I'm looking forward to seeing this.
A quick Q & A from the director, Stephen Frears:
Exclusive: Stephen Frears on The Queen
Source: Edward Douglas September 29, 2006
If you were to believe director Stephen Frears, you would think that he were a directing savant who just happens to fall into all these great movies and owes everything to his great writers and cast, but in fact, the man is a genius, something that anyone who's seen his body of work from Dangerous Liaisons to The Grifters and more recent movies like Dirty Pretty Things can attest.
Last year, Frears helmed the historical musical-comedy Mrs. Henderson Presents, which got Dame Judi Dench an Oscar nomination for the title role, and his new movie, The Queen, is likely to do the same for actress Helen Mirren. It shows what happens behind the doors of No. 10 Downing Street and the Queen's Scottish countryside retreat after the death of Diana, Prince of Wales, and it's another brilliant masterpiece from the humble filmmaker.
ComingSoon.net has a very rare exclusive chat with Frears on what will hopefully be the film that gets him the Oscar he has deserved for many years. He's a man of few words, though he tends to find just the right ones to get his point across.
ComingSoon.net: It's an interesting transition from "Mrs. Henderson Presents" to this, from a woman who acts like she's the Queen to actually doing a movie about the Queen. Did you already have this script in your hands while you were doing "Mrs. Henderson"?
Stephen Frears: I read both scripts within three days of each other. I read "Mrs. Henderson" and then I read "The Queen" but by the time I read "The Queen" I had said I'd do "Mrs. Henderson."
CS: So you had all your ducks lined up in a row.
Frears: I made two films back-to-back. I think it drove them mad that I made them wait a year, but now they say it was good waiting, but at the time, it drove everyone mad. (chuckles) We had Helen [already cast]. You know, we did this other film about Blair ["The Deal"] and the producer came and said, "Would you like to do another one about these events with Helen Mirren as the Queen?" and I met Helen and thought she'd be very good, and then Peter went away and wrote the script.
CS: The movie is very politically charged, but there's a lot of humor in it, too, especially while extrapolating what's going on behind closed doors. Were there any things in the movie that got laughs that you weren't expecting?
Frears: No, it was always witty, and people find it very funny. You kind of have to laugh at the whole thing or else you'd burst into tears, I guess. Yes, it was always conceived as being funny and tragic at the same time.
CS: How did you work with Peter [Morgan] on the script? Were a lot of the one-liners in the original draft or did some stuff come from the actors?
Frears: He wrote the script, which is more or less the film we made, but of course, you're refining scenes the whole time. It isn't improvised. I like the writer to be there, so you're actually in that position where you can rewrite immediately if you want, and immediately introduce any new ideas. I can't actually remember.
CS: So Peter was there on set the whole time?
Frears: Yes, I prefer the writer on the set.
CS: How do you go about recreating places like Buckingham Palace, since you weren't able to film there? I was especially impressed with how you recreated the sea of flowers outside the gates after Diana's death.
Frears: We do the best we can! That was outside Greenwich Palace in London, another palace made of the same colored stone. That particular bit outside the palace we would have done it outside another building more or less of the same architectural period, maybe they changed the color of the stone or cleaned it up in some way [using computers].
CS: What's the reaction to the movie been like in England?
Frears: Phenomenal. Second weekend was 6% up from the first.
CS: I assume that everyone over there must feel similarly about how things are run there.
Frears: Everyone knows what we know. Everybody in Britain knows what I know and more or less, thinks the same way I think.
CS: Is it seen more as a comedy there than it is here, where people think of it as drama?
Frears: Well, it's all those things! I don't know. You just see people getting it in many countries now. I remember the press conference in Venice, they said, "Oh, it's a lot of laughter," and I'm thinking, "Why are they laughing? How can they understand these jokes?" The institution is fundamentally a ridiculous institution and the family is a rather ridiculous family. But of course, they're also human beings, therefore more complicated than that.
CS: I liked the fact that you did try to humanize them a bit.
Frears: I think people expected us just to make a satire. That's what you normally do, you make a satire. I never expected any of this to be taken seriously. That's the most ridiculous thing of all.
CS: Have the Royal Family asked for any kind of royal screening yet?
Frears: It's getting closer and closer. They're above it all. They won't ask for it.
CS: But they must be aware of it.
Frears: Of course. The whole of London is talking about it. They'd be acutely aware of it. The servants might go and see it, and then there's their entourage.
CS: I'd be worried about that, that the servants would go out and see your movie and then come back to the palace and start laughing anytime you say something.
Frears: The answer is… don't have servants.
CS: Have you noticed any changes in the way the royals deal with the public since the events in the movie, or did it just go back to the way things were?
Frears: It's very hard to know, but they now fly the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace when the queen is absent, so they'll never get caught again not having a flag to lower. I don't know if there's been change or not. As it were, we've had the effrontery to make the film, and maybe we wouldn't have had that nine years ago.
CS: What about how the people of England see the Queen?
Frears: People are very, very fond of the Queen. She's now 80, admired, sort of loved, perhaps more than ever before, particularly because Blair has been such a disappointment, and Blair has been inconstant—if that's the right word—and the Queen has been somehow… what people criticize in Tony Blair, the Queen personifies the opposite, so the Queen is steadfast and principled whereas Blair we see as lacking principles.
CS: At the beginning of your film, it seems like the Queen is the one really running government.
Frears: No, the Queen has no power, but of course, she is enormously powerful, at least constitutionally. You know, a law is passed by queens, lords and commons, so she does have to sign it, but she's not in any position where she can refuse to sign it. There's isn't any sort of record of her interfering in politics. Her father used to say more. All of that stuff where the Queen meets the Prime Minister, of course that's so secretive. No one knows anything that goes on there. And the Queen has passed legislation of which she disapproved, so for example, when they banned fox hunting, well, most of the Queen's friends hunt, so the Queen must have been disturbed having to sign something making what her friends do every day of the week illegal. But she didn't publicly complain. She had no choice.
CS: With each movie, you seem to be going more into a political direction.
Frears: I have no explanation at all. Somebody said that I've made the definitive film about Thatcherism and the definitive film about Blairism.
CS: So you'll have to figure out whose next in power.
Frears: Oh, no, no… I don't really think about it. It's such an interesting story. No one had ever made a film about the Queen. It is regarded as a very audacious thing to have done. It's simply never been done before.
CS: And yet here, we overtly make movies about the President all the time.
Frears: No, this is thought to be a very cheeky film, except the content isn't very cheeky. It's witty but the making of the film… it's never happened before.
CS: What do you think is the fascination with royalty, in general? Movies about kings, queens, past and present, there's always something intriguing about it.
Frears: The very idea that this sort of modern country has an institution like that at the top is sort of ridiculous. All those men marching up and down. The idea of that in the 21st Century is sort of nonsensical isn't it?
CS: Do you see more of those questions from journalists from countries that don't have that sort of ruling class in place?
Frears: No, no, no… I noticed that countries that are republics are absolutely riveted by it. Big hit in Italy, and they think it's going to be enormous in France.
CS: Well, at least France had a pretty big history of that sort of thing.
Frears: Yes, but they got rid of them. Chopped their heads off. It's a very peculiar idea, because it is such an old-fashioned institution, but they're quite clever, they've survived a long time.
CS: How about the feeling about treating actors like royalty?
Frears: You mean like Tom Cruise or somebody?
CS: Okay, up until the point where the people are done with them, but there are instances where actors are treated in that fashion, though your movie shows that even the royal family are humans first and foremost…like when the Queen decides to go for a drive by herself.
Frears: They need to escape from all that nonsense.
CS: Is this like a known thing that she drives an all-terrain vehicle in the country?
Frears: Oh, yeah, yeah… that's easy-peasy. Somebody described her the other day, coming up in some battered old Land Rover. She's really just a wealthy country woman, sort of a wealthy rancher's wife really… but she's also the Queen. The amazing thing is that it hasn't driven her completely mad. [Oh, my… did Stephen Frears just make a pun?]
CS: Did Peter talk to people who knew her personally while writing the script?
Frears: Oh, he spoke to dozens of people. And it's interesting, now it's come out… the truth is that we were just guessing, an informed guess, an educated guess, but now… there was a woman here yesterday, whose parents' Prince Charles' closest friends, and she just said, "Yes, you got it right." And the Queen's best friend went to see it, and said that it was spot-on.
CS: Are you going to use those as quotes in the ads?
Frears: "They got it right."
CS: Are you at all worried that you may never get knighted if she sees the movie and doesn't like it?
Frears: No, I don't lose any sleep over it. I'm like Peter O'Toole. Peter says he only accepts awards from republics. (chuckles)
CS: It's been a while since you did "High Fidelity," so do you have any desire to return to American Hollywood-type movies?
Frears: Yeah, I'd love to. I just haven't read anything I liked. It all takes me by surprise. I didn't know I would make a film about the Queen. I didn't want to make a film about the Queen. I'd make an American film like a shot. I had a wonderful time in America. I have no complaints at all. All of that's sort of unconscious.
CS: Any idea what you're doing next?
Frears: Nope. [Peter Morgan would later mention that they might do a movie about European football together.]
CS: Did you know you were doing "The Queen" next when we talked to you about "Mrs. Henderson"?
Frears: I must have mentioned "The Queen," but nobody sort of picked up on it. I kept saying that the next film was about the Queen, but it seems to have caught everyone unprepared in some way, maybe because they did not know what the film was going to be like. In fact, by the time you would have interviewed me, I would have shot it.
CS: How do you feel about how "Mrs. Henderson" was or wasn't received here and did you think that the Weinstein Company was just too new when they released it?
Frears: Enormously disappointed. I think it's a wonderful film, but no, you can't blame other people. You make a film and sometimes they catch and sometimes they don't, and you'd go mad if you're trying to work out, "Oh, it didn't make it for these reasons." Audiences don't have to do what you tell them to do. The miracle is, certainly in Britain, that people have gone so bananas about this film. It's quite extraordinary and it mystifies me. I think the film is very good, but you just suddenly walk around the corner and you've done something that's captured people's imaginations.
CS: Maybe if "The Queen" catches on here, they can re-release "Mrs. Henderson Presents" and put "From the director of 'The Queen'" on it.
Frears: I wouldn't count on that.
The Queen opens in New York Saturday, September 30 after its opening night premiere at the New York Film Festival the night before. It will expand to more cities on October 6, while Mrs. Henderson Presents is still available on DVD, as are most of Mr. Frears' previous films.
