Richard Curson-Smith wrote and directed Home, a new drama based on JG Ballard's short story, The Enormous Place.
Richard talked with Gavin Collinson, discussing the inception and development of Home, its inherent humour and working with Ballard and Sir Antony Sher.
BBC Four: The Enormous Place must have seemed a difficult story to adapt. The whole thing appears so internalised - how did the project come about? And why chose that particular short story?
Richard Curson-Smith: It came about through my obsession with JG Ballard, and a feeling that although there's been some very famous movies of his books, with very few exceptions, he hadn't been particularly well served by television. And certainly his short fiction is full of strange, funny inversions and takes on the world that seem very appropriate for television. Plus he's an author fused with the mediated reality of television which I think he understands very, very well.
We chose to adapt The Enormous Space, which is a fairly enclosed and claustrophobic story, because it is expansive at the same time. It's about claustrophobia, but it's also an archetypal desert island story… it's Robinson Crusoe in suburbia. It's about internal and exterior space. The protagonist, the character of Ballantyne, is a recluse and a hermit, but he's also an explorer. I think [Ballantyne's experiment] is a fantasy which a lot of people have when they're feeling vulnerable. They think, well, what would happen if I simply shut the front door and never came out? So there's a relentlessness about the story which I was really keen to explore. It's a very simple, pure premise. What would happen? And I hope that allows an audience to empathise with him, because it's a journey which is very powerful.
BBC Four: Is it me being terribly sick or is there a lot of black humour in Home?
RC-S: There's a lot of black humour in there, absolutely, and it's a side of Ballard's work which I think hasn't been particularly well conveyed in film adaptations. It's because those adaptations are largely American and the world [of Ballard] is so stark and strange that in, say Spielberg's Empire of the Sun or Cronenberg's Crash, the humour can't really come through. I think it takes an English sensibility to understand there is a mischievous humour in this simple inversion that Ballard writes. He's a tremendously funny writer. I personally think that some of the material there [in Home], such as the scientist forced to eat a household pet, is screamingly funny.
BBC Four: Sure. I especially enjoyed the scene when the guy calls on Ballantyne and says he's lost his dog... "Really? Oh, what a terrible shame..."
BBC Four: Was Ballard involved with the production?
RC-S: Ballard wasn't involved beyond giving his kind of papal blessing. It's very difficult to get films of Ballard's works off the ground … he's suspicious, quite often, of people, because the world and his film student quite often knock on his door trying to make adaptations, and he's quite protective of his work. So getting the opportunity to do it was blessing enough and subsequently he's been very supportive of the film.
BBC Four: What was it like working with Antony Sher?
RC-S: Initially daunting, but then tremendously liberating. We had the benefit of two things which I hope contributed significantly to the film. One of them was a quite extensive rehearsal period, when we went to see Polar explorers, food scientists and agoraphobics so we were able to piece together a full picture. The way Antony works is by asking, what would the experience of seeing your house transformed actually feel like?
BBC Four: Very thorough.
RC-S: Yeah, very thorough. Now people know - because of the spectacle of what David Blaine's going through - the psychological effects of starvation. We know it gives rise to hallucinations and all sorts of different things and that was what Antony and I were very keen to tap into.
BBC Four: Antony Sher's performance seems very naturalistic. Was the role improvised at all?
RC-S: It was improvised at the rehearsal stage. We had a script and a fairly rigid film structure so we knew where everything had to go to. But within that rehearsal period we were able to open it up and take him to other experiences. But the budgetary demands of filming meant we couldn't keep it that open - we had to know what we were going to do. We would try to keep it as naturalistic as possible. For example, we would all leave the room when he [Antony Sher] was recording his journal, and the whole thing was shot in story order, so the whole thing was a journal and a journey from day one until the end.
BBC Four: The more avant-garde moments worked well. The whole concept of tying a rope to a banister and heading out into the great, white 'unknown'… What's your take on that?
RC-S: Well, we assume this is a hallucination, we assume it's a fantasy, but what if it's real? I want and I like that kind of ambivalence. That sense of, just maybe....
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