Page 36 - Fujifilm Exposure_35 Miss Potter_ok

W ith a starry cast including Julie
Walters, Laura Linney and Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint, you might have thought that writer-director
Jeremy Brock’s feature debut would be plain sailing.
But despite having them and a powerful producer in Julia Chasman by his side, Brock cited David Katznelson as his “most important ally” on Driving Lessons.
Danish-born Katzelson DFF (The Queen’s Sister, Mr Harvey Lights A Candle) worked tirelessly with Brock before shooting started, poring over the storyboards and travelling with him to potential locations, generally easing the new director towards the high anxi- ety of the actual filming period.
Of Katznelson, Brock notes: “He had a wonderfully gentle but deter- mined approach. He was incredibly generous with his time. If my main rela- tionship on the film was with the pro- ducer, my most important ally in terms of actually making the film was David.
“He was key to me feeling as con- fident as I did on the set and had that relationship not been as symbiotic as it was, I’d have had real difficulties.
“I like to be clear with people about what I want, referencing other films and my likes and dislikes, but then I like to trust people to deliver. As a director, you can’t take it all on. In retrospect, now I’ve got this far in the process, I find the mythologising about the director’s role by many directors very amusing.
“There are an enormous number of people on a film who are there to interpret and enhance the director’s ideas. Let nobody forget it is a huge collaboration. Design looks like it does because of the designer. Shots look like they look because of the director of photography. The director has an
overall view, but without their care it would never work.”
As the BAFTA and Oscar-nominat- ed screenwriter of the award-winning 1997 hit Mrs Brown as well as co-cre- ator of BBC TV’s long-running medical drama, Casualty, Jeremy Brock has certainly paid his dues.
But all that experience, including scripts for Charlotte Gray, The Widowmaker and The Life And Death Of Philip Knight, didn’t , it seems, exactly speed up the process of becoming a first-time feature director.
You could say that Brock, the son of a vicar, had nursed the idea of Driving Lessons ever since, as a teenager, he worked for the actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft. In fact, he final- ly put pen to paper on the project only about five years ago determined it should be his directorial debut.
Driving Lessons, a multi-award win- ner at the Moscow Film Festival earlier this year, is the tragic-comic story of a shy, poetry-loving North London lad Ben (Rupert Grint) who escapes the claustrophobic world of an overbear- ing mother (Laura Linney) and long- suffering vicar father (Nicholas Farrell) to work for... yes, an eccentric actress, Dame Evie (Julie Walters).
Sounds autobiographical? “Closer than I would like to admit,” smiles Brock, admitting that his family life was difficult before adding firmly, “the narrative I’ve created in the film is, however, separate from the truth.”
Brock embarked on a BBC Director’s Course in the early nineties, “then I had a family and, with Mrs Brown, my writing career took off a bit.” Once he finally decided to get his teeth into the project that would even- tually become Driving Lessons, he “deliberately kept it uncommissioned” in order to keep control over it.
With an experienced producer, Julia Chasman, on board, he then sought a suitable cast. Walters was
keen from the outset and her involve- ment quickly triggered the finance which then became even more secure when Brock reined in acclaimed American actress Laura Linney for the small but telling role of Ben’s decided- ly monstrous English mother.
As for Ben, the character was a timely change of pace for flame-haired teenager Grint, better known as Ron Weasley in the ongoing Harry Potter film phenomenon.
Once filming finally got under- way, Brock, tackled a schedule of six- day weeks that criss-crossed London and ended with three days shooting in Scotland.
Apart from a day lost due to the July bombings last summer, filming went smoothly, Brock outs down to preparation and having grown up in a good school. “I’m obviously not aware of myself in that sense although I take pains to give people clear instructions because I believe that’s part of my brief.”
Having now finally tasted the ulti- mate control of directing, Brock admits he “desperately” wants to do it all over again. He has, however, also written screenplays for Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King Of Scotland and a new version of Brideshead Revisited, as well as started collabo- rating with Macdonald yet again – and producer Duncan Kenworthy – on an adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff’s chil- dren’s classic, The Eagle Of The Ninth.
He explains: “If there’s one thing that 20 years as a writer affords you, it is the ability to articulate what you want. I think that an essential element in being a boss: you have to accept that responsibility.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Driving Lessons was partially originated on 35mm Reala 500D 8592
in production
THE RITES OF
Me and my DP. Writer-director Jeremy Brock singles out his cinematographer on Driving Lessons
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