BOP Interview: Lone Scherfig
By Ryan Mazie
August 17, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Based off of the immensely popular David Nicholls novel, One Day stars Catwoman-to-be Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess as two destined lovers who have drifted apart by life’s obstacles. For over 20 years we chart their relationship, witnessing their cosmically destined interactions every July 15th.
In a roundtable interview, Lone Scherfig talks about casting Anne Hathaway, reaching a wide audience, keeping a Britain-based film un-Americanized, and fitting 20 years of an entwined relationship in under a two hour running time.
One Day is largely a British production, so what sold you on Anne Hathaway for this part?
Lone Scherfig: She’s Anne Hathaway (laughs). She flew to London to talk to me about the character and I could see a very experienced, warm, devoted, versatile actress. I always admire good craftsmanship and she really has that. I can see it in her body of work – she has a wide range … so the part would come easy to her. The dialect thing was secondary, because I thought that she could get a dialect coach. The most important thing was to get the right actress.
It’s a matter of interpretation, because Emma Morely in the book is not nearly as beautiful or sensual as Anne. But I felt that finding someone that had a little more drama and gravitas would help when the film becomes as tragic as it does – it would be easier to accept the beginning than having someone who is more Katherine Hepburn, fast-talking – a more obvious choice.
David Nicholls mentioned that when writing the script that he didn’t want it to be Americanized.
LS: Well Nina Jacobson, one of the American producers on the film, was very keen on not moving it [to America]. That would have been another solution, to take the characters and story to New York or Boston, but she thought the specificity [was perfect].
Did you think about that when casting Anne Hathaway, that she would steer it into a more Americanized direction?
LS: I thought it was a positive thing to have an actress who would already help the film access an American audience. But the thing that will access the biggest possible audience and have me sleep the best having directed, was making the best film. So, the commercial decisions are secondary, but it definitely changes things having someone of her caliber attached to the film. Even this conversation and the whole set-up of the production – you are working in a different way. …
It’s also the seventh film I’ve done. I’ve done films where you do something people really like for a very small audience, because I am a Danish director where at maximum, if you are very lucky, you find 80% of the population, which is still only four million people. So it’s very satisfactory to shoot in a language where you can access a bigger audience and it’s great to have Anne as an American ambassador on the film.
How is it different from working with such a known and experienced actress like Anne compared to someone inexperienced and unknown at the time like Carey Mulligan on An Education?
LS: It’s very different. But all actors are different and I always try to adjust the way I direct to the particular actor, then make it all look like they are playing the same style. They just get there in different ways. Stylistically it has to work, because some of the actors don’t have any scenes together and they have to work on the same film…
Carey Mulligan was very inexperienced. With Anne it’s the other way around. It wasn’t a reaction where I was like, “Next time I have to have someone who knows what she’s doing” (laughs).
I read in interviews and talked to Carey Mulligan that she said that she didn’t feel the responsibility she had, because I took it away from her. With Anne there is so much pressure on every movie she does, because she gets so much attention. Strangely, you’d think it would be the other way around that a new actress would feel more pressure, but that changes the situation.
Also, Anne is American, so she thinks of herself as a Method actress. So she needs to find the emotions within her, which is really tough when she has to… overcome horrible things in the film. She needs and wants to be behind everything. She’s a perfectionist and wants to be in control and puts very high expectations on herself. Very often I would say, “This is fine, we don’t need to shoot ten more takes, we have a very good one now,” and she would continue, “Can we please go on,” and I have never experienced anything like that before. If you work that hard, if you dance until your feet are bleeding, that’s how you become Anne Hathaway.
What were the challenges of taking on such an extensive time period and condensing it into less than two hours?
LS: It’s a really positive challenge; because it is something you can really only do on film. Film has such a strong relation to time and the challenge of having all of this time pass in subtle ways; sometimes humorous and sometimes understated is really a truly cinematic challenge. You can jump all that you want in time and place in film now, but you have to convey this concept and give the film a pulse. Also, to do it in a way that didn’t get annoying. I think there were 23 times you have to see, “Oh it’s July 15th.” So we had to find a lot of different ways to do it whether it is sound, score, a camera move, and hopefully it’s unpredictable.
When I saw the film two days ago, I was sitting in the theater and when it said 2001, I thought, “Oh my God. They are all going to think that we have ten more years.” (laughs) And we kept experimenting with this until the very last minute so it felt elegant and light and unproblematic and effortless. If I see the film in a year, I would know, “Oh I should I have done this and that.” I can’t watch it yet. I can’t learn from it yet.
I’d imagine that after An Education, you received offers from the States. So I was wondering, do you want to make films in this country and if so, what’s appealing and what scares you about that prospect?
LS: It scares me less now that I’ve tried it. I always thought it was tricky to have an auteur background, coming from a completely different tradition: European and low-budget way of working. But it’s a strength, because it means that I have different solutions to offer. And it’s been very positive with [One Day’s studio, Focus Features], because there was no micromanagement. When they hire someone not so obvious to direct something like this, it is because they want and expect me to influence the film. They would be disappointed if I didn’t step up to it.
I’ve done commercials, which have been helpful, because you sit with a whole bunch of people behind you who are paying for the film to look like they had imagined. And you of course not only want to shoot that film, but something better than they had imagined. So I know how it is to have someone look over your shoulder while you’re working, and I don’t like it that much, but I do like having people who will throw a safety belt when you cannot swim any more or will throw more resources at the film if they see it is under budgeted or the schedule is too tight.
Speaking of influencing the story, being based off of a hugely popular novel, in what ways did you make the script your own when you saw it?
LS: I think the move from text to film is quite big, because of the time device. It is such a detailed project; it’s not a simple, clear film. It’s like a Jackson Pollock painting that is messy and disorganized, but then when you look at it for a while there is order, there is layers, there is a system to it. To get that right is hard. The book can take more detours, and doesn’t have to be as condensed as a film, and because of that it becomes personal. The scenes that look the most like something I’ve done before are the scenes in Edinburgh. I feel more related to those scenes that they looked almost Scandinavian with the blue light and the empty streets (laughs) and the Doc Marten boots. But I also took the opportunity to do something that had more color, was wilder, more eclectic, and try not to be too puritan of forcing a specific style onto something that didn’t have a specific style. I thought one way of doing it was to go with it, rather than be too restrictive. There is a lot of color coordination going on. There is very little or no yellow in the film for instance, so in that way it is a little toned down. But it is quite different than what I’ve done previously.
I also noticed that you focused more on the characters and less on the sweeping landscapes.
LS: Because even if there is comedy, there is an emotional balance that is much more important than to get all of these scenic little details right. The book has a lot more of that. The specificity of London through the ‘90s and the last decade is great and really entertaining to read. It is so detailed how David describes everything in Emma’s room, but the film is different. Also, you get all of that immediately on film. You don’t need two pages to describe it. You just put it all there. But if we went into detail, I think we would have lost some of the emotion. Which is why the [songs on the soundtrack] we’ve chosen aren’t well known. We didn’t want people humming along to U2 or whoever would be the most obvious – so the tracks are unknown, not something that a lot of people are emotionally attached to.