"Interviews with co-stars and others 2006 archive"

David Oyelowo plays Yemi in Born Equal"

BBC, 15 November 2006

"David Oyelowo as Yemi in Born Equal"

When he first walked into the B&B that forms the backdrop to Born Equal, David Oyelowo almost believed someone had turned back the clock. Seventeen years earlier, he and his family had lived in a similar hostel in London after leaving their native Nigeria. It was, he reveals, just one of the many reasons why Dominic Savage's hard-hitting drama affected him so deeply.

One of Britain's finest young actors, Oyelowo plays Yemi, a Nigerian journalist who winds up in the hostel having fled his home with his wife (played by Nikki Amuka-Bird) and young daughter after writing controversial articles about the situation in the troubled north of his country.

"The story stems from the problems in the northern states of Nigeria," explains the 30-year-old actor, who was born in Oxford but grew up in Lagos.

"There's a lot of oppression of Christians there and Yemi's father is a pastor who has suffered a great deal in the conflict, so you can see where the impetus came from for him to write these articles.

"When Yemi is threatened, he feels he has to take his family out of the country for their safety. But then he finds out that, because of his articles, his father and his father's congregation are being persecuted.

"So there are a lot of things going on with him. He has this acute guilt for having displaced his immediate family, and the guilt about what's happening to his father.

"But he also feels that he's done the right thing: if he doesn't speak out, who will? So there's a lot of conflict going on in the man's head and heart."

To research the role, Oyelowo talked to two Nigerians whose real-life experiences were brought together in Yemi's story.

"One of the people I met is a journalist who is seeking asylum in this country. His parents are Christians and they live in Nigeria, and he had written some controversial articles that meant that he'd been forced into hiding. He lost contact with his family and ended up having to come here to seek asylum," he says.

"We talked about the nightmares he'd experienced. When I last spoke to him, his request for asylum had been turned down twice and he was applying again."

Oyelowo also spoke to a Nigerian pastor who is caught up in the problems in the north.

"He's had his church shot at several times, he's seen Christians killed and his life has been threatened, but his view is that it's his calling from God to be there and he's not going to leave."

The actor was profoundly affected by what both men had been through.

"It had a huge affect on me, not least because I am Nigerian. I left in 1989 and have been back sporadically since then, and it was really shocking to me that this was happening. And I'm a Christian myself, so there was a double resonance for me," he says.

"But also, as an actor, you feel a need to be very true to what's going on – I knew that I had a job, a responsibility, to tell the story well because we were very much borrowing these people's stories for the film and everything we talk about actually happened to them."

Being truthful, he adds, is at the core of director Dominic Savage's approach to film-making. This approach relies heavily on improvisation, which Oyelowo describes as "the acting equivalent of extreme sports".

"You literally throw yourself at the wall and see what happens," he smiles.

"As an actor, you're constantly looking for new challenges, things that are going to shake you up.

"And I'm kind of an all-or-nothing actor – I like throwing myself completely and wholeheartedly into things – and so I found it creatively very stimulating.

"The only things you have to draw on are your emotions and your understanding of the character at that particular point in time."

Oyelowo was also able to draw on his own memories of living in a hostel back in 1989. At that time, he and his family had lived in Nigeria for seven years but made the decision to return to Britain during a period of intense political unrest in West Africa.

"When we arrived in London, my mum and my two brothers and I had to live in a place not dissimilar to the one Yemi and his family find themselves in, so I have first-hand experience of that and what's in the film is very accurate," says Oyelowo, who was just 14 at the time.

"Yes, it is a frightening place to find yourself but there are an awful lot of people, not necessarily impoverished, who just find themselves in that situation.

"Looking back to that time was, in a way, kind of wonderful for me because I thought: 'Wow, we've come a long way!'"

He certainly has. Though his father wanted him to become a lawyer, Oyelowo won a scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and never looked back.

In 2000, he made headlines when he became the first black actor to play an English monarch for the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the title role of Henry VI. The performance won him an Ian Charleson award and set him firmly on the road to success.

Since then, he has starred in three series of the popular TV spy drama Spooks, Hollywood film Derailed and the provocative BBC Two drama Shoot The Messenger, in which he played a young teacher who goes on a painful journey of self-discovery that challenges his attitudes towards his own community.

Cinema audiences will see him in the lead role in Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It and in The Last King Of Scotland, Kevin Macdonald's new film about the tyrannical reign of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, which will open the London Film Festival this autumn.

He is married to fellow actor Jessica Oyelowo and the couple have two sons. They live in Hove, Sussex, just streets away from Oyelowo's close friend and Born Equal co-star Nikki Amuka-Bird, who is godmother to his boys.

Musing on his recent roles, Oyelowo says that what gets him going as both a viewer and an actor is "work that really has something to say".

"That's why I was so keen to get involved in Born Equal. It's not dissimilar to Shoot The Messenger – it ticks the same sort of boxes," he says, adding that he believes Savage's film brilliantly captures what he calls "the syndrome of the city".

"The syndrome of the city is loneliness – the weird dichotomy of being surrounded by people but completely alone – and I think that's what Born Equal very much illustrates.

"Everyone's busy, buzzing around, doing their own thing and often we don't see or even recognise the people who've slipped through the cracks of society. That's a real indictment of our culture and our cities, in a way. But I think this film will really make us take a look at ourselves."

"Anne-Marie Duff plays Michelle in Born Equal"

BBC, 15 November 2006

Waiting at King's Cross station, heavily pregnant, bloodied and bruised, proved a profoundly unsettling experience for actor Anne-Marie Duff. She was filming a scene for Dominic Savage's Born Equal in which her character, Michelle, has fled her abusive husband and arrived in London, where she knows no one and has nowhere to go. But, with the drama's naturalistic style of filming and skeleton crew, many of the commuters streaming past her would not have known that.

"It was fascinating and sad, really. Someone on the station staff came to ask if I was alright but that was it – no one else stopped," she says.

"You think about it and you swear to yourself that you'd stop if you ever saw a young woman in that state. It was strange, it was like putting the world under a microscope."

In a sense, that is exactly what Savage's latest film sets out to do, exposing as it does the vast social inequalities that exist in cities across Britain where the fabulously wealthy and those with nothing live side by side.

"As an actor, you don't often get the opportunity to tell stories that have such pertinence," says Duff (35), who describes her decision to join the project as a "no-brainer".

"It's a film that's really about something and that was important to me. But what's beautiful about it is that, although their world is very difficult, all of the characters are, in essence, good people – it's just their circumstances or their life experiences that have made things hard for them."

Nevertheless, the actor, best known for her roles in Channel 4's Shameless and BBC One's lavish period drama The Virgin Queen, says that playing Michelle was one of the most emotionally draining experiences of her life.

"Anne-Marie Duff as Michelle in Born Equal"

"When Michelle flees her husband, she leaves her whole life behind and it's almost like dealing with a bereavement. Walking away from a part of yourself and leaving all your goods and chattels … you don't know who you are, especially with a child," she says.

While researching the role, Duff contacted Women's Aid, a charity that runs refuges around the country that offer a lifeline to women and children who have experienced domestic abuse.

"I went to a refuge and the women there were exceptionally helpful. I was very privileged to hear their stories," says the actor.

"We talked about the nitty-gritty of what it's like to be in a relationship that is physically and emotionally violent, and what that does to you. It was almost Kafkaesque. You talk to these women and they all have very similar stories – it's like they can hold up a mirror to each other's experiences. It was very helpful for me."

She soon realised that all of the women she met had "eventually come to the end of something".

"It was about going as far down as you can go and suddenly, I guess, a very primal urge kicks in to save your life or the life of your child."

For Duff, who lives in London, where the film was shot, one of the most heart-wrenching scenes is when Michelle finds herself alone with her daughter, Danielle (Gemma Barrett), for the first time in a temporary B&B for the homeless and dispossessed.

"Just before that scene, I had been talking to a real housing officer, a fantastic woman, and some of the statistics and facts she told me were absolutely terrifying.

"I asked how long it would take for someone like Michelle to get out of the hostel, to get their own place. I was thinking, she's pregnant and she has a child, so it can't be that long.

"And she said: 'Well, you're looking at about three and a half years.'

"It was a shock. You think to yourself, we're all only a couple of steps away from that. If you lost your family, if you went off the rails, if you became ill… It really doesn't take a lot for your imagination to make the leap."

Duff, who was born in London to Irish parents and grew up in Middlesex, was a teenage bookworm who was encouraged to join her local youth theatre to help conquer her shyness.

She found she loved acting and, after leaving school, trained at London's Drama Centre.

Her first professional job was the lead role in Uncle Silas at the National Theatre and she has rarely been out of work since.

She has notched up accolades on the stage in King Lear, Collected Stories opposite Dame Helen Mirren and Peter Gill's Days Of Wine And Roses, and on screen in films including Sinners and The Magdalene Sisters, as well as TV's Charles II, Shameless and The Virgin Queen.

Working without a script for Born Equal was, however, a new challenge for Duff.

She describes her first improvised scenes with Robert Carlyle (who plays Robert, a man Michelle meets in the hostel) as "both terrifying and empowering".

"I didn't know Robert and Dominic made a point of us not meeting before the filming, so we didn't have any shared preconceptions. So we got to know each other slowly, which was quite good, really.

"But it was weird on the very first day of filming because all we had to do was walk past each other in the corridor. There was all this fuss about not seeing each other and then there you were – it was a bit of an anticlimax!" she laughs.

"It was a good way to work, though. You have to be very on your toes and Robert was lovely to work with.

"In some ways, it was more frightening improvising with Gemma [Barrett], who was playing my daughter and is only six.

"I found it very hard getting upset or being a mess in front of her, because I was always terrified of crossing some line. But, thankfully, she's very sound and comes from a really great family, so it wasn't complicated for her – she knew we were pretending."

Duff believes that the relationship that develops between Michelle and Robert reveals a great deal about the kind of people they are.

"You know for Michelle that it's a fantasy, really – she's clinging to a life raft. I think, for both of them, it's more a sense of just trying to find somebody," she says.

"I also think that these hostels can be strange little microcosms. They suddenly become your whole world and Mother Nature does weird things in situations like that.

"You know, it happens when you work in offices or on film sets, too: you might start a job not being very attracted to people but, at the end of it, you find you're very attracted to someone you wouldn't normally be..."

Coincidentally, Duff met her partner, Scots actor James McAvoy, on a film set – on the hit series Shameless, in which they played young lovers Fiona and Steve.

The pair are famously tight-lipped about their relationship but, having just played a woman who is eight months pregnant, Duff does reveal that she is currently feeling "even more broody than ever".

"I had to wear all this padding and it was great – it's lovely having a belly. You get to practise being pregnant!" she laughs.

"It looked so good, as well. The paramedic we had on set one day told me I should be sitting down and asked how long I had to go, and even the midwives were impressed when we were filming in the maternity ward. Yep, the belly was a big hit all round!"

"Robert Carlyle plays Robert in Born Equal"

BBC, 15 November 2006

"Robert Carlyle as Robert in Born Equal"

Scots star Robert Carlyle is no stranger to characters who stalk the underbelly of society. Good guys who have fallen through the cracks, bad guys trying to be good, criminals, villains and the odd murderous psychopath have all strong-armed their way onto his CV over the last 20 years. But, he says, that's not the only reason why Born Equal's Robert feels so familiar to him.

Robert has just been released from prison and is searching for his mother. Dislocated from society, he's trying to make a clean start and thinks that finding his mother will help him on that road.

"It's difficult to explain without sounding very grand but if I was an artist who used paint and a canvas, then you could consider this to be the latest in a series of self-portraits, if you know what I mean – maybe me in another life and another time and another path," says Carlyle in his soft Glaswegian accent.

"I've kind of been sketching out that character over and over again in different guises. It's something that every actor does, in a sense – you use yourself – and I'm kind of interpreting Robert Carlyle in maybe six or seven of these parts now.

"They all come from pretty much the same place and pretty much the same world, but they're all very different. And there are aspects in there that obviously relate to me and some that don't."

Carlyle, who was born and grew up in the tough Maryhill district of Glasgow in the Sixties – the city that is still home to him and his wife, Anastasia, and their three young children – believes he's come across enough characters like Robert in his life to be able to relate to him.

"I know a lot of people and I've got a lot of reference points for this kind of work. Did I feel a connection to Robert? I understand him, I think that's probably closer to it. I understand the type of character Dominic [Savage, the director] wanted to see. It's someone who's familiar to me," he says.

"It's interesting because I'm 45 now and I think that a lot of guys get to this age and suddenly realise that their life's kind of passing them by.

"Robert certainly does and he finds himself wanting to repair the past. He commits himself to searching for his mother. He feels that will in some way help him to integrate properly into the world, into society – a society he's rejected most of his life. So he embarks upon this journey, without really knowing what to expect along the way."

Penniless and with nowhere to go, Robert is given a room in a B&B but, as he wanders around the streets of London and catches glimpses of the lives of the wealthy people who live all around him, he develops an acute sense of the inequalities that define the city.

"He really is stuck, disenfranchised from everything. Everything in every shop window is beyond his reach. Every house he passes by, every flat, every tower block is outwith his grasp," explains Carlyle.

"I think it's probably impossible for any one of us to imagine ourselves in that kind of scenario. But I can empathise and I can sympathise and I can do all that I can to understand it."

At the heart of Born Equal is a love story – a love story that ultimately can never be, says the actor.

In the hostel, Robert meets Michelle (played by Anne-Marie Duff), who is pregnant and has a six-year-old daughter, Danielle (Gemma Barrett). Michelle has escaped an abusive husband and, alone and desperate, she and Robert reach out to one another.

"The tragedy is that they are actually very well suited. In another life, in another time, they could be together quite happily, but I don't think Robert's capable of it, that's the problem," says Carlyle.

"He's got too many demons, too much to sort out. And as the search for his mother starts to go wrong, you can see how out of reach this guy actually is. There's virtually nothing behind him, no foundation."

Carlyle's own foundation, it is clear, was his late father, Joe, a painter and decorator who brought him up alone after his mother left when he was just four years old.

Leaving school at 16 with no qualifications, Carlyle went to work with his dad.

But, at the age of 21, everything changed when, after reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible (bought with some birthday book tokens), he decided that he wanted to act.

After classes at Glasgow Arts Centre, Carlyle enrolled in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

The actor's breakthrough role was in Ken Loach's 1990 building site drama Riff Raff. Unforgettable performances in popular TV thriller Cracker and as psychotic thug Begbie in 1996's Trainspotting followed, along with gentler roles as the BBC's dope-smoking cop Hamish MacBeth and Sheffield stripper Gaz in The Full Monty, one of the most successful British films ever made.

Although now in-demand in Hollywood – he played a Bond villain in The World Is Not Enough and starred in The 51st State alongside Samuel L Jackson – Carlyle is still drawn towards gritty and political films, with Born Equal following in the footsteps of Ken Loach's Carla's Song and last year's Human Trafficking.

"If something's got some sort of social aspect to it, it's always good and it makes it a little easier to justify doing it," admits the actor.

"I don't think Born Equal is overtly political. But then again, you see homeless people on the streets everywhere you look and of course it's political, it just doesn't necessarily look that way."

What did attract him to the film, however, was the prospect of working with director Dominic Savage, who is renowned for his extreme dedication to the art of improvisation.

"I'd seen Dominic's Out Of Control, which I thought was terrific, and I was aware of this reputation he has of being a maverick in the way that he works and that's right up my street," he smiles.

A veteran of improvisational theatre and film, the actor had no qualms about the lack of scripted lines.

"It's a fantastic way of working, it's how I started in a sense, and I love that element of surprise, not quite knowing what is going to happen next.

"You're not going home at night, looking at lines … I never do that anyway. And I'm the world's worst rehearser – I hate rehearsing anything at all, it kills it for me, so this is perfect," he laughs.

"When you work like this, you maybe live it a little bit more. Everything comes from inside and Dominic takes a lot of credit for that. What you need is a platform, someone who's going to be encouraging and allow that to take place and that's definitely one of Dominic's great talents.

"What also really helped is that Anne-Marie [Duff] and I got on very well together, very quickly. We were able to achieve that state of reality, I think, which is unusual for people who don't really know each other that well. It's all about trust at the end of the day; if you trust your fellow actors, you're flying."

Carlyle was also amused by Savage's fondness for what he calls "guerrilla filming" – eschewing a closed set for filming out on the street among members of the public.

"It's all about grabbing a camera and seeing what you can get and, even though I'm used to doing that, it was funny. A few of us were jumping on and off tube trains one day and to see all the women on the train doing double-takes at Colin Firth … they must have thought they were in a parallel world!"

Talking of parallel worlds, the actor has recently completed a fantasy adventure film, Eragon, alongside John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons, and is currently working on bloodthirsty thriller 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to Danny Boyle's hit film, 28 Days Later.

"Eragon is a kind of Lord Of The Rings-type thing – really good fun but really hard work," he explains.

"I go into that world every so often, the big-budget world, and then I run away to get my head back together again."

Born Equal, he adds, helped him do just that.

"I really wanted to get out of bed in the morning and go to work, and that's as big a compliment as you can pay, really. I felt that it was a good thing from start to finish. Everyone understood what Dominic wanted to do and went along with it – a lovely experience.

"But I'm absolutely delighted with the career I have. I feel like I'm the luckiest man on the planet. If I can continue doing it for the next 25 years, I'll be more than happy."

"Down and out in London"

Interview with director Dominic Savage about "Born Equal".

Telegraph UK, 21 October 2006

Photography by Manuel Harlan

With thanks to "you know who you are ;)"

The Bafta-winning filmmaker Dominic Savage, chronicler of society's margins, has turned his lens on the plight of Britain's homeless.

The first film for television that I made was a documentary about my father called Seaside Organist. I always admired my father. He would entertain on the Hammond organ between May and September each summer, playing three sessions a day - morning, afternoon and evening - year after year for 40-odd years, at a pleasure complex called the Lido in Margate. What I saw him do all those years was provide pure entertainment - it was all about community. People who came on holiday were working people from the industrial towns and cities of the country. He would play music and songs that took them away from reality, that allowed them to dream.

What my films do is, in a way, the opposite; they are about confronting life's realities, not escaping them. My first drama, Nice Girl (2000), was about the break-up of a young marriage and the impact on the children, basically a fiIm about getting married too young. When I Was Twelve (2001) dealt with the issue of children who run away from home. Out of Control (2002) was about young offenders, and Love + Hate (2005), my first cinema feature, was about race and bigotry. They are all films about people in difficulty, who are on the outside of systems. That is where, I think, great drama comes from.

I have always been curious about people: where they are from, what they think, how they live, how their lives differ, what they care about. Maybe it is because of all those people I saw as a child, coming and going on holiday in Margate, and not really knowing anything about their lives, but always wanting to.

My inspiration to be a director was Stanley Kubrick. My father had encouraged me to play the organ, and from the age of eight I would play a couple of tunes during one of his programmes - 12th Street Rag and When the Saints Go Marching In. My feet couldn't really touch the pedals, so I used to virtually stand and play. It pleased the audiences. It was a novelty. I used to get l0p pieces thrust into my hand afterwards, which I would spend in the arcades. (Later on, when I was a student, I would spend the summers playing the morning session on the organ using the same programme of songs as my father.) Because of my playing and performing, I got a part in a TV special playing the piano for Barbra Streisand in 1974. That led to child acting roles, and then, aged II, to a part in Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon.

This was a life-changing event for me; I found Kubrick's presence immense. At the time I didn't know who he was, and certainly hadn't seen any of his films, but his intellect and the way in which he made films deeply impressed me. He was open and curious, always experimenting, constantly changing things for something more interesting.

I remember I had been on call for some weeks before my first scene was filmed, so my anticipation was high. The set was ready and Stanley wanted to rehearse the scene. It was incredibly daunting. In this very grand room in Dublin Castle, meticulously lit by thousands of candles in chandeliers, Marisa Berenson and I, in full costume and make-up, walked it through. (I played her son in the film.) Stanley took one look at it though his viewfinder and decided it wasn't right.

That left a very strong impression on me; it was not an easy choice, and obviously had a cost implication, but he couldn't film the scene he wanted; for whatever reason the place wasn't feeling or looking right to him, so he abandoned it.

I like to think that I do similar things; if a scene doesn't feel right I will either abandon it or change it to some other location where it might feel better. An example of this is a sequence in my new film Born Equal that involves a day trip to the seaside. I had always written it as being Southend, consciously trying to avoid my hometown Margate. It was always scheduled to be filmed in Southend. The day before we were due to go, I felt wrong about it. How could I deny the fact that I had written the scene because of Margate and my strange romantic attachment to the place. I knew I had to go there. Even though it was a nightmare to re-organise, we did. For me it made all the difference. It brought an extra poignancy to the scene.

As different as our methods and our films are, I think Kubrick and I share a similar independent spirit about creating a film. I knew after the experience of Barry Lyndon that I wanted to do what he did, and certainly not act.

I discovered my abilities at the National Film School. Through making documentaries I realised that what I really enjoyed doing was engaging with people, and I discovered over time that I was able to get to the truth of someone, and that they revealed things about themselves to me that were personal, unique and insightful.

For me the vital element for creating a fiIm is this connection with people. It is the research from real life that becomes the inspiration for the script. I start a project with a completely open mind about what the film will be about. I don't rush at things, and don't make up my mind immediately. I try to meet as many people as I can, as it is from those people that a story starts to form.

With Born Equal it started with the premise of a film about homelessness today. I was struck by the number of people living in temporary accommodation due to an affordable-housing shortage. At present there are more than 100,000 households stuck in this situation. I did a tour of temporary hostels around the country, with the specific intention of meeting people who had, in a sense, fallen from grace; people who had known a better life, but through circumstance had ended up in a hostel. I was interested in that change of life, how and why people can fall between the cracks. I met and spoke with many people, at least 50. I would sit in their rooms and hear their conversations. Even though I had a Walkman I never recorded the conversations - it seemed somehow insensitive. It was the memories of those meetings that became important for me. the feelings I got from those people. What came across to me strongly was not so much the grim conditions and. the psychological effects of not having your own home - as bad as that is - but the reasons why people had found themselves in this situation, which as I saw it could just as easily happen to me, and many others like me. It doesn't take much, just a series of unfortunate events relationship breakdown, illness, losing a job - to tip one's life into a descent, and once you are in that situation it's really hard to get out of it.

The people I met were very ready to talk about their lives - maybe it was a way of unburdening themselves. I always remember the stories people tell me, and how it affected me when I heard them, and use that when I am writing the characters and themes in a film.

There is always a point when through someone I meet I am so moved that I know I have to make this film. There was a woman in a B&B in Scarborough who had had a comfortable life. She had a three-year-old and was expecting another shortly. She had escaped from domestic violence, preferring the idea of having nothing rather than enduring a life of violence. She was lost and numb; she had no one, and no one to be at the birth. I didn't know how much worse things could get in life, the fact that all this pain was tied in with the supposed joy of birth. It really set the tone for the film.

When I visited a hostel in Swiss Cottage, London, just round the corner from multi-million-pound homes, themes of inequality started to emerge. Then I knew that I wanted to make a multi-stranded film that compared lives, while showing other people in crisis. I wanted my film to make us all think about the people who are in those situations. If you understood it could happen to you, you might think a little bit more about the people we see around us every day who are living in desperation, hand to mouth.

The next process is forming the story and characters. This is always a mixture of everything - people and stories I have heard, not just recently, but over the years, and a lot of myself: my fixations, paranoias, personal experiences and philosophies.

I decided the story of Born Equal was to be about a set of characters connected by a temporary accommodation hostel and the area where the hostel is situated. All of them are in search of something, a decent life, and all of them are in crisis. Robert Carlyle plays Robert, a man out of prison searching for his mother. Dislocated from society, he is trying to escape his past and make a clean start. The hostel is where he meets MicheIIe (Anne Marie Duff), who is pregnant and has a six-year-old daughter; Danielle (Gemma Barrett). Michelle has escaped domestic violence and in their desperation their relationship offers them some kind of hope. Yemi (David Oyelowo) and Itshe (NIkki Amuka-Bird) are in the hostel having escaped violence in their native Nigeria. They have no money and no home, and a parent in real danger. Meanwhile, Colin Firth plays a wealthy hedge-fund manager who is going through his own crisis. Combining these stories gives a broader picture of the film's overall themes: the importance of money in society, the huge gaps it creates, plus the importance of other people in our lives to make our own complete. The importance of family.

The third part of my process is casting. I never think it wise to predetermine who will be right for my film. Part of the casting process is seeing who is up for my kind of way of working, above all who I have a connection, a chemistry, with. Again, all of this is very instinctive. Trust between the director and actors is essential. Ultimately, the way I work is quite uncomplicated. It's engaging everyone in creating this something that illuminates, uncovers, & offers some insight into humanity & life.

It is through the input, feelings and real-life experiences of the actors that the characters and final elements of the stories are really brought to life. With this way of working, it is a very exposing process, and I believe that because they put so much of themselves into Born Equal, it has made the film special, both in terms of the process, and the end result.

Maybe my approach to filming comes from that sense of being an outsider, because of my background; maybe because my parents both came from poor backgrounds, but improved their lives a little and gave us the opportunity to do something more. I am trying to do that in my own way, which expresses my need to tell stories that have a meaning, that reflect life, and hopefully make people think about society today. I hope the films that I make might effect some sort of change, even if it is only one person who changes as a result - if I have illuminated an aspect of life, of humanity, to that one person then I have succeeded. Of course I want that to happen to millions.

At the heart of Born Equal is a love story, albeit one that can't succeed - I find love and film an enticing combination. With my next film," I want to make a seriously romantic love story, because m the end love is the best thing that we humans have got, or will ever have.

"Lights, camera and non-stop action" by Rob Driscoll

Interview with Marc Evans

IcWales, 2 September 2006

Marc Evans

A Swansea-based musical with Catherine Zeta-Jones? A film on Dylan Thomas? Turning the infamous 'Baghdad Blog' into a movie?

Not to mention having a new film out next week and that little matter of being a newlywed. Rob Driscoll caught up with director Marc Evans, otherwise known as the busiest man in the movies

MARC EVANS is late for our meeting. Not that I'm bitter or put out in the slightest - he's been sending me regular texts informing me about the delay, and on arrival he's charmingly and genuinely apologetic.

In fact, the more I think about it, it's a wonder that Wales's most successful and prolific film director is ever on time, given the number of projects he's currently juggling, and the number of people he needs to meet.

At present, he's got about five different productions at the drawing-board stage, some more advanced than others. One of them's his long-awaited Dylan Thomas film, Caitlin, with Welsh actor Michael Sheen as the legendary poet; another's a Swansea-based musical with Oscar winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Caitlin, Marc hopes, will not turn out to be 'one of those heroic, nearly-was films.'

Because this particular big-screen project, about the tempestuous relationship between tortured Welsh 'rebel' poet Dylan Thomas and his wife, has had enough stop-start moments to make any movie mogul give up all hope and throw in the towel.

At the moment, fingers in many different corners are being firmly crossed, but the tentative plan is to start filming next year. Or possibly the year after.

Maybe it's the tricky subject matter, about an alcoholic, self-destroying poet; not exactly the stuff to shift popcorn on a Friday night down your local multiplex.

Yet Dylan has his myriad of fans, the world over, and they're still waiting for the film of his life.'We've got a great script, and a great cast on board,' says Evans.

'Michael Sheen, Miranda Richardson (as Caitlin), Kevin Zegers, the young revelation from Transamerica, and Rosamund Pike as the young Caitlin. 'And Pierce Brosnan has a cameo, because his company Irish Dreamtime is behind the movie (he's set to play Caitlin's psychiatrist, John Malcolm Brinnin).

'And we've got a good relationship with Caitlin's son, Francesco, who lives in Sicily and he fully approves of the script.

'So basically you sit there going, 'What else do you need?' You've got the cream of British theatre actors and some star power to boot. We've got a poet that doesn't condemn you to a poetry film - he's a rock'n'roll poet that people know about. But it's still very hard.'

Another problem is that there are a couple of other Dylan Thomas projects floating in the celluloid ether. One is Map of Love, which has been the long-term dream of another Welsh director, Chris Monger.

At one time, former Welsh College of Music and Drama student Dougray Scott was to have played Dylan in that production, and Mick Jagger was mooted as producer. Then there is another project with Keira Knightley attached - Best Years of Our Lives - with the Pirates of the Caribbean star down as Dylan's childhood friend, when he lived in New Quay.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Evans doesn't regard either of these projects as rivals to Caitlin.

'I know Chris Monger very well, and we talk to each other about it,' he says. 'It's also been a respectable length of time since the Map of Love script has been out there, so I don't feel they are in direct competition. To be honest, it's very hard for anyone to get a film made about this subject matter, so if somebody does it, it's a kind of victory for everybody else.'

Generous words, but you still guess that he'd love to make Caitlin before anyone else gets to the finishing line.

Especially when you've got an actor the calibre of Michael Sheen as your Dylan.

'I think of it as Michael's Raging Bull,' he says. 'He's born for the role - he's just perfect for it, he's from the same area, and he's told me he wants to put the weight on and 'become' Dylan but that's Michael for you, he's a chameleon.'

He adds, 'There was a time we thought the film definitely wasn't going to happen. Caitlin lost its window of opportunity with some of that cast - Rosamund and Pierce were doing something else - so we'll try to realign for it, but it's sort of in competition with the other projects I've got going.'

He's not joking. Evans, 47, is a one-man movie production line at present - at least, in theory, if they all get made. Most promising in terms of financial backing is a musical that he will film in Swansea, called Hunky Dory, which could well star its most famous daughter, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

'I've been talking to her about it lots, and she's really interested,' says Evans. The story is set in the long hot summer of 1976, and it's about a school that's putting on a musical, while everyone would rather be down by the pool.

'We'll hopefully start making that next summer. So I get to do snow in the winter, and then some sunshine - although no doubt it will be snowing in Swansea next summer! 'Even if Catherine is not in it, she would almost certainly be a co-producer, which would kind of make sense, as it's a homecoming job for her, and her brother David is also involved.'

But for now, back to the present and the project that's actually ready for viewing.

The morning of our meeting he'd raced down to London from the Edinburgh Film Festival where Snow Cake received its European premiere to much acclaim and, indeed, rapturous applause.

A typically quirky, uncategoriseable affair from our Marc, it's also, nonetheless, arguably his most mainstream and certainly starriest big-screen offering, with A-list players Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman and Carrie-Ann Moss taking the central roles.

Not that he's gone all Hollywood on us. 'Sure, it's a pretty mainstream film for me,' he agrees, sinking into his seat at his favourite London venue, the ultimate luvvies' hangout Soho House, where he's struck many of his most notable deals.

'Yet the film is still dealing with difficult themes - autism and bereavement - so I'm always surprised and dismayed to a certain extent that what I think is commercial is still considered kind of left-field. 'At the end of the day, it's a crowded market out there but with those three actors in it, it's more likely to get the attention of filmgoers.'

By turns poignant, hilarious and heartbreaking, Snow Cake is indeed a special movie, and may well turn out to be Evans' best-received work yet. But that's not the only reason why this year is a turning-point one for the esteemed Cardiff-born film-maker.

In July he got married, to actress Nia Roberts (of Solomon and Gaenor fame, the Welsh language film that was nominated for an Oscar) - an occasion, somewhat amusingly, he suggests he found a lot more enjoyable than he might have expected.

'I was surprisingly not nervous,' he smiles, recalling the wedding day - a service at Nia's family chapel in Pentrebach followed by a reception which sounds like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel.

'We had a marquee in a field, and the weather was so glorious, you felt you were in Umbria - it was the world at its most picturesque.

'The whole idea was to do something relaxed and informal, but of course those things are the hardest to organise. So it was a bit like a country fair, a marquee with bales. We had a 'guess the weight of the sheep' competition, and long trestle tables with picnic hampers.

'The thing that amazed me the most was, because we organised a lot of it ourselves, I thought that I would turn into a nightmare director on the day, and be worried about the next event in the proceedings.'As soon as the day started, I just enjoyed it.'

The happy couple are now living in Grangetown, Cardiff, and continuing their very busy lives. As Marc continually flies to and from America, where his profile is ever increasing, Nia's career is progressing very nicely too - she's just finished recording a Radio 3 production of Cymbeline, playing Imogen, opposite Sian Phillips. Evans hopes to work with his new wife, very specifically in a road movie he plans to film in Patagonia.

'Nia's sister lives out there, and we're going to make it with a Cardiff company called Boomerang who are starting to venture into film production. 'They're a young, go-ahead company and I think things are going to pick up in Wales over the next years. I know we keep saying that! 'Half the cast will be Argentinean or Spanish. There's a nice balance between Welsh and Spanish - you put one of the smallest languages in the world next to one of the biggest, which happens not to be English.'

At the moment, Evans is heavily embroiled in his latest production, an American documentary about a Death Row prisoner, which will keep him on the other side of the Pond for most of the rest of this year.

But the imminent UK release Snow Cake, in the meantime, is something that he wants to be around for, to give it his proper support.

Filmed in the remote Northern Ontario town of WaWa early last year, Snow Cake is a bittersweet comedy-drama that might just catch you and your emotions unaware.

It's also something more optimistic and humorous from a director who's previously brought us psychological horror (Trauma), out-and-out nail-biter (My Little Eye), violent gangland drama (Resurrection Man) and Gothic, dysfunctional family mood-piece (House of America).

The story centres on tight-lipped Englishman Alex (Alan Rickman), who arrives in the Canadian wilds on his way to meet the mother of his son. He offers an unconventional, teenage hitch-hiker Vivienne a lift to her hometown of WaWa, but when the car is hit by a truck, she dies instantly and Alex finds himself, for the second time in his life, grieving for someone he never knew.

Shocked and stranded in snowbound WaWa, Alex is drawn to seek out Vivienne's mother - but Linda (Sigourney Weaver) is no ordinary mother. Alan soon becomes aware that Linda is an adult autistic, albeit a high-functioning one.

He becomes increasingly involved in Linda's life and the community to which she feels indifferent and he also forms a relationship with Linda's sassy independent neighbour Maggie (Carrie-Anne Moss).

The production wasn't without its difficulties, something Evans finds par for the course in the industry.

'Like all British movies, the story of the financing is more harrowing than anything you put on screen,' he says.

'We went to WaWa because there was a guarantee of snow, an abundance of snow, which the story required. But by the time we got there in April, thanks to the pre-production and financing delays, I had this nightmare scenario of turning up with my crew and three world-class actors in a town of 3,000 people, with no snow! 'Basically, it was melting fast.

'But the locals came good for us, they dug snow out of the lake, and kept it in their garages, we had a 24-hour snow patrol.

'We shot the whole film in 27 days, which is really quick. Because of the delay with the finance, we had the time to rehearse it properly. There wasn't a lot of hanging around for special effects - there's one, with the crucial car crash.'

Evans reckons it was precisely the film's 'indie' nature - tight budget, remote location - that enabled him to secure such impressively A-list names for the story's central threesome.

'These three actors are best known for massive, cult movies - Sigourney for Alien, Alan for Harry Potter, and Carrie-Ann for The Matrix,' he explains. 'But in this case, they were obviously really interested in playing ordinary people with character arcs.

'If you're normally hanging around for blue-screen work to happen, there's something quite refreshing about doing a movie where you're on set all the time, and it's all about you acting. And frankly, the movie business is so skewered towards a younger demographic that actors like Alan and Sigourney, in their 50s, don't always get to play leads anymore, and these are proper leads.

'So although at the time I was so delighted and surprised that they took the roles, looking back, it all makes sense.'

Evans feels particularly humbled by Rickman's unbridled enthusiasm for the project and, indeed, his help in getting the film made.

The film is the first-ever screenplay by novelist Angela Pell, who wrote the main part of Alex specifically for Rickman, himself of Scottish and Welsh parentage.

'The character was even originally called Alan,' says Evans. 'So we sent Alan the script, and we met him here,' - he points, over to another Soho House table - 'with Gina Carter, the producer, and then Alan said something quite extraordinary.

'He said (of the script), 'If this were a house, I'd ask you to take it off the market. I love it - and how can I help you make it?'

'That was a wonderful approach from somebody with his kind of clout. So the conversation naturally enough went onto who might play Linda, and Alan suggested Sigourney, because they'd done Galaxy Quest together, and became great mates; they shared the same sense of dry, quirky humour.

'So Alan phoned Sigourney, she read the script, and she relished the opportunity to do something so different.'

In fact, Weaver became astonishingly diligent in her research for the role, firstly visiting autistic adults in America, and also befriending an autistic woman in Britain, who became her unofficial mentor, friend and guide for the part of Linda.

'Sigourney totally immersed herself in the character, researching for six months before we started shooting,' says Evans.

'What was most impressive was that she gave so much commitment to the part, to the extent that when she was on set, she was pretty much in an autistic zone - yet at the same time, there was a great sensitivity of not wanting to go over the top.

'She agreed that we were making a story about characters, not conditions.'

Music, especially Welsh music, remains a constant obsession of Evans, so fans will be delighted to hear, on the Snow Cake soundtrack, not only Stereophonics' Just Looking (both in its original format and also on a church organ during a funeral!) but also Super Furry Animals' Hallo Sunshine. 'I'll be honest about the music,' says Evans. 'I know it seems like I've snuck these Welsh bands into the movie, but Angela Pell, our screenwriter, is a bit like me, rather geeky about music, and had certain music tracks in the script.

'One of the tracks she was very keen on was Just Looking, because of what it was doing lyrically. There was also this attempt to keep the spirit of Vivienne alive, and there was something about the Super Furry Animals song Hallo Sunshine which seemed to sum up the kind of girl she was.'

Another film on hold is a biopic about legendary 1960s pop music producer Joe Meek, which in Evans' ideal world would star Rhys Ifans.

'The film industry is so faddish, and there's been a slight anti-biopic mood of late, but having said that, there has been some interest from America in the project,' he says.

'It's another left-field idea, but I would love to do it, as I'm so into my music. And the chance to work with Rhys would be fantastic.'

Next on Evans' agenda will be a return visit to Canada, specifically to Toronto, with the final cut of Snow Cake.

'I'm going partly for the Film Festival, but more importantly, to screen it to the town we shot it in, WaWa, in September. I can't wait to see how the locals react to it.'

After that, he will go back to work on his feature-length American documentary, In Prison My Whole Life, about a man called Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black inmate who has been on Death Row in Pennsylvania for 25 years.

'I've met a kid called Will, who's 25 this year, who was born on the night that the alleged murder that Mumia was accused of took place,' he says.

'Will has followed this guy throughout his life, being very aware that every minute that he's lived and breathed, Mumia been awaiting his fate. So we've been to meet Mumia on Death Row, and the documentary is, I guess, a journey into the dark heart of America. He's in SCI Green, in Winsberg, which is the back of beyond.

'Although he's banned from appearing on film, he broadcasts on the internet, he's very well connected outside prison as a political activist - and he doesn't know if he's going to live or die.'

The documentary is being produced by Colin 'Mr Darcy' Firth and his wife, friends since Evans worked with Firth on the film , Trauma.

'We've also had a very interesting conversation with Lee Daniels, who produced Monster's Ball and The Woodsman so he might get involved,' says Evans.

So why a documentary film? 'I've always loved making documentaries, and I've always tried to do different kinds of work.'

Two previous documentaries showcased his love of music; The Slate: Manic Art was about Manic Street Preachers, and there was his John Cale documentary with Super Furry Animals, called Beautiful Mistake.

Evans has recently become involved in yet another project called Baghdad Blog, a fictionalisation of the Baghdad Blogger who was serialised in The Guardian.

'He's a 35-year-old gay architect, writing out of Baghdad as the invasion was happening,' says Evans.

'It's sort of about the story of his and his friends' lives during the invasion. That one would be a drama for Film Four.'

A pretty exhausting schedule, then, for anyone to take in; like I said, with that myriad of projects on his timetable, is it any wonder that Marc Evans is occasionally late? More to the point, how does he cope with such an enormous workload?

'I would love to feel I'm in control of any of this stuff,' he laughs. 'All you can do is work on all of them, and hope you get to do all of them.

'It breaks your heart in a way, because you get attached to all these projects.

'I could see all those films, and I'd obviously go and see them all if someone else made them. But this day and age it's so competitive clinching film deals. 'That's the downside. Me? I just want to make them.'

Snow Cake opens on Friday

The expressive choices of Marco Pontecorvo.

In Camera, July 2006

Click to enlarge

Photography (photo Colin) by Keith Hamshere

Edited by Jesslala.

With thanks to Chinaruth.

NOTE:

This interview is a part from a photography magazine, therefore could be read as an advertisement.

Marco Pontecorvo, AIC, is enjoying a magical period in his cinematographic career. The young, yet highly experienced Italian Director of Photography has shot three major international projects in the last 12 months: Firewall, a Warner production starring Harrison Ford; The Last Legion with Producer Dino De Laurentiis starring Colin Firth and Sir Ben Kingsley; and the HBO television series Rome. When InCamera talked to Pontecorvo, he was preparing to shoot the second Rome series.

Two out of three of your recent film projects have focused on ancient Rome. How did you get involved with The Last Legion?

"While I was shooting the first Rome series, Producer Lucio Trentini asked for my show reel for a forthcoming Dino De Laurentiis production. But although Dino liked my material and offered me the film, co-production and share-related issues subsequently dictated that it had to be shot by a British DP. At that point, he asked whether I was interested in shooting The Last Legion. The story intrigued me and the timing fitted my commitments on Rome, but then the film was postponed and in the meantime Richard Loncraine asked me to shoot Firewall. So I let the last episode of Rome go, but stayed in contact with Raffaella De Laurentiis during the Firewall shoot. After various setbacks, the starting date of The Last Legion was finalised: one week after the end of Firewall. It was destiny!"

The Last Legion is set in Italy and Britain, but it was shot in the Slovak Republic and Tunisia. How did you maintain photographic consistency between the locations?

"Almost all the 'British' scenes and several in 'Rome' were shot in the Slovak Republic, while only one 'British' scene was shot in Tunisia.

From the outset we took advantage of the differences in landscapes, light and colours between the two countries and, where this wasn't possible, I tried to achieve uniformity with the other photographic atmospheres. 'Italy' looks warmer, dusty and is almost always sunny with strong colours, while 'Britain' is gloomier, grey and rainy, with autumnal colours.I shot the arrival in 'Britain' in Tunisia at dusk for more muted tones and the courtyard of the protagonist's 'Italian' villa in Tunisia, while the Slovak Republic was the setting for the villa's exteriors. I used a polariser to accentuate the colour saturation and achieve an intensely blue sky. With the help of special effects, I added red dust to the Tunisian shots and we also scattered it in the air. Then I prayed for sun!"

What visual style did you and Director Doug Lefler seek for The Last Legion and how did you set about achieving it?

"The story lies somewhere between reality and fantasy and that determined the film's photographic style. Sometimes we took a liberty or two, shifting the emphasis to spectacle and fantasy, while at other times we tried for a leaner and more realistic style. The central consideration was the division between the locations. I employed a lot of incamera special effects as narrative elements, for example dust, smoke and flames. Apart from a polariser, I didn't use any particular filters to saturate the colours and the sky because I knew I'd be working in DI. I chose Kodak VISION2 500T 5218 and Kodak VISION2 200T 5217 and fitted the ARRI with Cooke S4 lenses."

The Last Legion is a $50 million production based on a best-seller. What did it mean in practical terms working on a film with a high Hollywood-style budget?

"Although the working method and approach are fairly different, I don't believe there's a golden rule implying 'resources equal quality'. Experience with limited resources has helped me a great deal because I've gotten into the habit of making do and finding solutions. That kind of experience can only help in the flourishing American film industry."

Did you experience any particular difficulties shooting The Last Legion?

"Endless difficulties, both large and small. I had considerable trouble maintaining photographic consistency on the battle scenes in Tunisia and the Slovak Republic.In one scene I wanted sun and instead had days when it was so grey that it was like an endless twilight, while in another I wanted grey and got alternating rain and sun, preceded by a pea-soup fog! I tried to give the images minimal brightness and often met with the visual effects supervisor to provide elements that would enable him to add sky and sea on a sunny day. That way the audience's perception would be just a little off balance. I usually shot backlit and used smoke to help reduce the amount of sunlight."

The first HBO television series Rome received excellent reviews, high audience ratings and a Golden Globe nomination in the US. It was also popular in many other countries, so why did it attract only limited interest amongst Italian audiences?

"Rome was created for American audiences, yet it deals with our Italian roots. That's hard for an Italian audience to digest. It was also shown two episodes at a time, which is not always a popular choice in Italy. I could speculate indefinitely."

Unlike many Italian television projects, Rome was shot in 35mm. What does the format mean to you in the context of television?

"Rome was shot on Super 35 for the sake of accuracy. It is a superior format that has great formal and expressive depth and inevitably better quality. But the production effort can be frustrated if, as happened with the first couple of episodes in Italy, a product was released for broadcast that was created with a Beta SP loaded into an Avid, which was then downloaded to a fairly compressed digital format. It's a real sin because the expressive and formal richness of the 35mm format is lost. The quality of the product is fundamental, but so is the quality of the broadcasting — an important fact that unfortunately sometimes gets overlooked..."

How did the lighting package for ancient Rome in the television series compare with ancient Rome in The Last Legion?

"Even though both productions dealt with events that occurred in ancient Rome, the story, the media, the audience and the shooting format were different. Having said that, the interiors were lit with torches and oil lamps and the costumes and sets were similar, but these are objective considerations.

The diversity stems from my desire to innovate rather than repeat the photographic choices. It's an integral part of my philosophy that my approach to lighting is always aimed at the story."

What aspects of Firewall gave you the greatest satisfaction?

"I had the pleasure of working with Richard Loncraine on My House in Umbria; he's a very talented director and a great professional, as were the cast, the production people, set designers, costumers and assistant directors. We worked as a team and achieved an excellent result. I'm pleased with the photographic choices and the overall atmosphere. They helped to tell the story, which for me is essential."

You tested the Kodak Look Manager System on Rome. Are you planning to use the new version of the software on the second series?

"We've asked one of our apprentice trainees to handle it so the print will be calibrated during the day for each individual scene and the reference photos will start with the evening shoot. It's an extremely useful tool for dialogue with the laboratory — in this case Technicolor di Roma — and also for providing examples that simplify communication and obviate long discussions with producers and directors about the look of the film. I hope the new Kodak Look Manager System will be faster and more intuitive and that a shared vision system will be developed which requires less space than the current calibrated monitors."

"Rat pack noir" by Stephanie Bunburry

The Age Australia, 7 May 2006

The secret lives of celebrities inspires the latest film noir from Canadian director Atom Egoyan. Stephanie Bunbury reports.

"Every culture in society has needed its gods," says Atom Egoyan, "and in our system, that god is the celebrity." He is speaking in Cannes, where his film Where the Truth Lies has just been shown for the first time; the evidence is all around us. "And there is no way you can dismiss it as frivolous," Egoyan continues, earnestly. "As human beings, we've always needed other human beings to be lifted and presented as special. We have to look at those lives very carefully, to watch them rise, divorce and fail."

Egoyan's latest film is oddball, but so are they all. The Canadian director, whose previous films include Exotica and the wonderful The Sweet Hereafter, winner of the Grand Prix in Cannes in 1997, is one of cinema's true originals. Starting with his first film, Family Viewing, in 1987, he has consistently dealt in perversity, deception and the complex relationships bundled up into apparently simple constructions such as "family" or "work"; nothing is ever as we assumed it to be. Where the Truth Lies is a classic film noir mystery. Given Egoyan's interest in malevolence and its disguises, perhaps the most mysterious thing about it is that he has not ventured into that shady genre's dark alleys before.

Where the Truth Lies takes us back to 1959 and a glamorous world of casinos, hotel rooms and the new cathedrals, television studios. Of course, their glamour is as thin and cheap as the hotel suites' teak veneer; filth lurks behind every velvet valance. "I think the '50s is a period everyone thinks of as being innocent," Egoyan says. "But it wasn't. There were a lot of things being suppressed."

Lanny and Vince, a duo of cabaret comedians played to the hilt of dissipation by Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, are kings of this world. In the novel by Rupert Holmes on which this film is based, they were very obviously modelled on Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, but Egoyan found that real-life reference distracting. He wanted to imagine a new act from the ground up, eventually coming up with one that should have existed but didn't: the Ugly American and his buttoned-up Brit buddy. Their jokes are lamentable but, as Firth puts it, "there was the feeling that this was where it was happening, that Vince and Lanny are at the centre of the party".

That party, with or without the adoring public looking on, never stops. Behind the scenes, even at the annual polio telethon, there is always more champagne on ice, more girls on tap and more handfuls of uppers to keep them going.

"Doing a live show and having people give you that kind of adulation, the adrenaline and rush you get from that is so intense you need to keep it going," says Bacon.

"It's like a drug. It's that rock and roll thing. It's very hard to come down from that. And that's what's driving these guys."

Then, suddenly, the party's over. After one of their roaringly successful nights, a girl is found dead and dismembered in their hotel suite. The boys' alibis are unassailable and neither is ever charged, but the double act, on and off stage and screen, is at an end. Neither Lanny nor Vince ever talks about it until, 15 years later, a young reporter and former fan tries to unravel the long-dormant story.

Alison Lohman's Karen is also a creature of her own time, the '70s: she is the journalist who sets out to become part of the story. In fact, she is already part of it; Karen was a polio victim, featured on that long-ago telethon as a "miracle girl". To her, Vince and Lanny are still heroes. She hopes for a scoop but, more importantly, she also holds out hope of reuniting them. Not only does she discover how unlikely that is but, as she becomes involved with both men, she recognises plenty of dark, unexamined shadows in herself.

Egoyan has shot his noir in varyingly ravishing shades of colour: the '50s scenes are shot using a white diffusion lens that makes the image both brilliant and misty, while the '70s scenes are saturated and hard-edged. Both periods are shot with an eye for glamour that recalls the celebrity shoots in old Life magazines; since everything we see represents a character's point of view, says Egoyan, we should see their world as they would want it to be seen. "At first we were going to make it like Gilda, that kind of glamour, with very soft black and white," he says, "and we were experimenting with that but then it seemed way too cliched. And it wasn't really the way Lanny would see his life."

But the fact that there is very little actual "noir" does not, in Egoyan's view, lessen the film's fidelity to genre. Noir is not a colour to him; it is an attitude. "The defining aspect of noir is the idea of people's relationship to fate. In a classic noir there seems to be a machine intelligently playing with circumstance and the characters are caught in this place where they are being manipulated by it; it's leading somewhere and they are running away. Fate is the defining idea." The characters, however, all fight against fate by trying to construct their own narratives: Lanny and Karen by writing their respective accounts of the past and Vince, as we gradually discover, by scheming to turn the situation to his own advantage. "But the real core of it is withheld from all of them. That was very compelling."

Could this story happen now? No, says Egoyan, in the sense that the story is about the loss of an innocence - or, perhaps, ignorance - that no longer exists. In the '50s, the entertainment industry could effectively conceal whatever might damage its goods, keeping the celebrity myths intact. Now there is little that can escape those long lenses and mobile phone snappers.

"But you know what is interesting now?" says Egoyan. "It's the way these things are covered or concealed through the legal process as opposed to the journalistic one. It's quite amazing how now it is the lawyers who are making these incredible narratives in celebrity trials where the role of the lawyer is to be the entertainer, to be the person who will distract from where the truth might be." Everything might seem to be revealed, but this only means the attempts at concealment have become more elaborate. For Atom Egoyan, the prospect of peeling back those layers of disguise is surely more tantalising than ever.

"Thompson reports for Nanny duty", by Bruce Kirkland

Toronto Sun, 22 January 2006

Writer and star Emma Thompson takes little-known children's books and spins them into Nanny McPhee

Nanny McPhee, a dark yet delicious children's movie, deals boldly with an age-old question in parenting: What do you do with naughty children?

In life, writer-actress Emma Thompson admits she does not have a clue. She even confesses to falling into a total emotional collapse when wrestling with the demons which occasionally inhabit her own spirited daughter, six-year-old Gaia (whom she shares with second husband, actor Grey Wise).

"Generally speaking," Thompson says with a laugh, "I often will end up weeping on the floor saying, 'I don't know how to discipline you! I don't know what to do now!'

"And my daughter has come up to me, looked at me weeping, sitting on the floor, given me a hankie and said, 'Let's have a game of cards.' I've also taught her how to make Bloody Marys now, so she knows kind of how to calm me down and it's all right now. Actually, in all seriousness, I think it's very difficult to know (what to do)."

In the movies, however, Thompson's title character in Nanny McPhee has some answers. They involve magic but also rely on human ingenuity, a child's cleverness and simple but forthright communication between generations.

Thompson says there is also one truth that unites the seven very naughty Brown children in the movie and most naughty children in real life. "Parents always think it's the kids' fault. If they're naughty, it's the kids' fault. Not true! Children generally are not naughty for no reason."

Those reasons, she says, usually involve an adult who does something, says something or ignores the children when they do and say things that demand close attention. Naughtiness is a child's protest against a perceived injustice, Thompson says. So acting out is sometimes a good thing.

As a result, Nanny McPhee, which combines the light-hearted spirit of Mary Poppins with the Gothic sensibilities of a Grimm fairytale, is a cautionary saga, equally powerful for naughty children and for their parents.

"I think it would be terrible if what children come away (with) from this movie was that you've always got to behave," Thompson says. "No! Not so!"

Set during the Dickensian-Victorian era in a small English town, the movie has been spun from Christianna Brand's three books on the exploits of Nurse Matilda. Generally lost and forgotten, they are now being republished under the combined title Nanny McPhee: The Collected Tales Of Nurse Matilda. The new volume is comprised of Nurse Matilda (1964), Nurse Matilda Goes To Town (1967) and Nurse Matilda Goes To Hospital (1974).

Thompson, who won an Oscar for adapting Jane Austen's classic novel, Sense And Sensibility, into an Ang Lee masterpiece, wrote the screenplay for Nanny McPhee. She was also the one to get the project going -- nine years ago.

"It was an odd genesis," Thompson says. "I read (one of the Nurse Matilda books) when I was little but it wasn't one of my favourites. But I was dusting, actually, and I found it on the bookshelves. I looked at this strange little dumpy woman on the front, with this huge tooth, and I thought, 'I remember this book and I think her appearance changes.' As I read it (again), I thought, 'There's something about this that might make a good film.' "

Thompson took the idea to producer friend Lindsay Doran. The two met on set in 1990 when Thompson shot Dead Again with her then-husband, actor-director Kenneth Branagh. Doran was keen and the two embarked on what proved to be -- surprisingly -- a very difficult journey.

"I thought, of course because I'm an idiot," Thompson says, "that writing something like that would be simpler than adapting a major movie. Wrong! In fact, it was more difficult because there is, in fact, not a narrative in the books. I suddenly discovered that I agreed to write this thing and there wasn't a story. So I had to make a lot of it up. Well, all of it up, really!"

For example, Thompson killed off Mrs. Brown and turned Mr. Brown (played by Colin Firth) into a widower. There is also the question of the exact number of Brown siblings, but we will get to that in a moment. The few servants in service in the Brown household also changed and so did their importance. In the movie, a scullery maid (Kelly Macdonald) figures into the romantic plot in a crucial way while Mr. Brown's rich, imperious aunt (Angela Lansbury) makes key demands that threaten to ruin his life. But the consequences could be dire if Mr. Brown refuses her because her financial support maintains the household.

Consequently, Nanny McPhee the movie bears little resemblance to Nurse Matilda the books. Except that each shares writer Brand's original vision: That the nanny who cares for the Brown children has magical powers and deep insight into what makes children tick. She also has two large warts, a bulbous nose and a snaggle tooth, as Brand writes, "sticking right out like a tombstone over her lower lip." Ugly, ugly!

As for the children themselves, there are oodles of them in the books, running around, causing mayhem, getting into mischief. As Brand writes on Page 1 of Nurse Matilda, "There were so many of them that I shan't even tell you their names but leave you to sort them out as you go along."

Thompson says she was forced to, as screenwriter, "kill a lot of the children because they had so many kids in the books. You can't count them. My first version of this film had 35 kids in it. Can you imagine? Slowly, as the years went by, Lindsay ground me down. She said, 'We can't have 35 children! It's too expensive.' "

Thompson's stubborn response? "Okay, I'll give you 29! Then I slowly went down to 17, 13, 11 and nine. I absolutely stopped at nine. I said, 'I'm not going to do any less than nine. It's not going to make enough sense. It's not going to be enough kids.' So we ended up with seven."

Seven turned out to be a magical number (and the filmmakers needed eight to play them, with twins Hebe and Zinnia Barnes as Baby Agatha). "Actually," Thompson says, "I was watching The Sound Of Music the other day and it's seven. Robert Wise did rather well with that film because they're (all seven children) quite well documented."

What was good enough for Wise is good enough for her, Thompson says. "I realized I couldn't chart nine kids in an hour and a half. It just wasn't going to be possible."

What was equally challenging was the makeup. Thompson arrives with a most excellent freak look as Nanny McPhee. Her visage evolves toward the 46-year-old Thompson's own natural beauty, as she teaches her lessons. Warts vanish, the nose shrinks, the tooth decays away.

"From a continuity point of view," director Kirk Jones says, "it really was quite a complex shoot. It was complicated in the children's hours, as well. With the makeup, handling the children and the schooling, you really had to look at it almost as a military operation. There were charts and lists and we had to mark out every single day."

Just as complex is the mythology behind the story, Thompson says. "It's fascinating, actually. I really ought to research it more because, when I started to work out what myth Nanny McPhee was, I realized she was more like Shane than anything else (a reference to the 1953 classic Hollywood western in which a stranger, Alan Ladd, arrives at a settler's home and transforms a boy's life before riding off into the desert).

"That myth, that story form," Thompson says, "is probably very ancient and it is to do with chaos. It is to do with a situation where chaos reigns and all the powers that be and the authorities that are existent cannot do anything. They cannot act, they cannot restore balance or harmony. (Then) a stranger comes in -- indeed, (Albert) Camus' La Peste is the same thing -- and restores balance or harmony or order and then has to leave or die. They cannot stay. That's the interesting thing about it. They have to go."

Kids were fine, but the ass was a real pain

There is an old adage in Hollywood that adult actors should never work with children or animals.

"I don't think that is true," says Emma Thompson, writer and star of the movie Nanny McPhee, "although you should never work with donkeys!"

Let's talk children first. Even though they are referred to as "dreadful, awful, monstrous creatures" in the press materials for the film, that is written with great affection. And Thompson got along famously with all eight children playing the seven offspring of Mr. Brown in the movie.

Indeed, as she leaves her Hollywood interview sessions one recent day, she spies young Samuel Honywood -- an extraordinarily articulate youngster who plays Sebastian -- and chases him about until, catching up, she bundles him into her arms for a big hug. Both squeal in delight.

Thompson also got along with the various animals on set for the English shoot in Buckinghamshire and at famed Pinewood Studios. The menagerie included a big pig dressed up in Sunday finery. But that damned donkey!

"That donkey was supposed to be active," Thompson says. "And it just stood there as if it had been injected with half a pound of heroin. You know that thing they say at the end of movies -- 'No animal was harmed, accidentally or otherwise' ... well, I wanted to harm it. I wanted the end of (the movie) to say, 'Emma Thompson harmed the donkey!' Because I had a real, profound desire. That's a terrible thing to admit but there you go."

"Thompson transformed" by Angela Dawson

Entertainment News Wire, 20 January 2006

At 4:15 in the afternoon, British actress Emma Thompson is jonesing for some tea. Only problem is there is no tea in this posh Beverly Hills hotel suite and, even after ordering room service, no sign of its arrival.

Dutifully, this two-time Oscar winner forges ahead. Thompson is here to promote the release of the family-friendly fantasy adventure "Nanny McPhee," in which she stars as the title character. Based on the "Nurse Matilda" books by the late author Christianna Brand, "Nanny McPhee" is a cross between "Mary Poppins" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." McPhee isn't the most demonstrative nanny, but she gets the job done with a little magic.

Thompson is almost unrecognizable at the outset of the movie in a heavily padded costume and extensive makeup, including a bulbous nose, protruding warts, a unibrow and a snaggletooth.

In person, the actress is much more glamorous, with short, wavy blond hair, a stylish turtleneck and low-rise slacks. She is surrounded by mementos from home, including photos of her husband, actor Greg Wise, and their 6-year-old daughter, Gaia, taken at the London premiere of "Nanny McPhee."

The film marks Thompson's first credited screenwriting venture since her 1995 Oscar-winning "Sense and Sensibility," in which she also starred. (She recently did an uncredited rewrite on the acclaimed "Pride & Prejudice.")

Bringing "Nanny McPhee" to the big screen was a labor of love that took nearly a decade. Thompson, 46, rediscovered the long-out-of-print books she had read as a child while dusting a bookshelf several years ago.

The books depict the magical adventures of a mysterious nanny who arrives on the doorstep of a house filled with unruly children. Though the stories weren't necessarily her favorites, Thompson saw cinematic possibilities after rereading them.

Together with Lindsay Doran, with whom she collaborated on "Sense and Sensibility," Thompson set about acquiring the rights to the "Nurse Matilda" series. But creating a workable screenplay was a bigger challenge than she'd anticipated. "I suddenly realized that I just agreed to write this, and there wasn't a story," recalls Thompson, chuckling. "There's not, in fact, a narrative in the books."

The writer-actress uncovered other obstacles as well. The books contain an untold number of naughty children, none of whom have specific characteristics. "They just run around making mischief," she explains.

So Thompson reduced the number of children to seven and reinvented the father as a widower working at a funeral parlor. She also provided him with a love interest, the household's unassuming scullery maid, Evangeline. She even renamed the title character with a little assistance from her mum, actress Phyllida Law.

"Nurse Matilda" was simply too "hospital-y," Thompson explains, adding that "nurse" is a dated British term for nanny. And "Matilda" was the title of a Roald Dahl children's book that was adapted into a movie.

Law, who is Scottish, suggested McPhee, figuring it had a solid, no-nonsense ring to it. It also was the name of a favorite author (John McPhee) in the Thompson household.

Though born into a prominent London theatrical family - her late father, Eric Thompson, was a theater director and actor - Thompson had little first-hand knowledge of nannies. "We had au pairs," she says - live-in childcare providers from other countries who typically spoke no English. "But we didn't have that kind of proper nanny."

Thompson says her screenplay was influenced by the popular nanny films of her youth - "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music" - yet "Nanny McPhee" has a darker, comical edge. Arriving at the Brown residence shortly after the 17th nanny has been driven away by the household's mischievous children, McPhee sets about restoring order. Her unexpected arrival confuses Mr. Brown (Colin Firth), but he welcomes her nonetheless because he has exhausted the supply of available local nannies.

The children, portrayed by young British actors between the ages of 1 and 14 (including a pair of twins sharing the role of baby Aggie), are curious about the mysterious and scary looking stranger in their home but confident they will soon scare her off.

Nonplussed by the children's antics, Nanny McPhee sets out to impart important lessons to the children, using a little magic via her ever-present walking stick. Sure enough, the children learn vital lessons over the course of Nanny McPhee's stay. Mr. Brown learns to be a more attentive parent and opens his wounded heart to new love.

Thompson says Firth was an inspired choice by director Kirk Jones ("Waking Ned Devine"). "He combines that romantic hero and somebody who can do pain as well, but nobody knew he could do slapstick and be so terribly funny," she says of her co-star. "He just made me laugh."

Thompson says W.C. Fields got it half right when he warned grown actors never to work with children on animals. The children, she says, were great, but the pet donkey was a headache. "That donkey was supposed to be doing things but it just stood there as if it was injected with a half-pound of heroin," she complains.

She jokes, "You know that advisory at the end of movies where it says 'no animal was harmed accidentally or otherwise?' Well, I wanted to harm it. I wanted to have at the end of the film, 'Emma Thompson harmed this animal.' "

The "Nanny McPhee" script contains some expressions that smaller children may not recognize, but Thompson is confident they will understand the meaning nonetheless. As a mother, she knows children build vocabulary by hearing new words, and she disdains films that talk down to children.

"I like that (the script) is honest and not trying to be hip," Firth observes. "It allows itself to have a kind of cozy, almost fusty feeling of old nursery parlor fairy tales. And there's a very archetypal dark streak running throughout the story."

Thompson describes her story as kind of a Western for girls. "It's like 'Shane,' " she explains. "A stranger comes into a situation that is chaotic and all systems of authority have broken down. Then, using unorthodox methods, the stranger creates the circumstances by which balance can be restored and then leaves."

It is a template that has been used successfully in countless nanny classics, and "Nanny McPhee" has already become a hit in Britain. Time will tell whether American audiences respond as enthusiastically.

In the meantime, Thompson, who studied literature at Cambridge University, is moving forward with other writing and acting projects. She recently wrapped the comedy "Stranger Than Fiction," co-starring Will Ferrell, whom she describes as "very tall and heavenly."

She also is completing a rewrite on "Fast Forward," a romantic comedy on which she has collaborated with "About a Boy's" Nick Hornby. "We've been working on it for six years," she says with mock exasperation. "I'm just so pleased we're going to make it this autumn with Peter Cattaneo, who directed 'The Full Monty.' "

After "Fast Forward," Thompson says she will have "cleared the decks" and concentrate on other writing projects. And perhaps getting that long awaited cup of tea.