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Spotlight:May 2003
|
from the original 1974 Cinebill given to the audience The eminent playwright and scenarist
answers some
Q: Well, not a practicing physical homosexual? HP: No. Q: Mentally attracted to men? HP: Precisely, yes. I think quite a number of men are in this position and it makes life very difficult for them. However, I must emphasize that this is only one element of his situation, in his attitude towards himself and others. His nausea is an intellectual nausea. Q: Having done the play on the stage, was it difficult to re-imagine it as a movie or not?
Q: What kind of director are you? I mean, are you an improvisor or a meticulous planner? HP: I did plan the film shot by shot, all subject to modification naturally during the actual shooting, but I think the basis of the screenplay did prove to be a proper and workable basis. I must remind you this was the first time I had directed a film. I was grateful for all advice. I've always been very closely associated in the films which I've written for Joe Losey, but it's a very different matter, of course, when you're asked to take final responsibility for all particulars and on all levels. Q: But do you actually enjoy the process? HP: I enjoyed the activity very much indeed. Q: How possible is it to film a play successfully, a work conceived in one definite medium?
Q: While Peter Hall was directing "The Homecoming," you were evidentally around the set a good deal -- you've been directing "Butley" -- the author, Simon Gray, has been around on the set a good deal. What do you think is actually gained from this kind of writer-director relationship -- what is the benefit of the writer being there? HP: There was, as you know, a tradition which still obtained when I started writing, of writers being banned from rehearsals or the studio. It wasn't until I met Peter Hall that I realised how things could really work. He invited total cooperation and participation beetween all concerned, with the author as a principal factor. I have followed that course. After each take the first person I looked at was, on the whole, not the cameraman or the operator or the continuity girl or the sound mixer, but Simon Gray. The shot can be perfect, the sound perfect, but if what we're looking at and listening to is not fully and precisely expressed, you're nowhere. The author's judgement and instinct in relation to this central fact must be invaluable. After all, he wrote the damn thing. ||| Cinebill Vol 1, No 7, January 1974 © 1350 Publishing Co, Inc.
|
HP:
I wanted to do the play of "Butley"
in the first place because it seemed to me to have such verve,
such mastery of language, and the central character was, I thought,
such a remarkable man. I found the play ferocious, very witty,
very sad. It seemed to me that Butley was a man living in a kind
of no man's land -- between women and between men. I understood
from the play that his sexual experience was with women but that
he probably liked men better. In other words, I didn't see him
as a homosexual.
HP:
No, it wasn't I was concerned
with expressing the work in terms of film and I was dealing with
a work which in fact dictated itself in terms of how you look
at it. We simply considered how very sparely we could aid what
actually takes place in terms of seeing the framework in which
it takes place. It was valuable, I felt, to see the context in
which he existed and so we took the opportunity to see him, I
think economically, in relation to the corridors, entrance hall,
exterior of the college itself.
HP: The play
of "Butley" was written for the stage. The film "Butley"
was conceived for the screen. On the stage one of the challenges
that faces a diarector, a writer and the actors is how to focus
the attention of the audience, how to bend the focus, how to
insist that the focus of the audience goes in one specific direction
when there are so many other things to look at on the stage.
With a film the audience must attend only to the particular image
you're showing them. They have no chance to do anything else,
unless they're more interested in their ice cream or the person
next to them.