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IN CINEMAS NOW
‘Great!’ for three reasons. It was a chance to direct strong, tradition- al drama again, an opportunity to learn about electronic imagery and it would get me out of a financial hole,” says Roddam.
“I also said to myself: look, there’s glamour attached to film which these mini-series don’t have. But, in reality, I could do some poky or mindless little film but it would only be snobbery to make me choose them over Moby Dick which is, after all, one of the best novels ever written. And I learned a phenomenal amount making it.”
It was also, like Cleopatra which followed later, the equiva- lent of two 90-minute feature films back-to-back. “ I did Moby Dick in Australia and Cleopatra in Morocco, and I had just the best time making both of them. With Cleopatra, it was like directing The Robe. Day One we had 1300 extras and 700 horses. There were incredible costumes, design and six Panavision cameras! We had a $32 million budget of which $27m was below the line so it was really a bit like having a $60m movie to make.”
It was in somewhere equally hot if perhaps rather less exotic that Roddam came up with the idea for last year’s acclaimed BBC series of plays based on Chaucer’s classic. He was in Arizona scouting locations for the third series of Aufpet with a top
Beeb executive who was “look- ing for a new series that would reflect Britain now.”
The Canterbury Tales had enthralled him at ‘A’ level with its “great tapestry of England in the 14th Century, not just the morality but how they ate and dressed too.” Within those archetypes why not, he ventured, confidently, “transpose them to nowadays?”
Even this time round he wasn’t tempted by the idea of directing one of the resulting screenplays. “I was happy being the execu- tive producer. I still want to pur- sue film. Okay, I may be writing a book or a script, starting a pub- lishing company or thinking about an invention but for me that’s just treading water while I’m waiting for the right film. It’s like going for a peak [and, yes, he does climb mountains too], you’ve really got to go for it.
“This might sound odd coming from someone who hasn’t direct- ed a film for 12 years, but every time you get a chance to direct a movie you also get the chance to make the best movie’s that ever been made.
“So out of awe and respect for this medium, I want to try and do something great, not just ordi- nary. It’s been my undoing in the past,” smiles Roddam. “But you never know, it may one day be my doing.”
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“ENGROSSING, ELEGANT, SENSUOUS AND SEDUCTIVE”
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