Tom Hooper’s film The King’s Speech is out in UK cinemas on the 7th of January and is the perfect way to start your cinematic year.
Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush take the lead in the story of King George VI’s reluctant ascension to the throne and the crucial relationship he strikes up with speech therapist Lionel Logue to tame the stammer which threatens to undermine his presence as King as he is thrust before his subjects under intense public scrutiny at a point in history when the people need a monarch to lead.
I had the chance to sit down with Hooper who was very keen to play up the collaborative nature of the film’s development, including his work with Firth and Rush on the all important central relationship and how this creative partnership extended beyond the filming. Hooper’s humility and considered opinion of his success was a pleasure to see and I’m hopeful for much more from Hooper in the future.
The interview took place a few days after The King’s Speech won five awards at the British Independent Film Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Colin Firth, with Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter taking home the Supporting Actor and Actresses awards, and Hooper was in a genial and generous mood, eager to discuss his film and his next steps.
HeyUGuys
The film did very well at the BIFAs, have you been pleased with the reaction to The King’s Speech as a whole?
Tom Hooper
Absolutely, but I was almost worried because the film probably looks bigger than it was, and has taken on this momentum, so people might not acknowledge it as a British, small budget, independent film. But that’s what it is. Without the Film Council it would not have got made, without Momentum, the distributors, it wouldn’t have got made. And the studios all had it, but there were never going to make it in today’s climate.
HeyUGuys
Why do you think that is?
Tom Hooper
Well, it may change, and these things are cyclical, but at the moment the studios are focused on films that make £400 million or so, or franchises that can make over a billion and they’re not so interested in this kind of filmmaking. I think it might change but certainly when I was setting The King’s Speech up that was the world we were in. So, I was sitting at the BIFAs thinking that this is only possible thanks to independent filmmaking, and it really is a classic British independent movie.
HeyUGuys
It didn’t look like it was a small movie.
Tom Hooper
Yeah, sure and I was hoping it wouldn’t become a victim of that.
HeyUGuys
With the success of the film and the involvement of the Film Council, and given the turbulent times the industry is in where do you see yourself?
Tom Hooper
Well, I’ve always been in filmmaking, I started when I was 13 on a clockwork Bolex 16mm camera and it wasn’t to do with school, nor something to do with my parents, it was something I just did by myself so I suppose the idea that cinema is independent has always been behind the way I’ve done it. As for where I see myself now, I was very inspired by what Danny Boyle did, he had the success of Slumdog and he didn’t go and take a huge payday, he went and did a passion project on a similar kind of budget to Slumdog and people have given him credit for the fact that he followed his heart. That’s what I want to do; I want to follow my heart. I’m sure at some point there will be one of those huge movies I’ll be attracted to, the right one will come along. There’s a part of me that’s always been attracted to the Bond films because as a kid growing up they were always so associated with cinema. So, one day, in the right circumstances I can see that happening, but it would have to be right, I don’t feel as if I have to do a big film next. I think I’ll do another film like The King’s Speech. And also, people always say “Oh, I suppose you’ll be doing an American film next?” and surely the joy of The King’s Speech is it proves you can make an English low-budget film that is successful in America.
HeyUGuys
That’s good to hear, and after seeing Transformers on the TV last week I suddenly thought of you as the Anti-Michael Bay, particularly as The King’s Speech there’s an excellent use of silence and the feeling I got that you allowed yourself to step back and let the characters play the story out.
Tom Hooper
Yeah, and also what’s good to remember is that this film has an unusually small amount of score and if you look at the classic Hollywood movie, the tendency is that everything is mediated through music, and you have films where 80-90% is scored in some way and it’s almost as if they’ve lost confidence that performance and naturalism holds and it’s so great collaborating with Alexandre Desplat because as a composer he’s not an egotist, and it’s not about putting himself into every frame. He’s as likely as I am to consider a scene is better without music, or think that silence is important here. He’s a real team player. I felt it was only in the silence that you could hear this tiny detail of the clicks and stammers, and the little tiny noises that Colin’s throat was making, and even if you put any kind of background traffic on you could lose it. It was in doing the sound that I realised that it needed to be an incredibly intimate soundtrack where you gave particular emphasis to the sync soundtrack we recorded at the time that had all these extraordinary noises Colin made
HeyUGuys
Looking back at your work, in particular Longford with the title character and Myra Hindely and in The Damned United with Peter Taylor and Brain Clough, you have these dynamics in the central performances where one is very public facing and one is a bit more of an adviser…
Tom Hooper
…yes, and even John Adams with Abigail, the wife and John as the public face…
HeyUGuys
Sure, I wondered if that’s what attracted to you the project, with the man who would not be King but who had a huge public duty and yet in the more intimate moments where he breaks down, or reads the bedtime story, you were able to focus on the man himself.
Tom Hooper
Yeah, it’s funny how you only get to see themes in your work when you’ve done enough of it, and I clearly have an interest in being subversive, and this, to me, was an extremely subversive way to get through the story of the abdication, and Geoffrey Rush likes to say we were effectively telling the story of two nobodies. We had the younger brother who was never going to be King, and this Australian speech therapist who had no expectation that they were going to be in the limelight, so there was a kind of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead quality to the story – that the star of the film is Guy Pearce, who is the centre of attention and is charismatic and then suddenly these two characters get thrust into the lead. And also to tell the story of Myra Hindley through the prism of Lord Longford is subversive and to tell the story of John Adams, the non-famous President, the non-iconic revolutionary founding father, that’s quite subversive too. He’s not the natural hero of a nine-hour, $100 million series. I also share this with Peter Morgan, I have this interest in iconic personalities and what they reflect back to us about our national culture, so with John Adams it was whether you can explain the schism in modern political America through the personalities of the founding fathers, can you trace back the way America is divided against itself through the personalities of the originators. In The Damned United it’s looking at Britain through the prism of sport and Cloughie and that culture and the moment when sport exploded and in The King’s Speech it allows one to meditate on the reason why the monarchy has survived, why it’s even in a healthy position. No one is tearing down the ramparts and I think that’s because the charge against the monarchy, which is that it enshrines class privilege in a way that’s unacceptable is complicated by this story that this guy wasn’t privileged. In his childhood he was abused by his Nanny, neglected by his parents, becoming King was his idea of a nightmare and suddenly the notion of privilege falls apart with King George VI, which is interesting. On a human level, lots of stories about self development, particularly in the modern age, it’s all about me me me, it’s about turning in, and I do think I tell these stories where it’s about turning outwards, where you only become great when you turn yourself out to collaboration. In the case of Bertie it’s because he listens to his wife, and because he is willing to bring this speech therapist into his life, that he becomes great. With Brian Clough it’s about discovering that only with Peter Taylor can he be great. Maybe there’s an analogy as being a director – you’re not great alone as a director because you’re standing on the shoulders of many brilliant people. Your director is a number of people, your actors, your writers, it’s (cinematographer) Danny Cohen, it’s (production designer) Eve Stewart, it’s my regular collaborators like Nina Gold who’s cast everything I’ve done for years. So, you’re really reliant on collaboration and I wonder at some level if it’s an expression about how I feel about directing?
HeyUGuys
At the heart of the story is the collaboration between Lionel Logue and George VI, how did you work with the actors on those scenes?
Tom Hooper
We did a three week rehearsal which is really rare on a movie, usually you get a week if you’re lucky, I think on A Single Man Colin flew on a Friday and started shooting on a Monday. Geoffrey said it was the only film he’d done where the rehearsal period was as thorough as a play and what that meant is we took that script and there was not a line that we didn’t analyse and discuss, improve if we could and David (Seidler – screenwriter) was in the room, so it was a team thing. And I discovered that Colin and Geoffrey were both brilliant on text, they are fiercely bright on structure and story and they became true partners with me on how to tell the story. At the end I could ask them about not just their character but about any character, and for the first time I sent them my cuts of the film and their gave me brilliant notes, so the collaboration carried on into post production which it never had before. And we became great friends through the film, and that is evident in the film, Geoffrey had this way of describing it as a ‘triangle of man-love’, but that aside part of the film’s DNA is my fondness for those two guys and you can’t fake that, and that’s where a lot of the heart of the movie is.
HeyUGuys
It’s true there is a love for the characters, and the story in the film.
Tom Hooper
It’s true, and I think as a director I have a kind eye, and I have a love for the people in the films, and my forte tends to be stories where I can be compassionate about people rather than hating them, or keeping them at a distance. Like a movie about a serial killer where you hate him or keep pushing him away, and I feel I want to shoot people in a compassionate way, engage with them in a compassionate way.
HeyUGuys
Something that occurred to me when you reunited Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle on screen, and having great fondness for the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice I enjoyed that moment, and I think the line when they are introduced was ‘You two know each other?’…
Tom Hooper
Yeah, or something like ‘You know the King?’, well I do have a mischievous side, I mean it’s bit mischievous of me to cast Derek Jacobi who is television’s most famous stammerer from I, Claudius in this film about George VI, and there was definitely something mischievous about reuniting Colin and Jennifer which people who care about both of them would enjoy.
HeyUGuys
So, what’s next? Is Long Walk to Freedom still in your future?
Tom Hooper
Yeah, that’s still bubbling. That won’t happen next because the cast we’re thinking of means it might be 2012, next I’m not sure, but you know me, I like to shoot once a year, so I’ll probably be doing something in the spring.
HeyUGuys wishes to thank Tom Hooper for his time and we heartily recommend you see The King’s Speech as soon as you can.
