Anthony Minghella: Interviews

Introduction

vii Introduction About a decade ago, I was preparing a book of original conversations with film directors, and I was very keen to interview Anthony Minghella . I pursued the filmmaker for about a year, but because of Minghella’s complicated work schedule, and the fact that he was in the midst of shooting Cold Mountain (2003) in Romania when I first corresponded with him, it took some time before we finally met. Our first meeting took place following the Cold Mountain shoot in the summer of 2003 at his offices , a converted chapel near Hampstead Heath in London. Minghella was in the midst of editing Cold Mountain when we met for the first of our conversations. After this first three-hour conversation, we agreed to meet again later in the week, but as sometimes happens when you plan interviews with film directors, this was not to be. Eventually, it was decided that we would meet again later in the year in North America. We aimed for December 2003 when Minghella was due to come over to the U.S. and Canada for the launch of Cold Mountain. Once again, that meeting was delayed until the following summer when we met again in London for another lengthy conversation. Most of those two conversations found their way into a volume entitled The Making of Alternative Cinema, Volume One: Dialogues with Independent Filmmakers, first published in 2008. I have taken this interview and reprinted it here, mostly intact, but segmented into two halves, as both a way to introduce Minghella, and to cover all of his major films up to and including Cold Mountain. The segments are placed strategically in the present volume, and although they slightly break the chronological ordering of the rest of the material in the book, they add a necessary, structural coherence. Of the dozens of film directors I have interviewed over the past twenty years in what are mostly career-spanning conversations, Minghella was amongst the most generous, erudite, and illuminating artists I have had the pleasure to meet. In retrospect, this only made the news of his untimely death in 2008 more shocking. Anthony Minghella and I barely viii introduction knew each other, and yet I felt that I had lost a good friend when the news broke in March of that year that Minghella had died of a hemorrhage following surgery. In a strange way, Cold Mountain formed a pivot to our two conversations . Even though we did not discuss the film during our first talk, Cold Mountain was clearly not far from Minghella’s thoughts. He had come off the grueling shoot a few months before, and he had been meeting daily for several months with his editor, the legendary Walter Murch, in the editing facilities he had set up at his offices. The post-production process would not end until the fall of 2003, not long before the December launch of the film. When we finally met for the second time in the summer of 2004, we discussed Cold Mountain. The disappointment of the film’s reception was still apparent even though Cold Mountain had done good business and was well enough received by most critics. It also garnered seven Oscar nominations, mostly in secondary categories—a respectable showing but nothing like the rapture that greeted The English Patient a few years before when Minghella’s film won five Academy Awards, including the coveted best director nod for Minghella himself. Cold Mountain felt like a failure even though it clearly was not. The difficult physical challenge of making Cold Mountain, and its disappointing reception, marked something of a turning point for the director . When we spoke for the last time, Minghella was writing an original screenplay that would eventually become Breaking and Entering, his final theatrical film as a director. In his final years, Minghella would also go on to direct a television film for HBO, an opera, and handle a number of producing chores for Mirage Enterprises, a company he owned with the late American filmmaker Sydney Pollack. On top of what already seemed like a punishing work schedule, Minghella also took on the daunting challenge of Chairing the Board of Governors of the British Film Institute, a position many thought he was mad to take on. It is generally regarded as a political headache with few tangible rewards. After the punishing experience of making Cold Mountain, the third of three large-scale films in a row, Minghella felt a creative shake-up...