Case Study: Richard Eyre

Theatre was Richard Eyre's first love before mixing it up with television and film. His star rose in the 80s with The Ploughman's Lunch (1983), culminating in a BAFTA win for Falklands War TV drama Tumbledown in 1988. More awards followed for his stage work before a return to the big screen with Iris (2001) and the Oscar®-nominated adaptation of best-selling novel Notes On A Scandal (2007). Here, he explains how the theatre has influenced his approach to filmmaking.

First steps on the career ladder...

"I became an actor when I was 21 and my first job was actually a recording of a Shakespeare play to sell in schools. I played a small part in a production of Hamlet and then I was cast in Hornchurch Repertory Theatre for a production of Henry V.

"My first step away from acting into directing came when I was having a miserable time in a theatre company in Leicester, and persuaded some of the actors to allow me to direct them in a Sunday production. Then the director of that theatre said to me, 'You know, you could be a director, but I don't think you will ever be an actor, so you'll have to choose.' And I did. Somebody who had seen that Sunday night production offered me another production and the director of that theatre took me on as his assistant. I just started to get work from other people who had seen my work."

Moving into television...

"Directing film is radically different from directing theatre. In the theatre you have a single point-of-view, essentially the point-of-view you're sharing with the audience. In film, the director is choosing the audience's point-of-view, and that changes from shot to shot. Plus, the habit in theatre is to think of sound and music as something incidental and dialogue as the principal thing and you're always trying to get the audience to look at the speaker, whereas dialogue on screen works in a completely different fashion.

"My move into television came about when I was running Nottingham Playhouse from 1973 to 1978. I was doing a lot of new work there and I was offered, out of the blue, an opportunity to produce a series of television drama called Play For Today. So, I was producing that and also began to direct for television. The first film I made was for television and was called The Imitation Game [1980], from a script by Ian McEwan. Ian was beginning to be known for his short stories and his first novel and Channel 4 was just about to start. They thought that we should make a film for them. It was Channel 4 and Goldcrest Productions who put up the money for The Ploughman's Lunch [1983], but it was a very small budget."

The long gap between features...

"Apart from The Ploughman's Lunch I was really unhappy with the work I was doing and the projects I was being offered. The things that I was being offered in television and theatre were just much more interesting. The film stuff was just so formulaic, I guess. "I did Tumbledown [for TV in 1988], which was a very big success and I was offered a lot of feature films after that, but I had committed myself to going to the National Theatre. While I was at the National Theatre I did make three more television films and then when I came out of the National Theatre that's when I did Iris [2001]. It started as a commission from Sony Pictures - Columbia. I was commissioned to write and direct it and they said, 'This is great. We love it, but we're not going to make it.' So, they put the script in turnaround and I then approached various people who I thought could put up the money. I went to BBC Films and Intermedia and that's when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack became involved and Scott Rudin, who brought in Harvey Weinstein as distributor. So, there were three sources of finance."

The UK film industry...

"I think there are always a few - like, half-a-dozen - good scripts being produced in Britain a year. Like this past year we've had The Queen, Paul Greengrass' film [United 93], The Last King Of Scotland, Notes On A Scandal - all British projects which have done very well. So, there's a sort of buoyancy about the British film industry at the moment. But I think part of the whole problem is that people talk about this as an 'industry' and, you know, I don't get it frankly. I mean you don't talk about 'the theatre industry' or 'the literature industry' and I just find it really depressing. It's just a series of individual projects, some of which are complete crap and some of which are good."

Favourite part of the process...

"When I started out I loved the shooting, but the shooting gets to be harder and harder work and I find the editing more and more interesting."

Inspirational filmmakers...

"I'm very inspired by Czech directors like Milos Forman - his Czech films - and Jirí­ Menzel. I like Czech and Hungarian films because they're all to do with nuance and behaviour, not plot."

Advice for budding filmmakers...

"Just make films. If people think of it as a business, they're already doomed. People exaggerate this whole business of networking and it's all b*******. The only thing that gets a film made is having a good script. It's story. It's script."

Stella Papamichael | Published 13 Apr 07