Film, TV and Animation

History boys: Alan Benett and Nic Hytner

Manchester's History Boy

Nicholas Hytner grew up in Manchester attending Manchester Grammar School and, much like the History Boys themselves, went on to take Oxbridge entrance exams to study English.

He is a successful theatre director who has worked for the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, the RSC and is now the Director of the National Theatre in London where he directed the stage version of The History Boys which opened in 2004. He also worked on a number of operas.

Nic Hytner has previously collaborated with Alan Bennett on productions for both stage and screen, including The Madness of King George.

Why did you choose Manchester for the regional premiere?

Director: Nic Hytner

"Well I think because it’s the most important regional city. It’s also my home city. I was born here and lived here until I was 18."

You went to Manchester Grammar School (MGS). Was it much like the experience of the History Boys?

"When I first read this it very much chimed in with my own experiences at MGS doing something which has disappeared now which is a 7th term after A-levels preparing for the entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge. The film, which is based on the play – same cast, and to a large extent, much the same script – focuses on eight really bright, really funny, really articulate lads from Sheffield going through that term studying History and aiming to take the entrance exam.

Listen to Alan Bennett on BBC Radio Manchester > Audio and Video links on this page require Realplayer The History Boys premiere in Manchester: photos > BBC Movies: The History Boys (15) >

"I think the big difference between them and me and the lads I knew is that we thought ourselves to be that articulate and witty.. but we weren't! I don’t think there ever have been lads who were as witty and articulate and insightful as these.. but that’s the point."

How much is the film about education?

Premiere: Alan Bennett and cast

"To a degree, yes it is about education, it’s about the purpose of education. It’s about a debate which still rages: whether education is utilitarian in purpose, whether it’s there to provide you with qualifications and prepare you for a professional life. Or whether it’s romantic in purpose, whether it’s soul-expanding and mind-broadening. A lot of people feel that over the past 20 years, it’s become more and more target-driven and that something has been lost. But I think the reason why audiences have been so attracted to the play is because, in the end, it’s very human, it’s a character study, there are 12 people who you get to know and care about."

Did you find your schooldays here rewarding?

"Yes I do remember that they were. But I was lucky that I had some very inspired teachers. And I think that what’s stuck in my mind about my schooldays at MGS is the extra-curricular stuff – the music, the drama and the interests many of the teachers took in expanding our interests and encouraging us to find lives for ourselves outside the curriculum. I remember the curriculum as being very well taught and quite demandingly taught but somehow that’s evaporated and what I’m left with is the plays that I acted in, the orchestras that I played in, the choirs I sung in."

Did you  know straight away that this would be a film you would want to direct?

"I don’t think we realised there was film in it until we saw how it was working on stage. It’s not a spectacular film nor have we ever wanted it to be anything other than a character study. It’s quite talky, and it’s intimate. Its objective was to get closer to the people that we knew were exciting audiences on the stage, to get behind their eyes and under their skins.

Was it an easy transition from stage to screen?

"It was certainly easier for this cast to be completely alive to all the nuances of their past and to bring to the screen the rapport and electricity they had on stage. The balance you have to strike always is between the desire to completely remake it for a film and to be true to what’s great about the material. The line that we took is that they used to make really quite faithful and dramatic stage-screen adaptations – the greatest them of all eg. Streetcar named Desire, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf didn't muck around that much so we decided not to. In some ways it’s an unfashionable film – it’s very talky, and it’s about people. There are no explosions."

You achieved that transition quite quickly – in film terms..

"Well it’s 2˝ years ago that we started and yes.. it’s because we made it cheap. We made it very very reasonably because we knew that only by making it for a couple of millions pounds – it’s cheap in film terms and for that money we were able to make it the way we wanted to make it and with the cast who had been acting in it for a year when we made it."

What’s it like working with Alan Bennett?

Scene from The History Boys

"Well after two films, four plays, we have by now a kind of shorthand. He is, as everyone knows, an exceptional writer, who is enormously easy and open to collaboration. And much of what he’s written in this play was in response to the actors who he eventually cast in it."

Would any of the History Boys have made good film-makers?

"Well none of them do. I think one of the many implied melancholic conclusions is that they were at their brightest and most attractive when they were just about to leave school. They, most of them, go onto have relatively humdrum and averagely happy lives. They were exceptional at the school. They were exceptional at the time that Alan imagines them and captures them. But they don't have dramatic futures because most people don't."

So what's in store for the audience...

"It’s very funny. I think it’s a great deal more intellectually stimulating than your average movie but it’s played with such success as a play up and down the country and so far as a film. It’s been getting all the laughs that the play gets which we're very pleased about."