Film Voices: Interviews from Post Script

11. Stephen Frears

“You obviously expected a somewhat younger man,” chided Stephen Frears as he gently shook my hand. “Everybody does.” He was right. I suspiciously surveyed the rather scruffy middle-aged man who stood before me on the steps of the Syracuse University London Centre. Dressed in a rumpled brown corduroy jacket and a pair of baggy gray pants, his hair disheveled and waistline creeping over his belt buckle, Frears knew precisely what I was thinking: where was the fire-breathing young radical who had directed My Beautiful Laundrette (1986), Prick Up Your Ears (1987) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1988)? “After all,” he continued with an almost embarrassed smile, “I’ve had quite a long career, though few people outside England know anything about it.” Right again. For most of us, Frears did indeed burst, seemingly out of nowhere, into prominence on the strength of the most interesting trilogy of British films made during the 1980s. These films resonated so deeply within my consciousness that I scoured video stores to find other films made during the Thatcher era. My explorations ultimately led to further research in England, where, during the summer of 1989, I taught a class called Contemporary British Cinema. Though I greatly admired the films of other British directors, I remained most affected by Frears. So, being a cheeky American, I found his number in the London directory, rang him up, and invited him over for a chat. Much to my delight, not to mention surprise, he quickly agreed, and the following interview represents a distillation of that conversation. Frears quite correctly called my attention to the fact that he did have “quite a long career” before making his celebrated trilogy. Born in Leicester, England, in 1941, Frears, like many other British filmmakers, began his career in the theater, C H A P T E R E L E V E N 쵧 Stephen Frears LESTER D. FRIEDMAN AND SCOTT STEWART 195 196 FIGURE 11. Director Stephen Frears on the set of his film Hero (1992). Courtesy: Jerry Ohlinger Archives. eventually directing plays at the Royal Court (home to Joe Orton*). He also started dabbling in the cinema, working for Karel Reisz† on Morgan (1966) and Lindsay Anderson‡ on If . . . (1969). His first feature-film directing assignment was Gumshoe (1972), a wry detective yarn starring Albert Finney that appeared on the scene and quickly sank from view. Frears spent the next twelve years working on BBC and ITV television. While there, he joined other notable directors like Michael Apted, Mike Newell, and Ken Loach, and he collaborated with some of the finest writers of the period, including David Hare, Alan Bennett, and Christopher Hampton . He remains proud of this work, claiming that television “gave an accurate account of what it’s like to live in Britain . . . something not found in many countries .” In 1984, Frears completed his second theatrical feature, The Hit, the story of a small-time criminal (Terence Stamp) who testifies against his superiors and lives in constant fear of their retaliation. Like Gumshoe, The Hit was a critical success and a commercial failure. One cannot overstate the profound impact Frears’s extended internship in television had on the three films (all financed, at least in part, with television funds) he made during the 1980s, as well as on his subsequent movies. His experiences with outstanding writers gave him tremendous respect for the written word. As he says, “I start from a collaborative (with the writer) point of view.” To put it another way, part of his success comes from the fact that good writers trust him “not to muck up” their work. His years in British television also inform his work habits; he quickly acquired a reputation as an efficient director who brings projects in on time and within budget—two traits which endear him to the businessmen who finance films. His television films usually dealt with “men and women who go to work and lead rather desperate lives,” and his theatrical films concentrate on the gritty realism of daily existence, focusing on the position of marginalized outsiders. To this stratified cultural context, he applies the British television tradition of social criticism, a point of view that endows his pictures with a class consciousness absent in most American movies. Frears’s “invisible” style also remains indebted to the unobtrusive techniques that characterize television aesthetics; consequently, he overtly situates himself in the tradition of such...