50 SHADES OF CONTROL FREAK
In her £1,500-a-night Hollywood villa, how E.L. James has become...
WITH its promise of forbidden sex and themes of submission and control, it already has millions of cinema-goers in a lather of anticipation. Yet there has been another steamy drama going on behind the cameras on the set of Fifty Shades Of Grey.
Because author E.L. James and director Sam Taylor-Johnson have been scrapping over how realistic the sex scenes should be – and it is James who has emerged very much the dominant partner.
But this should be no surprise.. Because the woman who is, by her own admission, a ‘rather ordinary’ ’ housewife from less-than-fashion-a-ble Brentford in West London has become a Hollywood sensation.
And she wields a staggering degree of control over the movie, insisting on an authentic rather than an artistic depiction of the graphic scenes made famous by her books. It is, say sources close to her, an ‘obsession’.
The film is to be released on Valentine’s Day, and stars Irish actor Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey, the tycoon with a taste for kinky sex, and Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele, his submissive virgin lover.
Insiders say James has ended up with one of the most all-encompassing deals in Hollywood history, with final approval over the script, actors and director – even having control over the costumes, set and merchandising tie-ins.
And she had approval over the sex scenes which, according to one film insider, ‘push the boundaries of a mainstream movie in a way they’ve never been pushed before’.
When James first created the characters of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele and their extreme fantasy world of bondage and sadomasochistic sex, it was, she admits, ‘purely a fulfilment of my own fantasies’.
But today it has made her a fortune. James is thought to have earned around £50million in the past year alone, a sum which could be increased by the extraordinary range of merchandising now on offer.
The books have sold a staggering 100 million copies worldwide and Hollywood made her a £3.5million offer for the rights to them, resulting in a £27million big screen version of Fifty Shades which is one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year.
Today, home in LA is the famed Chateau Marmont hotel, where she stays in the £1,500-a-night bungalow where Blues Brothers star John Belushi overdosed on a ‘speedball’ cocktail of heroin and cocaine.
One insider said: ‘It’s her home away from home. You see her most nights in the hotel garden, sipping her favourite chablis.
‘People come up to her all night, industry types and the odd celebrity, paying homage. She is loving it.
‘She is a real power player in Hollywood, although everything depends on the movie opening now, of course.
‘If it becomes a phenomenon, she’ll remain everyone’s darling. If it bombs, she’ll become a pariah.’
In the UK, E. L. James drives an Audi, in LA it’s a chauffeur-driven Maybach limo – not to mention the journeys by private jet around America. During her regular visits to Hollywood over the past two years, she has mingled with Christian Bale, Jake Gyllenhaal, Katy Perry and Robert Pattinson who, allegedly, was her first choice for the role of Christian Grey but turned it down because it was too similar to his part in Twilight.
James’s attention to detail – and that of her colleagues – has been extraordinary. Dornan, best known until now for his role in BBC drama The Fall, went to Vancouver sex clubs to make sure his interpretation tied in with James’s vision.
REPORTS of in-fighting between James and Taylor-Johnson over the sex scenes became so rife the pair posted a cheeky Instagram photograph together posing cheek to cheek with both raising their fists accompanied by the caption ‘the gloves are off’.
Now the rumours have been confirmed in an astonishing series of interviews by Taylor-Johnson, who admitted she and James, 51 (real name Erika Leonard) were at loggerheads for much of the shoot, with sex the biggest bone of contention.
Taylor-Johnson told Vanity Fair magazine: ‘We battled all the way through. She’d say the same. There were tough times and revelatory times. There were sparring contests. It was definitely not an easy process.’
James authorised a friend of hers to confirm the rift saying: ‘There’s an Erika who is fun, fancy-free and enjoying her success a lot, and the Erika who is obsessively controlling the property.
‘She truly believes she has to control it because of the fans, because she’s the only one they trust.’
James herself said: ‘I was always concerned how the sex would be handled in the film. I think we got there in the end.’ While Taylor-Johnson fought for a more ‘subtle’ interpretation of some of the book’s raunchiest sequences, James insisted on being on theth closed set for the lovemaking sceness – including inside Christian’s notorious ‘Red Room Of Pain’.
‘Sam was for the less is more approach but Erika wanted more,’ says a source. ‘Her vision ultimately won out because, after all, she created the books. There were numerous run-ins on set.
‘Erika stayed up late night after night at the bar in the hotel reworking scenes and putting sex back in. We were working for two masters, Sam and Erika, but Erika w won most of the time. This is her b baby – whips, chains and all.’
It is a long way from 2009 when J James, then a low-ranking TV execu utive, created the characters on a Twilight fan blog, writing under the pseudonym ‘Snowqueens Icedragon’ so that none of her friends would k know the ‘Mummy porn’ was writte ten by her.
The stories quickly took on a life of their own and were shared and reshared by mothers from London to Long Island until publisher Random House came calling, and the rest is history. For James – who is set to walk the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere with husband Niall, an Irish author who described himself as ‘the least romantic fecker that ever lived’ – the next few weeks w will be all-consuming. Taylor-Johnson, an artist whose la last film was the low-budget John Lennon biography Nowhere Boy, remained in her LA editing suite last week putting the finishing touches to the film.
And if the movie is a success, there will be two further releases – based on James’ follow-up books Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.
‘I was concerned how the sex would be handled’