If you had to use one word to describe the work Stephen
Frears, it would be eclectic. A director whose films resist easy
classification, Frears has worked in both his native England and
in Hollywood, and both within and outside of established genres.
A brief cross-section of films he’s worked on – My
Beautiful Launderette, Dangerous Liasons, Mary Reilly, BBC’s
The Deal – is indicative of the vast breadth of genres that
Frears has approached. In fact, the director is perhaps a living
testament to the complexities of the auteur/genre debate. Perhaps
because he himself pays genuine respect to the collaborative
nature of film as an art form – above all acknowledging the
primacy of writers who create source novels and screenplays
Frears appears to ‘tiptoe’ into his own work through
the ‘back door,’ unlike, say, Ken Loach or Stephen
Spielberg, who unambiguously ‘occupy’ their films,
whether as socially-conscious auteurs or bigname entertainers.
But while it is difficult to say just what constitutes ‘a
Stephen Frears film,’ it is possible to find Frears’
signature in the sensibility surrounding character and in the
films’ attitudes and interests. First and foremost, Frears
devotes careful attention to the way people live, how they think,
and how they react within their social environments, often on the
precipice of irreversible change. Whether a low budget indie
picture such as last year’s Dirty Pretty Things, or more
commercially successfully US star vehicles like High Fidelity,
Frears’ films are almost always received with critical
acclaim. But does he like to watch his own films as much as the rest of
the world seems to? “Every now and then when they’re on
the television, but that’s it. I did actually watch High
Fidelity when it was on TV at Christmas, though. I thought it was
rather funny.” The film he is most proud of, however, is
Dangerous Liasons. With endearing modesty he enthuses, “I
still can’t believe I was allowed near it. I had intended to
make it into a very lavish, Max Ophuls-style melodrama but once I
started working with the American actors we realised it
wasn’t going to work like that at all. The end product
turned out to be something completely other than what I
hadimagined.” What strikes me about Frears over the course of the interview
is his peculiar habit of speaking about his films as if
they’re not actually his, but merely something he played a
part in producing. Unlike the ego-obsessed Hollywood directors,
Frears insists that writers should get the most credit for a
film. “I do come second. I don’t invent the films. What
the writer has done, I admire. Maybe it has become less like that
in recent years. Maybe it’s a completely dishonest position.
For all I know, it may just be entirely an act of
self-concealment on my part. I made a little joke about being
imperialist and colonising writer’s ideas. I remember one
writer I worked with in television saying, ‘Well, you
somehow absorb it, and you regurgitate it in some way,’ and
it’s gone through my intestines in some complicated way that
I don’t fully understand.” He cites his “BBC upbringing” as the reason for his
deference for screenwriters. “I was brought up, as it were,
at the BBC, where it was the director’s place to support the
writing. We had a built-in respect for the writer’s skill,
and today I still wouldn’t cross the road without a good
script. I question, which is part of my function in all parts of
the filmmaking process: Why are you doing that? Why are you
playing it that way? You conduct an intelligent conversation with
everybody. That’s different from saying, this is what you
should do or this is what you should write. So it’s hard to
claim credit.” Is there almost a sense of insecurity in his wish to shift the
focus of attention onto the screenwriters? He pauses, before
musing, “Maybe I’m just hiding. I wouldn’t want to
pretend I can’t see that. But that may be necessary, or that
may be what I have to do. The truth is, it’s the actors who
expose and reveal themselves.” So what role does he see himself as having in a film, if the
writers and the actors should be, according to him, at the
forefront of our attention? “I think I can bring things to
life, which seems to me, far and away, the most profound thing
you can do. In giving life, you dramatise the story. Generally, I
go in and when I shoot, it’s as though there’s a sort
of path through the woods, and it’s the most interesting way
through. Often people don’t see that, and I show them the
path. Then I can say to the editor, you can go and cut it now
because I’ve shown you the secret passage.” “But the business of bringing the script to life involves
the unexpected”, he continues. “In fact, Jimmy McGovern
talked about that in an interview. On one particular section of
Liam, he thought I’d be able to give him a really good idea,
and all I said was, “It’s not good enough. Write
something better.” I didn’t know what he should write,
and he did go away and write something much more interesting. So
you’re really there in a rather destructive way, while at
the same time encouraging the writer to be adventurous, to have
the confidence to go somewhere. It’s trying to make sense of
what they’re offering.” Hasn’t he ever been
tempted to write himself? “No, never”, he insists.
“Writers are extraordinary. I never suffered from the
delusion that I was capable of writing – I think that’s
one of the reasons I’ve survived so long in the
industry.” Having been in the industry so long he has no doubt ploughed
through thousands of scripts: I ask him if he’s ever let a
great script slip through his fingers. “ Thelma and
Louise”, he says without any hesitation. “Someone said
to me, ‘Oh, it’s nothing special.’ They were
wrong. I don’t think I’d have done it as well as Ridley
Scott did, but it would have been great fun.” There is, however, no typical Frears script. Dirty Pretty
Thingsand High Fidelity, for example, are worlds apart.
“Yes,” he concedes, “but at the same time, I
don’t see High Fidelity in quite the same light as others
do. I always knew that I was alone in seeing it as the story of
one man growing up, rather than about music and a certain kind of
lifestyle. It is a feminist film: a cry for men to grow up. The
people who have most stopped me behaving like a child in my life
have been women. High Fidelity is about a man dealing with that.
So I think of it as political [as Dirty Pretty Things], to some
extent.” And finally, I ask him if he has any advice for any
budding film-makers hoping to follow in his foot-steps. “Get
a proper job!”ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004
Dirty Pretty Films
