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Pride & Prejudice
Mr Darcy & Mr Bingley turn heads in Working Title's new Pride & Prejudice
A masterclass with Deborah Moggach & Joe Wright
Following a preview of Pride & Prejudice
London, 13 September 2005
Presented by The Script Factory & National Film & Television School, in association with United International Pictures, & The Screen on the Hill
In conversation with journalist David Benedict
Script Factory director, Briony Hanson
Ladies & Gents, welcome back. Before the screening I promised that our guests, Joe & Deborah, would be in conversation with the journalist David Benedict. Unfortunately David is stuck in a giant traffic jam but will be with us shortly – so he & I are going to tag-team this interview until he arrives! So, please welcome director Joe Wright & screenwriter Deborah Moggach [Applause].
Joe, let’s start at the beginning of your involvement with the project at which point Deborah had already completed a screenplay draft. What did you find most appealing about Austen’s, and subsequently Deborah’s, story?
Joe Wright
That it felt like an acute piece of character observation. I thought it’d be less emotionally honest, more airy fairy. In fact, what Austen was originally creating was a piece of British realism.
BH
Deborah, how do you go about approaching this project? How did you actually ‘screenwrite’ this? Did you, for example, re-read the book and make notes as you went? How do you go about translating something like this?
Deborah Moggach
I did it all from my little OUP Oxford Classics Pride and Prejudice, which I’d had for years and years. I read it when I was younger and adored it, but I hadn’t read it for years. I read it two or three times, but if you read it thinking about a screenplay, you’re thinking of all the narrative beats, and what you have to conflate and re-sort. But I realised what a perfect three act structure the book is. Some of Austen’s books have terrific problems in adaptation, but Pride and Prejudice has huge reversals very early on that send the characters off in a relentless direction and which change their lives. Then there are huge revelations and the story all turn arounds later on. So there are fantastic surprises as you go along in the book; just when you think things are going to be all right, Lydia runs away, then just when you think something else is going to happen, Catherine de Bourgh turns up and so she ups the ante. It’s a very filmic book, despite it containing no description and being a very unvisual book.
BH
How do you go about chopping down something of that size? How do you decide what you’re going to keep or discard?
DM
You have to be true to the integrity of the book and to Jane Austen, but then you also have to be quite ruthless. What you don’t see, you don’t miss, but in Pride and Prejudice what you don’t see probably everyone is conscious of because so many people know the book practically word for word. I know masses of people who re-read it every year! But from the beginning, this is Elizabeth’s story. And by focusing on Elizabeth Bennett and what’s happening to her, and her gruelling and difficult journey, certain things slough off as you go along. Jane’s trip to London, we don’t need to know. Although I did write those scenes with Jane in London, they weren’t needed and Lydia’s shenanigans with Wickham in London weren’t shot at all.
Elizabeth fails to fall for the charms of Mr Darcy JW
No, we couldn’t afford London. I wanted to go to London to get a sense of it.
DM
When I started cutting down, certain scenes conflated. For reasons of economy some scenes now do three things, whereas in the book, they only did one. But it doesn’t feel clotted to me when I watch the film. I don’t think one misses those things. For instance the scene that was shot when the militia was leaving wasn’t in the film.
JW
It wasn’t very well directed, and I usually take out anything that’s going to show me up. It was a toss up between that scene and the swing sequence, and I preferred the swing sequence. But that’s probably a mistake – maybe we’re a little bit light on Wickham.
DM
There was a big scene of the militia leaving, and people coming up with chits of payment and the women all moaning.
JW
Exactly. And with Lydia and Kitty crying and Wickham half blanking Lizzy. That all went.
David Benedict arrives – breathlessly!
DB
I’m interested in the sheer technical process of the adaptation. How many drafts did you get to?
DM
Maybe ten drafts. The thing about adapting something is that the first draft is very truthful to the book, and that’s the draft that turns into the drama because you then shed the book. It’s tempting to be retentive, and think that the bit in the book was so lovely I must somehow get it in. The book then disappears and that first draft is what then becomes the movie. The first draft is clotted and faithful to the book, and the second draft becomes the movie. For instance, I don’t know how to write a ball scene – do you feed in all the characters at the beginning? How do you direct by your writing, where the emotional focus is going to be throughout a ball scene. It’s difficult.
DB
What was the original commission? Presumably Working Title approached you? And at what point did Joe come on board?
DM
He came in about draft three.
DB
So initially, you were writing to a brief from Working Title?
DM
Yes. There was someone else attached who faded away, so Joe came in about then.
DB
What was your brief?
DM
They had no take on it at all. I was staggered. They said, just write it! I thought they’d say, let’s go post-modern or this or that. But they said nothing. It was blissful really. I was completely alone with it. Which is unusual because usually there are lots of people with their two penny’s worth, and they usually come on board later. At the beginning, they just said, let’s do it!
DB
Is that quite scary?
DM
Yes! I had this feeling of everybody’s love of the book and their deep knowledge of it and how much it means to them as they grow up and fall in love. As one gets older one realises more and more its truths about families and fathers, love and sex. So you mess with that at your peril.
DM
As someone who had not read the book when you took the project on, were you surprised at what you saw from the first draft that you read?
Simon Woods - a Mr Bingley for the modern eraJW
Yes. It felt like it was honest and that is what one is always looking for. It’s really difficult to direct anything where you don’t believe in the emotions that you’re trying to express or portray. You’re looking for scripts that are personal, honest and truthful. I thought the script had that in it, which is why it moved me and why I took it on. I think if a script has truth for the writer, then it has truth for the reader.
DM
He doesn’t cry very easily!
DB
Is what we see in the final cut a synthesis? Was the drafting a refining of what there was or did you write a completely different movie?
DM
All sorts of things changed. For instance, when they were bounding around at Chatsworth, there was a scene in the tavern when Elizabeth arrives at Pemberly, and this scene is true to the book: she hears about Darcy, and the chambermaid tells her he’s out at this time. Then I think she went to Chatsworth and found this amazing Oakswood.
JW
Exactly. What I really like to do is find locations while we’re in script development, so there’s a dialogue and you’re not trying to enforce this fiction onto something that isn’t there. Take the sculpture gallery, for instance: originally, it was picture gallery, as in the book. But because the Victorians destroyed most of the picture galleries in England, I couldn’t find one that was working. Then we were at Chatsworth and we discovered this sculpture gallery which had these incredible sculptures, and suddenly it all made sense that we should shoot the scene in a sculpture gallery, where the bust of Darcy would be far more arresting. Also, one of the problems with the book, for me, is that Lizzy falls in love with Darcy when she realises how much money he’s got, when she sees the pad. I always thought that that wasn’t quite good enough. So the sculptures made me think that we could bring something more sensual to that, and that the house could give Elizabeth a deeper understanding of who Darcy is in terms of the culture. So it’s a constant going back and forth between script and location, and also casting.
DM
And also what the actors do. When Kiera Knightly looks at the house, and she just has the giggles.
JW
That’s in the book, because I didn’t know what her reaction should be when she saw the house. And I asked Kiera what we should do, and she says, it’s alright, I know what to do, it says in the book. So that establishing shot does a fantastic amount of work: you look at the house and you see it’s about a disparity between people. You know that Darcy is of a higher standing than the Bennett family, and it’s symbolised by the house which is grander than anyone can imagine.
DM
Elizabeth’s also saying, I could be the mistress of all of this. In the book, Jane says she first became attracted to Darcy when she set eyes on the beauteous grounds of Pemberley. Not a line we could use because Jane Austen had such a layered meaning, that is Jane was interested in money, but on the other hand the Bennett’s house is pretty damn gorgeous anyway. I’d rather live in the Bennett’s house. It’s a problem that it’s so big, and it’s old fashionedly big.
JW
It’s also faded: they can’t really afford it. A house like that should have ten servants, and they can only afford two.
DM
In the script, there are only hints about the rural nature of the Bennett’s house, the set designers did wonderful things by making it so muddy, and so on its uppers, that we could then move into the fashionable Regency world through the Bennett’s eyes. We’re seeing what the Bennett’s are like, and why they may be looked down on. Especially after the assembly ball with all the Hogarthian characters: six thousand people applied to be extras in that.
JW
Two and a half thousand people applied to be just in that scene.
DB
You mentioned that you don’t know how to write ball scenes, surely a half truth…. But I imagine a lot of it is in the edit and in the rhythm of the cutting and in how you juxtapose shots, unless you’re writing an absolute shooting script. But in your writing you’re probably setting up the atmosphere, the lines you need and so on, and then it’s a negotiation with Joe and the cameraman about what gets shot.
DM
Well, I wasn’t there when they shot most of that scene. So it wasn’t really a negotiation. But what was fascinating that I would write a scene of Mr Collin’s ghastly conversation with Elizabeth, but when I watched the film it was chopped up with Jane desperately trying to get in stuff about Wickham. But it was heavenly because Mr Collins couldn’t get a word out and it was very funny: it must be like that at those balls. But I didn’t write it like that, that was all in the way it was shot.
DB
Were you on set at all?
DM
Donald Sutherland held my hand in a potato warehouse in Lincolnshire - that was the high spot! He’d walk about with his electric toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. They were shooting one of the few shots that wasn’t actually in a home, which was the assembly ball in the potato warehouse on a very hot day. All the extras were in another warehouse fanning their skirts up and down to cool their knickers, because the costumes were so heavy. Then in the other warehouse there was this extraordinary creation hidden away in the most mundane and boring depot. That was more enthralling than watching the amazing country houses because it was so dull outside, and then inside there was Donald Sutherland.
JW
We built that set up in Lincolnshire because we didn’t want to use London extras. In London they do it a lot and they know the rates and they moan. They’re professional extras really. We really wanted people who’d never done it before, and who’d be excited to be there and get involved.
DM
Extras always feel like, and are treated like, fodder, but Joe got them all together and told them the story of what was happening and the story of the book and film. Then the actors came on and told them who they playing and their characters, so the extras all felt they were in a real scene. Everybody at that time went to the balls, of course: it was their social thing of the week. So the young, the old and the lame, and most classes went. And I think that in the film it shows up that they were all included. They actors and extras understood what it was all about.
DB
That says to me, Joe, that you are very intune to what turns up on set, rather than being a strict storyboarder, knowing what you’re going to shoot at every moment.
JW
Both really: I storyboard everything as a safety net. I’m terrified of not having any ideas. It’s a fallback position if I’m not struck by something. There are certain things that are very clearly and carefully thought through beforehand. The sequences like the ball sequences, you can’t storyboard or else they’ll be stiff and dry. The dinner table scenes are like that as well. I’ve got a love of zoom lenses, as they allow me to speak to both camera operators (as we’d have two cameras), and point things out as I’m shooting a scene. I also like it when the actors don’t know they’re in close-up. When they give a performance, and you tell them it’s time for their close up, they’ll fuss and say, “now, I’m ready for you!” You always get something slightly stiffer. But when we go over to Rosings, for instance, it was far more formal as I wanted a more formal atmosphere to the storytelling.
DB
There’s shockingly little time to rehearse, particularly in television. Did you rehearse a lot?
JW
Yes. We had three weeks of rehearsal. Which is a lot. It’s a terrible thing that actors don’t get paid for rehearsal. They’re always complaining and say that they’ll turn up for the second or third reading. I was very strict with them all, and said they had to be there for three weeks. When actors arrive on set, they always eye each other up trying to work out who’s going to be the weakest link, and who’s going to be competition, and working out whether they’re going to snog each other. Starting the dance rehearsal first broke the ice and ensured they all made complete fools of themselves, and laughed a lot. That was a good galvanising exercise. Unfortunately, you can’t do that in films where there isn’t any dancing. Two weeks of acting rehearsals are about conversations, especially where the families are getting to know each other. I specifically cast the actors because of their mix on as well as off screen. I really enjoyed the shooting process, and I enjoy bringing groups of people together and seeing how they get on. Jennifer, who plays Lydia, for instance, is an extraordinary girl who emancipated herself from her parents at the age of fourteen, she’s very Californian and out there. Then there’s Taloula Riley, who plays Mary, and she is one of the most conservative English girls I have met in my life, who by the age of nineteen has decided which day she’s going to be married on, even though she’s never had a boyfriend. Then there’s Donald who’s this great patriarchal figure, and Ros with her great intelligence, and Kiera, with this extraordinary energy. Putting all these characters together was really exciting. We talked about who we were, and spent a lot of time in improvisation workshops, rather than rehearsing the scenes as you would in the theatre. Finally the Bennett house was ready, and we made sure the set was dressed. We lit fires so it had the smell of a real home: it was a fully working house that had a 360 degrees real. We went down there and spent a few days playing sardines, and just mucking about in the house so that they could claim it as there own house. They each had their own bedroom and a space of their own. Tom Hollander also played sardines and claimed that when he was in a cupboard with the five Bennett sisters it was the happiest day of his life. The job of a director is about creating an atmosphere where people can feel relaxed and are able to express themselves freely and where they are not afraid of trying things out.
DB
That pays off because it results in getting good performances from single actors which some directors are more able to do than others. But trying to get families to look like families is really hard. But here you do believe that they live together and that they’re used to being in each other’s company.
JW
I didn’t want to cast people who looked like each other though. What I did rather, was to find mannerisms that they all shared. Lizzy and Donald both use their hand over their mouth. Lydia and Kitty spent a lot of time getting the same octave in their voices. There are families that are united in their tone of voice as much as their looks. Ros and Kiera are completely opposite, but that was a choice.
DM
Kiera’s great beauty we thought may be a problem. She’s so dazzlingly lovely that we thought one of the points of it was that she gives hope to all of us, and it’s wit and intelligence that nabs you the Darcys and the Pembleys, that’s if you want Pembley. But Kiera’s gorgeousness is very modern, so actually the very very beautiful Rosemund Pike is more the serene, lovely blond conventional beauty. Kiera has an extraordinary blazing life and wit. She’s a sport, and that really comes across. People say she’s a sport in “real life”.
DB
Were you involved in directing the casting?
DM
Not at all. But some of the families are so the same: the same pointy faces – yet it’s produced such different creatures.
DB
I imagine that the final shot is not the final shot that you wrote. I can’t imagine you ended your first feature with such a quiet scene, a quiet shot just holding on Mr Bennett.
DM
Well spotted! There was another ending.
JW
Kissy kissy! Deborah first wrote an ending which said, we’re all at Pemberly at a wedding party. We move through each member of our cast, and let each have their moment. That’s the kind of scene that you read as a director, and say to yourself, you have got to be kidding! What am I supposed to do with that. We talked a lot about it, but there was a scene where we see Darcy and Elizabeth alone, and I thought it was a bit too sweet. It didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the film. There’s a problem with the ending - the real ending is Darcy in the dawn scene. But then you do want to see the reaction of the family, but then you also want to see Lizzy and Darcy again. So you have three endings which didn’t work, and you just want the film to end at that point. So I tried lots of different ways of making that last scene. In the end we tried it without it, and it seemed to work much better. I like how fast Elizabeth goes.
DM
I don’t think you needed it. I think ending with just Donald Sutherland’s face and Elizabeth going, is enough.
Audience Member
Why are there special thanks to Emma Thompson?
JW
Emma gave me a lot of advice. It was my first feature, and I was terrified. I felt ill equipped. She’s a friend of Working Title, and I asked to talk to her. I turned up nervously on her doorstep with my briefcase and she had her walking boots on and said, we’re going to Hampstead Heath. We walked and she talked about AIDS in Africa and other things that interest her. Finally, we sat down on a bench and opened the script, and I asked her questions, and she acted bits out for me and explained things to me. It was a brilliant shoulder.
AM
I wish the film had been longer! It’s a great shame you had to chop so much. What dictates the length of a film? Do you look at the prospective audience and wonder how long you can keep them in their seats, or are you told that it has to be a certain length?
JW
There was a longer edit, the first edit was forty five minutes longer. But it was a bit boring. The fact that you want more is a good thing. But I like that we end on the close up because it just whips it away. The longer version was just more indulgent in the shots of ceilings of houses. I felt that I was letting the audience drift. One of the things when you do an adaptation is that you want to stick to the narrative, and beats of the story, but I was also keen to be faithful to the spirit of the book. I wanted to create the same feeling in the audience as you get reading the novel. That’s why you get so many close ups because Austen looks very carefully at people, and using this technique I found a cinematic equivalent to her prose. But it’s a youthful book, written by a twenty one year old girl when she wrote the first draft. So it’s got great energy, and I wanted that speed and energy running through it. I wanted that youthful telling of it. That’s not because I wanted a youthful audience, but because it was written by somebody young.
AM
Who actually dictates the length of the film?
JW
I do in discussion with Working Title, and also test screening audiences.
DB
The length is always a collaboration between the director and the producer. But the point is that you’re left wanting more. But, another twenty minutes may slow the rhythm down. And the movie is quite long in commercial terms anyway. If you start hitting two and a half hours long, it means the arc has to change.
JW
Apocalypse Now: The Director’s Cut goes on for about five hours, and I was disappointed by the scenes he’d put back in that were completely useless.
DM
I first saw the assembly ball scene on a little screen, and I thought that it went on too long, it seemed to go on forever! But when I saw it on a cinema, I couldn’t get enough of it.
JW
Audiences are so literate and read so quickly. You don’t need twenty eight shots to establish who likes who.
AM
How did you decide on Matthew McFadden?
JW
He was one of the first people I thought of when I read the script. He’s brilliant and one of the best actors we’ve got. I then went on a world trip looking for Mr Darcy, which was exhausting and pointless as we came full circle back to Matthew. When Matthew and Kiera were together, they were better than when they weren’t together. They made each other better actors. I also wanted a manly man, not a boy band pretty boy. Lizzy had come to an age in her life where she appreciates proper men rather than boys who look like girls. I wanted someone of the right age. My first thought was that I wanted to cast all the actors at the ages that Austen wrote them. The emotions only seemed real to me when they were experienced by very young people. Darcy is twenty eight, he’s a young man who hasn’t hit the plateau of his thirties yet. He hasn’t quite hit the comfortable position were he knows who he is. Matthew approached the role as an actor in search of a character, rather than as an icon. Darcy’s parents died when he was quite young, I like to think in a tragic accident late one night, so he woke up one day to find the huge responsibility on his shoulders of the estate and the nine hundred livelihoods that depended on that estate, so he had to quickly put on the suit of manhood that didn’t quite fit him. That’s why he is the way he is, and the story is about a girl who teaches him how to be a gentle man.
DB
The pace slows down in two places - one on the swing and the other where they walk towards each other across the dawn fields. That seemed to come from a different film.
Tom Hollander at work with Keira Knightley
JW
Maybe I was indulgent. I loved that shot. He looks lovely and the shot means a lot to me - to see your destiny walking towards you, I’d want that moment to last a really long time. Rhythmically, it worked for me. With the swing shot, I just wanted a breather. It’s so hectic, fast and dialogue heavy, I just wanted it to be the end of that section, and we’re moving on. It was just a bit of time for the audience and myself to take a breath.
AM
Parts of the dialogue are quite modern, for instance when Lizzy stomps off from her family. Did you keep the dialogue modern, or keep with Jane Austen’s dialogue?
DM
Very little has been put in. Most of it is Jane Austen. One always has moments of wincing. I put in one line where Caroline Bingley is reading a letter, and I wanted a little chink of what’s happening in the outside world. I could’ve had a voice over with Jane Austen commenting, but that would not have worked.
AM
The only people that kiss in the film are Mr and Mrs Bennett. Was that a deliberate choice from the script, or did it come out in the final edit?
DB
Was there a no snog rule!?
JW
Not at all. People didn’t kiss unless they were married. We weren’t setting out to make a modern, revisionist film, but something that was authentic and true to the era as possible. The kiss that Mrs Bennett gives to Mr Bennett in the first scene is probably not authentic either, but just Brenda just going for it and wanting to get on top of Donald. But I like the fact that Mr and Mrs Bennett have a loving relationship, I like the fact that they still have sex, well they probably do. Donald was distraught to find out that Mr and Mrs Bennett wouldn’t share a bedroom, and petitioned for weeks that he was sure that they would share a bed. So he’d knock on Brenda’s door, because rather than going back to their caravans, the actors went to their bedrooms when they weren’t shooting. So he’d knock on Mrs Bennett’s. He was very pleased that the last scene through the window has a hint that they’re about to have sex. But I’m a fan of thirties filmmaking. Brief Encounter is probably one of my favourite films of all time, and having done Charles II which was wall to wall shagging, I was worried that I was getting a reputation. But I wanted to make it as sexy as possible.
DM
If you try and write something that’s set two hundred years ago, you think what on earth did they do in their rooms? What were they doing all time? They didn’t have anything to do. They do what we all do, which is to lie around and pick their noses.
JW
The original draft had loads of scenes where Mrs Bennett was collecting eggs – I cut all those scenes.
AM
How long did it take to write the script?
DM
It was done over two years, off and on. Nobody has asked about Colin Firth, have you noticed?
AM
It’s a film that shows the formality and informality of life at the time. Here, you get a sense of family life, and it’s Joe’s work that did that. Are you from a family of girls, Deborah, and were your parents trying to get you married off?
DM
Not in so many words. But you always want to see your daughter settled. The thing about bickering sisters, I’ve got three sisters, is that the film took it way beyond anything I could imagine. When they’re in the kitchen, they’re dying ribbons with beetroot juice – I didn’t put that in, but it’s brilliant. They had to be making do.
JW
The production designer is my closest collaborator. We started in television together, and she’s just brilliant.
DB
The production design is really extraordinarily good.
JW
She’s the one that comes up with ideas like the beetroot. When I don’t know what to do about a scene, she’ll come out with things like the beetroot.
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