The sum of all Frears
Director Stephen Frears talks through his spectacularly diverse CV
LIKE HOWARD HAWKS, if Howard Hawks had been born in Leicester, Stephen Frears has made great films in practically every genre: period movies (Dangerous Liaisons), crime (The Grifters), contemporary drama (My Beautiful Laundrette), comedy (High Fidelity) and the admittedly niche Michael Sheen Plays Tony Blair genre (The Deal, The Queen). His latest, Victoria & Abdul, charts the relationship between Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and an Indian clerk (Ali Fazal), is a historical drama, but with the most topical overtones of institutionalised racism and cultural intolerance. We spoke to the gloriously grumpy director about seven of his best. And Mary Reilly.
GUMSHOE
(1971) Frears’ debut feature cast Albert Finney as a bingo caller who dreams of being a private eye. “I remember being so out of my depth. I was terrified, but I did always think that the script was brilliant. Andrew Lloyd Webber composed the music. We were like children. We used to clutch each other and roll about in delight. It was detective stories and rock ’n’ roll. What more do you want? He says I am the only person in the world who has ever employed him because normally he is the employer.”
MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
(1985) Frears’ calling card about a young Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke) and a racist (Daniel Day-lewis) revitalising a run-down laundrette started life as a Channel 4 TV movie.
“It was written in my contract that it could only be shown on television. Nobody in their right mind would have put money into it as a cinema film. It was always a brilliant piece of writing, but the premise was so absurd. Then it got into the cinema because it turned out to be a really good film. We simply couldn’t raise the money for a cinema film. I told [screenwriter] Hanif [Kureishi] to make it dirtier. He didn’t seem to need much persuading.”
DANGEROUS LIAISONS
(1988) A film adaptation of an RSC production about duplicity in 18th-century France starred Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer.
“I didn’t know at the time, but afterwards I realised I was more interested in the feelings than the social comedy. I wanted it done on the scale and style that Americans bring to things. I shot a lot of it in close-up. In the film, everyone is lying, but it is only in the close-ups you could tell the dishonesty going on. [Costume designer] James Acheson was cross until Bernardo Bertolucci said, ‘Because it is shot so close,
you see how good the costume work is.’ He changed his tune when he won the Oscar.”
MARY REILLY (1996)
A huge flop, the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (John Malkovich) was told from the point of view of Jekyll’s maid (Julia Roberts). “It was horrible, horrible, horrible. In the end, the [Robert Louis] Stevenson story was about transformation. I didn’t know how you did that stuff. It was my own fault — I am not blaming anybody — but it wasn’t much fun. It was far too expensive. Christopher (Hampton) originally wrote it for Tim Burton, and then I turned up. If I had made it for the BBC, I think it would have been rather good. It was a beautiful piece of writing.”
FAIL SAFE (2000)
A live US TV adaptation of Sidney Lumet’s Cold War drama starring George Clooney, Richard Dreyfuss and Harvey Keitel. “I had seen the Sidney Lumet film in the ’60s when it was in the cinema. George Clooney asked me to do it. I had never done live television before, so I was curious to see if I could do it. The people from Warner Bros. were absolutely used to making mistakes. I thought if they don’t care, I’ll stop worrying. I think we had 12 days to prepare ourselves in the studio and had done it the previous three nights before. And it was a good story; there was a blueprint that Sidney Lumet had laid out. It was really good fun.”
HIGH FIDELITY (2000)
An adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel about a morose music obsessive, with a stellar turn by Jack Black as a vinyl nazi. “Jack Black was dazzling. I met with him — I didn’t know who he was — and thought he would be fine. Three months later, I heard he didn’t want to do it. I called him and he said, ‘You didn’t make me audition. The audition gives me confidence.’ So he went from having the part to being up for the part just like that. I asked him later about it and he said, ‘Well, I could earn a perfectly decent living putting my head down, and you asked me to put my head up.’ All that went on without my quite realising.”
THE QUEEN (2006)
Helen Mirren won an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II during the week following Princess Diana’s death “Nobody gave a monkey’s about us making it — until it was a big success. I shot scenes with the Queen in 35mm and scenes with Tony Blair in 16mm — anything to put Blair down. I think Blair is wonderful now but, at the time, you did anything to humiliate him or paint him in a bad light. He is a commoner and she is semi-divine. Or completely divine, for all I know.”
VICTORIA & ABDUL (2017)
Which saw the director reunite with Judi Dench for the third time after Mrs. Henderson Presents and Philomena. “It obviously had to be Judi. I think you would have had trouble getting another actress — they know that Judi has already played her (in Mrs. Brown). I didn’t know if she wanted to do it again, but that she had played her before didn’t interest me at all. I just had my own film to make. I organised a reading and some courageous actress played the part in front of her. She just heard it and thought it was lovely. On set, if I gave her some direction, she would say, ‘You just mean act better.’ She was always the first to say it.”