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ALL THE
WORLD’S
A STAGE
AN INTERVIEW WITH ROGER LANSER
IIt has been 10 years since Roger “He was,” Lanser recalled, “one of
Lanser last worked with Kenneth Branagh behind the camera – and it took Shakespeare to bring them together again. Apart from the ensemble comedy-drama, Peter’s Friends, and a short film, the
Oscar-nominated Swan Song, which fol- lowed straight after, their collaborations as cinematographer and director have principally revolved around the Bard.
In 1993 was the glorious all-star Tuscan romp, Much Ado About Nothing, followed two years later by In The Bleak Midwinter, a droll, crisply mono- chrome tale of backstage rivalries dur- ing a cash-starved church staging of Hamlet at Christmas.
Now Lanser and Branagh are re-united after a decade for the direc- tor’s long-awaited film production of As You Like It, intriguingly re-located to 19th Century Kyoto in Japan from the more traditional Forest of Arden in ye olde Warwickshire.
Lanser, a native Sydneysider, actually first met Branagh when the 21-year-old actor was just that, an actor, on assignment Down Under for the TV miniseries, Boy In The Bush, based on a novel by DH Lawrence.
those nervous young actors suddenly stuck with a bunch of blokes going, ‘G’day, mate... let’s see what you can ride a horse like.’ He was totally out of his normal environment. The original director was from England and had been asked to leave the production after about two weeks because he was- n’t working fast enough.
“I was the crew representative at the actors’ meeting to tell them what the new director was like and we became friends after that. These were the days before video monitors so the only person who saw the shot was the person operating the camera so he’d often consult me.
“In those days, he was still very much the theatre luvvie and in fact he was actually rehearsing something for the stage - a 1,500 line poem, I think - while shooting in Australia.
“At the end of production, he went back to the UK and we started doing that lovely thing which people used to do – that is, write letters to each other. As the years passed he became a massive star with the Royal Shakespeare Company and then moved into films with Henry V.
Photo: Kenneth Branagh (left) and Roger Lanser (right) on the set of As You Like It
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