The BFI Times 50th London Film Festival. 30 or so cramped journalists line the entrance to the Odeon in Leicester Square, craning their necks in anticipation, as the likes of Emma Thompson, Will Ferrel and Dustin Hoffman shimmer and muscle-flex their way onto the red carpet for the premiere of Stranger than Fiction.
The film stars Will Ferrel, well-known for his improvisational style of acting in roles such as Ron Burgendy in Anchorman. He was, however, more restricted in this film:
“There was no improvisation,” says Lindsay. “The director insisted that every one of these actors say the script word for word.”
The story follows Harold Crick (Will Ferell), an archetypal taxman who starts to hear a woman’s voice narrating his every move:
“Zack [Helm] had the inspiration for the film. He came up to me five years ago and said: ‘I want to do a movie where the guy hears a narrator and the narrator starts telling him things about his own life and then one day he tells him he’s gonna die. I thought that was a great idea for a movie! It seemed so funny and yet it seemed also an opportunity to explore why we don’t do the things we want to do before it’s too late.”
“There’s a beautiful scene in the movie where he says to his friend: ‘What would you do if you knew you were going to die?’ And the guy says: ‘I’d go to space camp.’ Well why isn’t he already going to space camp?! The character talks about how he’s so busy – but we’re all too busy!”
“A lot of people have come out of this movie and said: ‘I should tell that girl I love her!’ or ‘I should learn to play the guitar;’ ‘I should jump out of an aeroplane;’ ‘I should do all these things that I’ve always wanted to do – what am I waiting for?!’ That’s a great message.”
But jumping out of aeroplanes or extreme sports are not for Lindsay, who likes to live life to the fullest in a more conservative way:
“Actually, you know, I’ve kinda done a lot of things I’ve wanted to do. But I try to say thankyou to people. Every week I say: ‘Who am I really grateful to this week?’ and I call them up. If I’m out of touch with a friend I call them right away to make sure they know how much I care about them.
“I would like to feel that if I died suddenly everybody that I loved knows that I love them. That’s really important to me; more important than anything else. Expressing my emotions is my extreme sports!”
Lindsay speaks loudly and energetically, partly because of her obvious passion for her subject, and partly to get heard over the steadily increasing crowds that have gathered around her.
Her accent is distinctly American, and yet she expresses a strong connection with England: London, in particular:
“I love to come to London. I’ve spent a great deal of time over here. It sounds corny but my favorite part of London is Westminster Abbey.
“I came here just before Christmas with my husband and there were children singing and there was a little concert with people playing individual hand bells. It was so beautiful and romantic and I love the buildings and the architecture here. It’s just a great city.”
But does she ever miss home?
“I do. But I’m always very happy when I’m here. Even before I came to London, as a child, I always felt that somehow I belonged here.
As I got older my big dream in life was to make movies in England. Way before I ever got here! So now I’m here! I mean this movie wasn’t made in England but I’ve made two others here, and we’re going to make a sequal to Nanny Mcfee.
“How many people can say they’ve done the thing they’ve always wanted to do as a child?”
She has reason to feel satisfied, for her film repertoire is certainly impressive, working on widely accredited films such as This is Spinal Tap in 1984, as vice president of creative affairs at Avco Embassy Pictures in L.A.
Then, after moving to Paramount and hitting the glass ceiling there, Doran was lured away in 1989 by Sydney Pollack; she later joined Mirage as president and was one of the few women to hold that position at a major company.
There she worked on Sense and Sensibilty with Emma Thompson, a film widely praised for its comic yet touching adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, which also received four ‘best picture’ awards.
Since then she’s worked on many films and T.V series including the Blockbuster hit Nanny Mcfee and her most recent film, Stranger than Fiction.
Her success may have much to do with her non-stop passion for films, plus her attention to detail when it comes to film making:
“I’ve never stopped loving going to the movies.” She says, laughing.
“For a lot of people in the movie business, going to the movies just feels like work to them; they just sit there analysing it. And I do. I do sit and analyse but in a fun way. I say, ‘What a good way to get a piece of information across,’ or ‘Isn’t it smart that they’re able to get this exposition across in a way that is so effortless.’ I learn from every movie that I see but it never prevents me from loving the movie that I see.”
She also considers her approach to film-making somewhat unorthadox, especially with regards to her methods of finding the right actors and directors to work with:
“I ask lots of questions; even silly questions! A silly question to ask a film maker is, ‘If you imagine the movie in your head what will it be like? What other movies will it be like?’
And it sounds stupid. But, say, with a script like Stranger than Fiction a lot of people may say: ‘Well I imagine it to be like Last Tango in Paris.’ And you’ll say, ‘Well I love Last Tango in Paris but that’s nothing to do with this movie and we’re not talking about the same film!’
When I met Ang Lee on Sense and Sensibility, for example, many of the directors I met on that movie didn’t even talk about how funny the script was; they didn’t even know how funny the script was! And I wanted it to be a very funny movie that was also extremely emotional.
And Ang talked for the first ten minutes about how funny it was and then he said: ‘I want this movie to break people’s hearts so badly they’ll still be recovering from it six months later.’ And I said: you have a job! You know what this movie is about. It doesn’t matter if you can barely speak English or you’ve never read a word of Jane Austen in your life. That’s what matters. We’ll deal with the rest. We want someone who can make us a hilarious, heart breaking movie, and just about every movie I work on I want it to be both of those things.”
So have there been any real differences of opinion with regards to films?
“Well, one of the directors who wanted to direct Stranger than Fiction said it was a movie about rage. Maybe to that director it was but it wasn’t to me and it wasn’t to the writer and that just made it the wrong director. It would have been very interesting to see that movie but it wasn’t the movie that I wanted to make.”
So what does she look for in a film?
“I love movies that make you laugh and make you cry. And any movie that doesn’t do both of those things I think is falling short of what it needs to be.
“My favorite movie of all time, for example, is Seven Samuri, a Japanese movie. Makes me laugh, makes me cry. It’s a great action movie and its very emotional; its trying to do a lot of thing at once.”
Does she have any advice for budding producers?
“Persistence is the key. Nanny Mcfee took nine years to get made; this film took five. And it was the easiest film to get made that I’ve ever made! It took two years to get the script right and then we waited for exactly the right director. and then exactly the right cast.”
“So it’s really a matter of having the patience and a specific vision in mind and try to only attach people who share that vision.”
