Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ follows the story of Ron Woodroof, who discovers that he has contracted the HIV virus. Considering the severity of his condition, the doctors tell him that he doesn’t have more than a month to live. However, Ron finds ways to not only prolong his life but also to improve his condition. In all of this, he forms a close bond with Dr. Eve Saks. They first meet in the hospital where Ron receives his diagnosis. Despite their conflicting personalities, they become close friends, and Ron’s work influences Eve’s approach to treating her AIDS patients. While the movie is inspired by Woodroof’s true story, Eve is one of the elements that is a bit different from reality.
The Fictional Eve Saks is a Composite of Several Real People
Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) in ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ is a fictional character created to function as the heart of the story. Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, who penned the script of the film, based the character on the doctors and activists they met while researching the story. While a lot of narrative is borrowed from Ron Woodroof’s life, turning it into a two-hour movie meant that a lot of things had to be condensed, and some things needed to be tweaked to give a better structure to the story and make it more interesting. Eve’s character falls under the things that were made up by the writers.
In real life, Woodroof was under the care of a doctor named Steven Pounders, especially during the later years of his life. The writers interviewed him as well to get in-depth knowledge of Woodroof’s journey, but he was one of the many doctors that they talked with to fully understand the scale of the AIDS epidemic that had the country in its grip during the 1980s. Through their conversations, they found out about the experiences of real-life doctors with all kinds of patients and what they felt while treating said patients. The death and heartbreak they witnessed were also woven into the nature of Eve, which Garner brings to the screen impeccably.
Another thing the writers found out from the doctors was the behind-the-scenes research in the medicine being created to treat AIDS patients. They also discovered how the doctors would get involved, even if on a very surface level, with the buyers’ clubs, like Woodroof’s Dallas Buyers Club, to help their patients have access to the drugs that were not yet approved by the FDA. While they couldn’t openly support the buyers’ clubs, the doctors would let their terminal patients know of the options in front of them to help ease or even prolong their final days. Because the movie focuses on so many things about the doctors, the character of Eve Saks was created as a composite of all those who enlightened the screenwriters with their knowledge about the issue.
Jennifer Garner Didn’t Know Eve Saks was Fictional
Because ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ is based on a true story, when Jennifer Garner was cast in the role of Dr. Eve Saks, she assumed that her character was also based on a real person. To prepare for the role, she decided to look into the actual doctor. When she Googled the name, nothing came up; she thought it might be because the doctor had lived so long ago that there was no digital footprint of her. Then, the actress spent a lot of time going through journals, old newspapers, and microfilms in the library to find anything that may have mentioned Eve Saks. Eventually, when she couldn’t find anything about her, Garner talked to the writers about it, feeling embarrassed that she didn’t know anything about the person she was supposed to play. It was then that she was told that the character did not exist in real life and was a mix of many real-life doctors.
Even after Garner found out that the character she had to play was fictional, she did not stop researching about the AIDS epidemic. She scoured through the medical journals that came out in the 80s and read about how the epidemic was covered in the news to get a complete picture of what was going on at the time. This also allowed her to get a sense of the timeline where she knew when a certain drug was created, tested, and sent into the market to treat the patients and what other drugs and modes of treatment came after that. She also revealed that she didn’t know about the existence of the buyers club until after she started working on the film, which gave her the true estimate of how much was still out of her knowledge. Armed with all this preparation, Garner brought Dr. Eve Saks to life with sincerity, immediately making the audience fall in love with her, even though she is fictional.
Read More: Dallas Buyers Club: Is the 2013 Movie Based on a True Story?
