Page 20 - Fujifilm Exposure_24 Stephen Fry_ok

IN LOVE
AND WAUGH
Stephen Fry
goes behind the camera for the first time to direct Bright Young Things
G ood comedy – even ‘tragi- comedy’, as Stephen Fry
describes Bright Young Things, his feature direct- ing debut – is, as they often say, all about timing. There surely can’t have
been a better time than the centenary of Evelyn Waugh’s birth for Fry’s own adaptation of the author’s remarkably prescient second novel, Vile Bodies. Waugh, 27 at the time and just deserted by his first wife, was writing in 1930 about that between-the-wars generation who had, in Fry’s words, “a startling propensity to crash-and-burn in their endless search for newer and faster sensations.”
Or the ‘hysterical fooleries of the Bright Young Things’, as Waugh’s biog- rapher Christopher Sykes neatly summed it up in his masterly 1975 mem-
oir... which perhaps also offers a clue to the more user-friendly film title change.
With, he admits, some consider- able liberties taken to the original in terms of omission and amendment, Fry has clearly been revelling in his new day job squeezed in between act- ing, writing, quiz-showing or hosting award ceremonies.
Given his reputation as a tireless polymath, it’s not really surprising that Fry has managed to attract an astounding Anglo-American cast including Dan Aykroyd, Stockard Channing, Sir John Mills, Peter O’Toole, Jim Broadbent, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Simon Callow, Hugh Laurie, Harriet Walter and Richard E Grant.
And then there are the BYTs – boasting evocatively Waugh-like names such as Adam Fenwick-Symes and Miles
Malpractice – played by a mixture of the familiar (Michael Sheen, Emily Mortimer) and unknown (Stephen Campbell-Moore, Fenella Woolgar, James McAvoy and Guy Henry).
Fry always had it in the back of his mind to direct one day but only on something which “perhaps arrogantly I felt I could bring something to that others couldn’t.”
BYT had actually started out for Fry some five years ago purely as a writing job. Later, in LA and about to lunch with “the hottest director in town”, Fry rang his producers in London and asked them if he should tout his script over the mineral water. They replied, “Oh no, we have another director in mind.” “Who’s that,” Fry asked. “You!” they told him. He thought it over for about ten minutes before calling back to say, “Let’s try it.”
After considerable va-et-vient, including the collapse of backer FilmFour, Fry finally found himself in the maelstrom of pre-production. In the interim he’d completed some three more films as an actor, about the same number of new books and the odd revised draft of BYT.
The financially re-constructed £7.5m production, involving The Film
Photo main: Stephen Fry directing the Bright Young Things stars Emily Mortimer and Stephen Campbell-Moore
18 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video