Schultz, married to Nancy, who was eventually killed by Du Pont.
Foxcatcher was nominated for five Academy Awards, including best actor for Steve Carell (as Du Pont) and best supporting actor for Mark Ruffalo (as Dave Schultz).
Beyond the splendor of the actual estate, Bennett also insisted on replicating the smaller estate house where David and Nancy Schultz lived. It was detailed right down to the same dinosaur poster on their son Alexander's wall.
"The house they used to portray our home was so exact," says Nancy Schultz. "And then they went one step more and replaced everything in the house -- exact furniture, the posters on my son's wall, the books on the shelves. The pictures on the wall were the exact pictures of friends and family, replaced with Mark Ruffalo and Sienna Mliller (who played Nancy Schultz). They had done a remarkable job."
Miller was helped by the fact that Dave Schultz chronicled so much on home films and pictures. These same home movies will be used in an upcoming documentary on Schultz which has just been completed.
Even the scene in Foxcatcher in which Miller and Ruffalo are playing with the children in leaf piles actually took place in Schultz's life. It made for surreal watching during the filmmaking.
"Our daughter Danielle looked up at me and said, 'You know how people want to go back in time and re-live a moment. Well we're doing that right now,' " says Nancy Schultz. "It was very unusual."