Agnes White (Ashley Judd) and Peter Evans (Michael Shannon) in Bug Photo credit: Anthony Friedkin

"I loved the idea of playing someone who was really wounded and not very imaginative who is subsumed into the stronger, more dynamic person," said the actress, whose character contends with a hothead ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr.) and an insect infestation that may only exist in her new beau's head. World Trade Center actor Michael Shannon plays Peter, the off-kilter ex-soldier, who lures Judd into a world of pain and paranoia. Even though Friedkin and Judd were film veterans, Shannon was, by far, the most experienced with Bug, since the actor had originated the role in the play's initial Chicago run and reprised it in stints off-Broadway and in London.

"The biggest adjustment for me, in terms of taking it from stage to screen, is that, when you do a play, you hop up there 8 o' clock and you tell the whole story in two hours and it's over and you can go have a beer," says Shannon. "When you're doing a movie, you're going in and you're trying to perfect all these little moments."

The only problem is Shannon probably didn't have as much time as he usually would have on a film — the production chugged along on a lean-and-mean 25-day shoot in Louisiana. Yet Shannon's stage experience became a valuable resource once Friedkin insisted on shooting the film in sequence, which is rarely done.

"If Michael hadn't done the play so much and Billy hadn't storyboarded literally by his own hand every frame of the movie, I'm sure that people with lesser visions and acquaintanceship with the material probably couldn't have done what we did in less than 25 days," says Judd, before adding with a laugh, "at least not without completely running everyone into the ground and becoming bitter."

Of course, necessity is the mother of invention and on the $4 million budget, Friedkin cleverly erected a soundstage for the film's central location, a hotel room, out of a high school gymnasium during the school's summer vacation. Friedkin also employed the vacated classrooms for production offices and makeup and wardrobe rooms. Though school was out of session, Shannon recalls that during the first week of rehearsals, "the wrestling team was running up and down the bleachers."

Peter Evans (Michael Shannon) in Bug Photo credit: Anthony Friedkin

Shannon also recalled how the crew tried to come up with ways to film Bug's climactic scene in which Shannon's character, Peter, must pull out one of his teeth. "We had gone through a lot of head scratching about how to do this — people building different contraptions and whatnot, because Billy really wanted to see everything. But at the end of the day, unless you've got $100 million to spend, it's really difficult to pull something like that off."

The same can be said for Friedkin, who is coming full circle by adapting the work of Chicago-based playwright Tracy Letts. A member of the Steppenwolf Theater troupe, Letts shared a hometown connection to the Windy City-bred Friedkin, who admired the edginess of Letts' writing and caught the play during a trip to New York.

"It really is black comedy, which is a very difficult thing to bring off," says Friedkin, who also adapted The Birthday Party from the Harold Pinter play in 1968. "There's only a handful of people in the English speaking world who have been able to bring that sort of thing off. Pinter did in the '60s and early David Mamet. But I think Letts is a kind of successor to that."

For the same reasons she was bewitched with Letts' script, Judd wants audiences not to be afraid to let Bug sink its teeth into them. "I think it's important that we let people know it's okay to laugh, because otherwise they might wonder 'Oh my gosh, is this supposed to be funny?' But in order to achieve that humor, the acting has to be totally sincere and totally passionate and totally authentic in its commitment to what is happening within the narrative. I had to go all the way with my performance. And the result is it's not that you get a straightforward tragedy. It's more like the Greek tragedies. It's kind of a laugh a minute."