Andrew Davis Q&A With Austen Fans

Masterpiece Theatre Q&A with Screenwriter Andrew Davies

If you could be an observer in one of Jane Austen's books, which one would you chose to be in?— M. Shatto

An interesting question, and one I've never been asked before. I think I'd like to be a participant observer in Emma, observing how the mystery of Jane Fairfax's piano and Frank Churchill's haircut — and I'd be tempted to intervene and dissuade Jane from what I think is a bad choice of husband.

Do you think Jane never found an enduring romantic relationship because she was so very judgmental of the society she lived in? That she "scared off" potential suitors?— K. Puchek

She certainly had a sharp tongue and didn't suffer fools gladly, but she was very attractive in her youth, and very flirty. Her real trouble was shat she had no money, so Tom Lefroy (with whom she did have a love affair) couldn't afford to marry her (no doubt the same for other young men). She was made an offer by one wealthy chap, and she accepted, only to change her mind the next day.

I am a screenwriter and a huge admirer of your work. When first sit to write a scene, looking to carry Austen's prose to screenplay, what is the first thing you think of? Is it an overall shape to the scene? A feeling? Do you have a series of questions you ask yourself to keep focused? Or does each book ask for its own style, rhythm and approach?— J. Fox

Generally I'm thinking: how does this scene advance the story? What does it reveal about the characters? Is there an essential "key line" in it? And as this is a visual medium, I'm often looking for ways in which the feeling or the meaning can be carried by a look, or an action, rather than the spoken word. But yes, different books, even by the same author, have different moods and rhythms. Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice are very speedy and sparky, while Persuasion is much more sedate, almost melancholy.

When you are writing a teleplay with time constrictions, how do determine which scenes to exclude from it and which ones are most essential? Do you ever worry that fans of Austen's works may be angry at their favorite little moment being missing from the adaptation?— S. Kowalski

There are a number of scenes which are essential if the story is to make sense and make an impact. And then I tend to choose my own favorite little moments, and not worry about other people's favorite bits. They can always read the book again! Selfish, I know, but there you go.

Is there anything, in any adaptation, that you wished you had done differently? Maybe you had an "ah ha" moment long after the project was over or maybe with unlimited funding and time you would have "tweaked" the adaptation a bit?— C. Yancy

The only one I can think of at the moment is Darcy's second and successful proposal in Pride and Prejudice. Too much walking, not enough tender looks, not enough passion.

Do you believe Lady Susan, The Watsons or Sanditon could ever be adapted? You could pull it off — and the Austenites might even let you.— H. Veistinen

It's a tempting thought...maybe I will one day!

What do you think of all the prequel and sequel books to Jane Austen's novels, and would you ever consider writing an adaptation of one of them?— S. Hawkins

I have read a lot of them now and there isn't one that comes near to capturing Jane Austen's style, way with character, and expertise with plot. But I live in hope!

Have you ever thought of taking up pen, and writing a sequel to Pride and Prejudice?— R. Crader

Not seriously, but if I did, I'd take them a generation later, as parents of a rather wild and rebellious son, and two daughters, one romantic and the other sensible.

When you are writing your screenplay, do you have a particular actor in mind for a role and make suggestions to the casting director? Or, do you tweak the script to better fit the actor once they've been cast? So many actors in your projects seem tailor-made for the roles.— D. Kallgren

I don't usually think about particular actors when I'm writing a script, though I have a clear visual picture in my mind. I generally start thinking about casting when the script is complete, and I do make suggestions, and some but not all of them are successful. One of the nice things about Jane Austen is that her heroines are so young (around 20, most of them) that we can cast fresh talent, straight out of drama school, and I love being able to launch careers like that.

Have you ever pondered what happens to the characters after the novel's end? I especially would like to know if Pride and Prejudice's Lizzie Bennett truly lives happily ever after with her Mr. Darcy. She would have Lady Catherine as a disapproving relation. Darcy would have the detested Wickham as his brother-in-law, and he still would be involved with Lizzie's mother and foolish sisters.— J. Perrin

I think Austen foresaw a happy marriage — lots of clever, active children. Pemberley is a long way from Hertfordshire, so they wouldn't need to see too much of the Bennett family. Ditto Lady Catherine. Darcy would probably have to bail Wickham out financially at least once more.


In the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the movie seems to follow the book pretty closely until the end, when the tension of Elizabeth telling her mother about her engagement and her beginning life at Pemberly was left out. Was this a conscious decision to leave out these parts?— C. Smith

Absolutely. There is pleasure in reading a novel and seeing how all the little details get worked out, but in a drama, once the audience can sense the ending coming, I like to wrap it all up pretty quickly.


Did you find it difficult not to be influenced by Emma Thompson's 1995 Oscar-winning screenplay of Sense and Sensibility? How did you get it out of your head and go with your own version?— P. Ellison-Pierce

I liked the movie, but I thought that it (and indeed the book) had weaknesses, particularly to do with the men who get the girls. Edward is dull in the book, and weedy and ineffectual and silly in the film. And Colonel Brandon is so underwritten in the book and such a shadowy presence in the film (!!!!!) that it's hard to see how Marianne would turn from Willoughby and come to love Colonel Brandon (OMG - Rickman's Brandon? Really?!). So I did a lot of work on the men. Also, Emma Thompson junked the back story in which Willoughby seduces Brandon's ward and gets her pregnant, so I thought, "We have to foreground this." Apart from that, I looked at the movie several times to make sure that there was nothing in my script that was in the movie, but not in the book.


I really admire Davies as a writer, and would loooooove to be in a masterclass with him. I really enjoyed these Q&A, but I have to say I disagree with him with Q5 over Darcy's proposal. The book is perfect, but I think the BBC proposal is pretty excellent as it stands. Walking - yes, passion - oh yes. It was just such a massive moment that any gesture would be futile, and fail to capture the largeness and, well, extraordinariness of the moment. An overflowing joy. I think their overwhelment with their new situation is captured as near perfectly as it could be. And nary a snog in sight. (I just had to say it. It's the most hideous word!)

Pic 1: Pride & Prejudice 1995 from: Shepherd
Pic 2: Emma 1997 from: Highbury Online
Pic 3: Sense & Sensibility 1995 from: Rickmanista
Pic 4: Northanger Abbey 2007 from: MSN
Pic 5: Emma 1996 from: Corshamtown
Pic 6: Sense & Sensibility 1995 from: Zamok

The Inside Scoop on "The Kiss"

A very big thank you to Kari for unearthing this charming NY Times article, and to IMDB poster helloeeze who originally shared the article. This is one big "awwww" read (swoon-o-metre alert - so don't say I didn't warn you ;), and make sure you pop over to the NY Times and read the full article, it's gorgeous. It's so refreshing to read about McAvoy; so talented and yet so humble and unspoiled.

“James is not somebody who’s going to get his head turned,” the director Julian Jarrold said.

“He’s thoughtful about what he wants to do next.” Mr. Jarrold, who made “Becoming Jane,” said he had wanted to work with Mr. McAvoy again after directing him in a mini-series based on the Zadie Smith novel “White Teeth” five years ago. “It was quite a small role, but he shone out,” Mr. Jarrold said. “He’ll be around a long, long time.”

Mr. Jarrold praised Mr. McAvoy for bringing something extra to the party, an inspired flourish that bolsters a scene. “He gave me a lot of options,” Mr. Jarrold said. “And these were always in service of the story — not the things some stars suggest to make themselves look good.”

In “Becoming Jane,” there is a scene that both men call simply the Kiss.

The movie concerns a putative romance between a 20-year-old Jane Austen, played by Ms. Hathaway, and Mr. McAvoy’s character, a worldly Irish law student named Tom Lefroy. While there are other kisses in the movie — as you can only hope there were in Austen’s short life — this is the first.

The scene needs to pack a punch, and it does, not least because it’s she who kisses him, boldly and deliberately after weeks of wary distrust. But his response caps the moment: In one of those small, eloquent gestures that are a signature of Mr. McAvoy’s work, he draws back slightly, as if not daring to believe what just happened, and, seeing that she meant it, his eyes fill with amazed joy. A perfectly executed impulse — he did it on only one of the takes — it creates a second of tension that underscores each lover’s vulnerability and seals the scene in memory.

Not all Mr. McAvoy’s gestures are small. “Julian was the first guy who’d let me be funny if I wanted to be funny,” he said. “I didn’t like the script, I was afraid Lefroy would be too Darcy, and he said I could play with that image, and that interested me.”

Pic 1: Jane & Tom from: Rotten Tomatoes

Pic 2: The Kiss from: Tiscali

Miss Williams Regrets

... Well, not technically ;), but she did have some concerns:

She admits the plate-spinning of balancing work and parenting did send her "a little bit crazy" in the summer, when she was working on a forthcoming BBC film called Miss Austen Regrets. In an interview last year, Williams criticised the "lazily colloquial" script. But, as with so much else in her life, the finished film proved to be "different from what I envisaged, which is wonderful. It's much more intangible than your average biopic, the choice of shots gives it a very European feel. It showed me how much I still have to learn."

I love European films, so my interest is sparked! Continue reading Olivia's interview here. It's a great read.

Miss Austen regrets didn't air in the UK sometime in December (will keep my eyes peeled for a screening date) and on February 3 in the USA.

Pic: Olivia Williams as Jane Austen from: BBC

Secrets of the new Mr Darcy: Rising star Dominic Cooper

He has inherited the mantle of brooding heart-throb from his friend Colin Firth. But Dominic Cooper's own tangled family drama exceeds anything Jane Austen could have imagined...

The evening before we meet, Dominic Cooper was having supper with Colin Firth.
The actors recently worked together in Greece on the movie Mamma Mia!, where they struck up a friendship of sorts.

Cooper says Firth is "someone I'd like to be like - a funny, charismatic person..."
He continues to list Firth's qualities, but I have to confess I don't quite catch all he says.

... At 29, Cooper is part of a new generation of British actors, that includes James McAvoy, Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall, Emily Blunt and Hayley Atwell, making their mark in film and on stage.

He says that the thought of "filling someone else's shoes" as Willoughby - Greg Wise famously played him a decade ago, co-starring with his now wife Emma Thompson - was a challenge.

"Whenever I mentioned it to people they said: 'Oh Willoughby - nasty piece of work.' Then came the realisation that he was just a young man who made the wrong decision."

Indeed, this realisation is powerfully dramatised in the concluding part of Sense And Sensibility this weekend, leaving the viewer with a certain sympathy rather than absolute antipathy for Willoughby.

"His weakness is that he obeys his aunt," says Cooper.

"You have to remember the time and how, for girls, if you don't have money you're screwed. Marianne doesn't have money, which makes life very difficult for her.

"Willoughby doesn't have money, so needs his aunt's inheritance. That's why it's so desperate when he rejects Marianne.

"I do truly believe that he was absolutely in love with her, that he wanted to marry her and is about to ask her to marry him, but gets put in a very difficult position."

(29?! He looks more like 17 ...) Continue reading the (very interesting) article here at the Dailymail. Have fun!

Pic: Dominic Cooper as Willoughby from: The Dailymail

Masterpiece Theatre Clips & Interviews on YouTube!

Ah, this is such a nice Jane-y way to close the year ... PBS have uploaded three Jane Austen Season Behind the Scenes interviews with screenwriter Andrew Davis onto Youtube:

*Spoilerific*



An Interview With Andrew Davis : I LOVE this interview - it's short, but loaded. Andrew Davis speaks such sense! His favourite scene from Pride & Prejudice '95 is also my favourite - it just can't be beaten! There's also footage from Northanger Abbey '07 and Sense & Sensibility '08.



Behind the Scenes with Andrew Davis - Jane Austen's Men & Women : This clip is almost better than the previous one - let's just say I gagged laughing, more than once. ;) I really loved listening to Davis's take on the characters in the first part of the clip.



Behind the Scenes with Andrew Davis - Adapting Austen : "When in doubt, copy it out" - fantastic! I love the music at the beginning of the clip. I don't recognise it from any of the other adaptations so I'm hoping *fingers crossed* that it's theme music from Sense & Sensibility.



PBS TV Trailer for the upcoming Jane Austen Season : All six novels on the small screen for the first time. Yay!

UK Jane fans don't have long to wait for Sense & Sensibilty which begins screening on New Year's Day. We can't wait for reviews! The new adaptation will air in the US as part of the PBS Sunday's With Jane extravaganza.

"I Don't Believe in Mr Darcy"

She's only 18, and she describes herself as naive, but actress Imogen Poots, who's starring in the BBC's big Christmas costume drama about the life of Jane Austen, has no illusions about men.

Based on the life and letters of Jane Austen, the feature-length film focuses on the author's later years. Imogen plays Jane's niece Fanny, an ingénue who looks to her spinster aunt for guidance on matters of the heart.

According to producer Anne Pivcevic, "Imogen has that combination of naivety and consummate intelligence that made her perfect. As soon as we saw her, there was never any question that she was Fanny."

"The corsets virtually cut off your breasts. I can't imagine how women ever lived in those clothes," she grimaces. She wasn't an Austen devotee ('I'd read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility'), yet she quickly grasped the perennial Austen conundrum – should a girl marry for love or money?

In Miss Austen Regrets, the recurring advice Jane gives to Fanny is that she must marry for love.

"It's something we take for granted today – that we can earn our own living and marry whom we like," Imogen says. "But it was a harsh world then because women were reliant on men for their status."

I wonder if Imogen has fallen in love herself, but she is evasive on the subject of boyfriends. "I'm too young," she says, laughing. "I've done what Fanny does – met someone, thought, 'Oh my God, I'm in love!' and had those intense times where nothing else matters."

"I think that happens constantly when you're young because there will always be someone older and wiser to look up to," she adds. "But I don't believe in Mr Darcy. Men like him only exist in fiction."

I quoted excerpts of the interview relevant to Miss Austen Regrets, but I suggest you head over to the Dailymail and read the full article, because it's fantastic. So, do I believe in Mr Darcy? Hmmm, let's just say that I desperately will myself to, because yes, I'm convinced that there are real life "Darcy's" out there ... somewhere!! (far from here, I can tell you!)

Miss Austen regrets will air in the UK sometime in December and on February 3 in the USA.

Ref: "I don't believe in Darcy," says Imogen Poots, star of BBC's Miss Austen Regrets

Pic: Imogen Poots as Fanny from: Dailymail

Olivia Williams Discusses Miss Austen Regrets

British actress Olivia Williams is no stranger to Jane Austen, having played Jane Fairfax in Emma 1996 and more recently reading a Persuasion audio book. She recently spoke to The Guardian about her role as Jane Austen in the upcoming Miss Austen Regrets:

"...Though she had 'written this summer off' due to the baby, it turned out to be a busy one, and after making two films, There for Me with her friend Paul Bettany and Flashbacks of a Fool with Daniel Craig, she was back doing more Jane Austen, this time a BBC film about the writer's later years. Miss Austen Regrets is a highly - maybe dangerously - speculative biopic, tracing a narrative out of the writer's possible romantic near-misses. It is a bleakly accomplished little film, quite unlike last spring's sprightly Becoming Jane, and Williams turns in a startling and muscular performance: spiky, self-assured and yet frequently stricken by the thought of what might have been.

'Mmm, it's very dangerous, isn't it?' Williams agrees, flinching a little. She hopes the Janeites who made such a fuss about Anne Hathaway's Austen in Becoming Jane are still lying down in their darkened rooms, recovering, so that this film will pass without comment. However, she is a bit of a Janeite herself, so her own reservations surface with very little encouragement. Having trained herself to be 'wily and flinty and mercenary' over the years, which is presumably one reason why she signed up to the project, she couldn't help being pained by it. She feels awkward about the intrusion into a modest and little-known life: 'My ideal script would be quotations from the letters, brilliantly knitted together into perfectly natural scenes. Anything that you put into her mouth has to be brilliant, written by somebody who was as brilliant as Jane Austen, and that's impossible, so to have her speaking in a way that is lazily colloquial to me was a mistake.'

So she has said lines that she feels uncomfortable with? 'Did I say lines I was uncomfortable with?' she muses, in a rather lawyerly fashion. 'There was so much debate that most of the time we shot scenes two ways, so I'm subject to the editors. I feel I've done what I can, I've fulfilled my contract, and I've quieted my own conscience.' She pauses. 'You know, I have this fear, because of my own academic background: I'm scared that my English teacher from school is going to ring me up and say, "She wouldn't have said that! How could you?" That keeps me awake at night,' she says gloomily. 'That and childcare.'"

I suggest you head over to The Guardian and read the rest of the interview - it's a fascinating and enlighting read. I love Olivia as an actor and I'm looking forward to her portrayal of Jane Austen!

Miss Austen regrets will air in the UK sometime in December and on February 3 in the USA.

Pic: Olivia Williams as Jane Austen from: BBC

Anyone missing James McAvoy's Glaswegian accent?

Cos it is very likely that you, like me, will go: 'Aaaarrrrggggggghhhhh!!! Jaaaames!!!' when you see this clip about manners during the Regency period:



And how the cricket was actually not popular in Ireland and Scotland, despite being a favourite sport in UK:




Also, Willow has posted the Becoming Jane cricket scene in YouTube.




Thank you Artisan News Service and Willow for the YouTube videos! By the way, James is bulkier, eh? Must be that 'Wanted' movie! And James is sooo cute and funny in both interview sessions!

Anne and James talking about dancing

Okay Kari, you win :-D

Thanks for the tip, here's a YouTube video of Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy talking about dancing in the 18th century. I've seen the interview with Anne before in Film 2006, but I have not seen James talking about the dance. And oh my God... his accent is soooo sexy!



Enjoy, Ladies and Gents!

Reelz Channel interview with Anne Hathaway

YouTube has another uploaded interview with Anne Hathaway about Becoming Jane. Click here for the complete Reelz Channel interview.



Jill, the interviewer, asked Anne of what she would ask Jane if Anne could meet her. Anne answered with why Cassandra destroyed the letters, and can she [Anne] have the copy of all the letters. Also, if Jane likes the movie, and if Jane is okay with her playing the Jane Austen, or she prefers someone else to play her. So cute! ^_^

In another topic, Noelle made some lovely BJ icons for your postings, so I'm sure she would not mind you using them! Click here for the icons. Thanks Noelle!

Anne Hathaway interviews with CBS &c

I am excessively fond of this CBS interview here with Anne Hathaway, for Hannah Storm and Anne talked of Jane Austen a lot (although Get Smart was also mentioned). Click here for the YouTube link.



In the interview, Anne also said that Becoming Jane referred to all Jane Austen's novels, not only Pride & Prejudice and its Mr. Darcy, and Hannah thought of it as a good thing. Anne suggested that it is not fair to say that Jane Austen needed Tom Lefroy to inspire her writing. Anne also questioned whether it was the experience, or the imagination that made Jane Austen a great writer (I understood that this was where Anne might get the initial 'clash' with James McAvoy). Though I personally think that Jane did combine experience and lots and lots of imagination, I still respect Anne's opinion here, and I hope the puritan Janeites will see her interview, so they don't attack her that much... sometimes.

The second interview was longer, I took the second part only, but I love it when Anne said that she did the Get Smart audition just because she wanted to see Steve Carrell. She's so funny!



The gorgeous thing? The BJ clip is the kissing by the pond! Eeeeeeeeekkkk! ^_^

The hilarious thing? Anne said that Jane Austen kissing was an extremely unaccepted behaviour at that time, and she did that anyway. Then Anne said, by now the Janeites would type furiously in their blogs, saying 'Can you believe she said that?!' LOL!

The very very funny thing? Conan (?) the interviewer tried to write his diary (Dear Diary) saying that he was talking to Anne Hathaway that was positively in love with him! LOL!

More on the Truly Moving Picture (TMP) Award Interview with Julian Jarrold

Icha previously made a post about the TMP interview with the Becoming Jane director Julian Jarrold, kindly provided to us by Lisa Trifone.

Lisa updated us today with news that the interview is now available in audio form on the TMP podcast.
Here is the link:

http://www.trulymovingpictures.org/podcast-view.aspx?id=67


Furthermore, the unedited interview with Julian that may potentially contain some film spoilers can be found here in text version:

http://www.trulymovingpictures.org/interview-view.aspx?id=66

The audio version of this will be available shortly on the website.

Happy Listening!


Pic 1: TMP logo

Pic 2: Julian Jarrold from shopping.yahoo.com/p:Julian%20Jarrold:1800313388

Anne Hathaway is 'Becoming Jane'

Michelle has provided me again with an in-depth interview of Anne Hathaway with Comingsoon.net. Here's the link to the entire interview, and I shall only quote the part about other Austen movies and chemistry that I have not read yet elsewhere.


CS: When you were cast as Jane, did you watch any of the films based on her novels and did you derive anything from them?

Hathaway: Oh, yes. A lot of anxiety, that's what I derived. (laughs) My favorite—and I gotta keep it in the family—is "Sense and Sensibility." Just everything about that movie is as perfect as it could have been. That's an extraordinary film. I also loved "Persuasion," the BBC version with Amanda Root, I thought she was an absolutely delight, and I really love that one. I loved "Persuasion" because I think it's a little bit bleaker than the others but it's also beautiful to get caught up in Ann Elliot's transformation. In fact, it was "Persuasion" that convinced me I was really doing the right thing by telling this story. Tom Lefroy was born in Ireland and maybe this is nothing and maybe I shouldn't have hung my hat on this one fact, but in the story, Ann Elliot is attending a concert, and Captain Wentworth has arrived and everyone is so impressed with him, including people who disliked him before because he was poor. He arrives and Catherine overhears someone talking about him, someone who had previously denigrated him, and this person said, "Oh, who is that very impressive young man? He has an air about him. Irish I would think." I don't know if that has anything to do with Tom Lefroy, but it seemed fitting. And so, "Persuasion" meant a lot to me when I was making this movie. Also, I thought the recent adaptation of "Pride & Prejudice" was an absolute delight. I think Keira Knightly was heaven in it and I think Joe Wright is genius and I can't wait to see "Atonement."

CS: Can you talk about how you established chemistry with James McAvoy and were you able to shoot the scenes sort of in order with the way they happened in the movie?

Hathaway: (laughs) No, no one cares about putting scenes in order to help us out. That's the least of their concerns. It's funny. The questions that people ask about chemistry. There's no formula to it. It's not like getting into a character of finding an accent or choosing what costumes your character would wear. It's really something much more intangible. I like James. I really like James McAvoy as a person. I think he's smart, terribly clever, a lot of fun, a brilliant actor and so, I just enjoy spending time with him, maybe that's what came through. Maybe he and I understood our characters well enough that we were able to let that relationship come through. Who knows? But it's nice to watch.

Pic from annie-hathaway.com

David Letterman on Anne Hathaway & 'Becoming Jane'

Thank you again Kari, for directing me to the YouTube section of David Letterman's interview with Anne Hathaway regarding Becoming Jane. Thank you also boneshk for the video clip!




I hope to receive more info on audio interviews of Becoming Jane from YouTube; so just drop me notes guys! Thanks! Also don't forget to drop your impressions on Becoming Jane in the post below. Truly appreciate it!

TMP interview with Julian Jarrold

Lisa Trifone of the Truly Moving Picture Award has recently done an interview with Julian Jarrold, and here's the verbatim copy from the Truly Moving Picture site.

It didn’t take British director Julian Jarrold more than a few moments to name “The Lives of Others,” the 2007 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, as one of his personal Truly Moving Pictures.

“It’s about how relationships were distorted by always having to look over one’s shoulder,” he shared in a recent phone interview. “But it is actually full of fantastic hope and optimism at the end, a truly amazing film.”

Jarrold may be looking to films set in the 20th century for inspiration as a change of pace. His Becoming Jane hits theaters nationwide on June 10, and filming meant spending days in 18th century England with young stars Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy. The latest Truly Moving Picture Award winner, Becoming Jane is a sharp-witted, smart and charming portrait of Jane Austen before her novels would make her one of Britain’s most revered authors.

When he made the transition from television to film with 2005’s “Kinky Boots,” Jarrold knew he had Austen in his future.

“I’ve always been interested in Jane Austen, but I was cautious about doing another adaptation of one of her novels,” he confessed. “But this screenplay came along and…it allowed all sorts of little insights into how she wrote her novels.”

Those insights, of course, include exploring the relationship Austen most likely had with a young Irishman named Tom LeFroy. It was a deliberate decision to cover that portion of Austen’s life when, newly twenty years old, her ideals and perspectives that would appear in her later works were just taking shape.

With the script in place, Jarrold and team turned to casting their motion picture.

“We wanted to blow the dust off it a bit and find the real human being,” the director said. “We wanted somebody young and feisty. Annie had such qualities, and happened to be a complete expert on Jane Austen. It wasn’t hard, really, to cast her.”

Anne Hathaway tackles the role of Austen with grace and confidence, and costars James McAvoy as Tom LeFroy, Maggie Smith as Lady Gresham and James Cromwell as the Reverend Austen light up the screen alongside the feisty American.

Austen’s affair with LeFroy was never meant to be, though, and she would go on to live and write as a single woman. Balancing this sense of loss with an optimistic tone proved a personal goal for Jarrold, as he crafted a film that highlighted what Austen ultimately achieved and contributed to literature.

“I hope [the film] enriches their understanding of Jane Austen,” Jarrold offers to the audiences who’ll see the movie in theaters. “I just hope people will go back to the books and read them again and again.”

And if he’s done his job, they’ll return to the film again and again as well. Becoming Jane is in limited release June 3, nationwide June 10. View the trailer or visit the official movie site. To learn more about this and other award winning films, visit www.TrulyMovingPictures.org

Written by Lisa Trifone | Photo Credit: Colm Hogan/Courtesy of Miramax Films

'Becoming Jane' music videos and interview in YouTube

Apparently I've missed several music videos of Becoming Jane from YouTube, so here they are. Now, the first one I found was Anne Hathaway's interview with Talking Pictures' host Tony Toscano. No embedded tag, so you have to click here to see it.

The second one is a music video by SinnedAngel08, titled 'Jane and Tom'.



Afterwards, we have Celine Dion singing Then You Look at Me for the background, music video made by Floramir. There's a few seconds clip of James McAvoy and Jessica Ashworth (Lucy Lefroy), apparently off the set watching the filming. Lovely!



Enjoy!

Anne Hathaway U.S. schedule interviews

AH_fan (I assume from Annie-Hathaway.com) informed that Anne Hathaway will be having several TV interviews to promote Becoming Jane. The schedule is as follows:

The Late Show with David Letterman - Friday, July 27
Live with Regis & Kelly - Wednesday, August 1
Late Night with Conan O'Brien - Thursday, August 2

I'm not in the U.S., so I'm not sure the exact time of it. But I assume you guys are familiar with these shows? Go check it out and tell me how it goes.

Interview with Director, Producer and Star.

I am always interested in reading interviews of the people responsible for making the film and this one stood out for me.

It is an interview with Julian Jarrold (films director), Robert Bernstein (films producer) and James McAvoy (Tom Lefroy....of course!)

I just wanted to share it with everyone as it gives alot of insight into the making of the film and the ideas behind it.

I think from reading this blog it is clear that Icha and I believe very strongly that there did exist a passionate love story between Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy. James McAvoy makes a statement that I really agree with:

"to understand the human condition you have to have been pained by the human experience."

This is the philosophy that I use when I think of the wonderful love stories that Jane Austen wrote!

The link for the article is here:

http://www.britfilms.tv/index.php?id=1856

I hope you enjoy.

Pic: Sketch of Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy from austen effusions by Jane Odiwe.

Filming location of 'Becoming Jane'

Defying the tradition of previous Austenian movies, Becoming Jane was filmed in Dublin and some countryside of Ireland, instead of Hampshire, U.K., the birthplace of Jane Austen. The movie indeed received funding from the Irish Film Board, but as Julian Jarrold said in an interview with Phase9 Entertainment, the decision was mainly driven by the fact that ‘Hampshire now is groomed and manicured and we were able to find in Ireland was a sense of countryside that felt more unchanged. That was one of the things that I really wanted to get... a sense of the landscape in which Jane Austen grew up. Ireland also has a great variety of Georgian houses and older houses as well. I think it gave us quite a different and interesting look for the film’.


At first, I was rather disappointed that the movie was not shot in England, but then after reading this interview, I was convinced that it was the right decision. The bad weather somehow created better lighting and soulful feelings for the movie, not unlike the bad weather in the Legends of the Falls. And after all, Tom Lefroy was an Irishman, so it kinda paid tribute to him as one of the most important figure in Jane Austen's life. In addition, in an interview with the Britfilms, James McAvoy said that he liked the fact that the houses in Becoming Jane were 'left to recede a bit more, a bit more gritty that you haven't seen in Austen films' and thus portrayed a 'sense of reality and a sense of poorer world' in the Regency Period. Yup. A good choice indeed, and I mean it.

See Film 2006 interview with Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy and Julie Walters for better viewing of the set in Dublin. I hope that the DVD will feature landscapes and buildings used to make the movie, for they are very beautiful indeed!




Pic: www.annie-hathaway.com

Last year's interview of Film 2006 with James, Anne & Julie Walters

Okay, before I fly to Melbourne this evening (to see HH Dalai Lama, yay!), I think I will close the day with this post re: interview of the 'Film 2006' crews with James McAvoy, Anne Hathaway and Julie Walters. It was done last year, October 2006 at least, but it worth putting it here. A very interesting piece, including a scene of Elizabeth and Darcy (Pride & Prejudice 2005) and we have a bit of dance scenes here, plus James' very sexy way of saying 'sexy' (true!). Yumm!



This is the link to the YouTube video.