Voices on the Art Form

Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 STEPHEN FREARS

Stephen Frears is a British director whose work explores the intricacies of human behavior with a persuasive style. He makes an unfamiliar environment familiar, an unknown world knowable, whether it be the private life of playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears, or the French aristocracy in Dangerous Liaisons. He leads us tactfully through the nebulous world of con artistry in The Grifters, and brings to light the metaphysical struggle between good intentions and darkest wrongdoings of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Mary Reilly. Frears' films ask the pervasive question, "What makes a person tick?"

In the fall of 1997 Frears directed The Hi Lo Country, a film version of the novel by New Mexico author Max Evans. During the following conversation, the day before production started for The Hi Lo Country, he talks about how he finds his answers and brings them to the screen.


You have a law degree. How did you move from there into theater?

The world was a more sort of respectable place in those days. I came from a middle-class family, with professional people, and the idea of a life, a career to do with the arts, hadn't really crossed anybody's mind. It hadn't crossed my mind! So I read law because that was what people like me did. My father was a doctor, so I was going to be a professional. But in a way, my heart had run away and joined the theater without my really even knowing it.

What happened during your theater days, and how did that lead to directing television?

It is all sort of tied up with wanting to escape. I remember from when I was growing up the actors in the town were very colorful, and seemed to have a sort of vividness and a sense of life to them that other people didn't - both the actors and the working classes, so all I wanted ever to do was to escape. So I escaped, slowly. I didn't say, well, I'm going! and pack a bag. I wriggled slowly out of it, without probably even admitting to myself that that was what I was doing.

You went to the Royal Court Theatre.

The Royal Court in the '50s was, I guess, the most exciting theater in the world. It was at the center of all the changes that were happening in Britain. . . . There were a lot of people around - writers, theater directors and film directors. I went from working in the theater to working with film directors who were associated with the Royal Court. Directors who were intelligent men, interested in making intelligent films. I became a sort of apprentice to many of them.

What were some of the earlier films you directed?

First of all, I made a film in l970 with Albert Finney, which was sort of an homage to American thrillers. Then I went into television and did a lot of work about English social life. Always very, very well-written work. And I got into a particular tradition, a particular way of working that is very British. . . . Traditional in the sense - you know, English literature is always largely consistent in the description of what Britain is like. You know, Dickens described what Britain was like, just as Mike Leigh does now. That's a very, very strong tradition in England, and I was part of that tradition. Whereas in America, one would be part of the entertainment industry. I have no sense of myself as being part of the entertainment industry, but part of a group of people with a sort of serious purpose.

You do seem drawn to very complex moral character issues that are hard to dramatize at times. It's like you get to the heart of what makes a person who they are.

Well, I guess so. I mean it's easier for you to see it than for me. That's just because I am who I am. You do what interests you, really. So it's not a sort of deliberate thing, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm interested in those things, drawn to those things - moral issues. Not moral issues in the sense of, "Oh, let's make a film about slavery," or "Let's make a film about wife beating" or anything. Just people as moral people picking their way through the day, and how you pick your way through a complicated world. So it's not that I'm trying to preach or anything like that. It's just that that's what catches my eye.

In so many of your films you take the audience on a journey and show them, bit by bit, what a given character does. Even down to intimate moments, looking in a mirror for instance . . .

Well, in a sense that's what you're doing, aren't you? The only thing I know about is what I know about human nature. Of course, your films are a sort of description of what it's like to be alive. You know, what it's like to be a man, now, really. What it's like to be a man coming to America, to have read these books, and seen these films. To live this sort of life. Not in any deliberate way on my part, it's just that's the only thing you really sort of know about.