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Written by Gregg Shapiro, WiG Staff Writer
Jan 14, 2010
Director Stephan Elliott holds Fizz as he arrives for the BFI London Film Festival screening of “Easy Virtue” in London. – Photo: AP/ Matt Dunham
A scene from Stephan Elliott’s “Easy Virtue”
Stephan Elliott is a storyteller. On screen or over the phone, Elliott has a way of telling a story and making it fascinating.
Having just mounted “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” the stage musical version of his Oscar-winning 1994 movie “The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert,” Elliott’s latest film “Easy Virtue” is making its DVD and BluRay debut this month.
Based on an early Noel Coward play, the film tells the story of the arrival of American widow and race car driver Larita (Jessica Biel) into the terribly proper lives of a stuffy British family following her marriage to favored son John (Ben Barnes).
I spoke with Elliott about “Easy Virtue” and his other movies.
Gregg Shapiro: Your previous films, including “The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert” and “Welcome To Woop Woop,” were contemporary stories. What was it about Noel Coward’s play “Easy Virtue” that made you want to do a period piece?
Stephan Elliott: Actually, I was quite famously having a career of basically trying to remove myself from “Priscilla.” As much as I love her, she is an old ball and chain. I haven’t actually ever been able to get past it.… Quite helpful was Richard O’Brien, who did the “Rocky Horror Show.” He said, “Look, Stephan, it’s the same thing. I’ve got ‘Rocky,’ and I can’t get past it. But there comes a point when you have to start looking at it as a gift. As a gift, instead of a burden.” Those were wise words at the right time for me. It is a gift and it’s time to get back to work and do something different. And yet it’s not different in a sense. I think there was a theme in there (that) attracted me to it, which is ultimately, at the end of the day, all of the work has had something similar — even “Woop Woop” had it — they’re all fish-out-of-water stories. Like it or not, it’s very much there. Jessica Biel is the drag queen, so to speak.
GS: I’m glad that you mentioned Jessica. At first, I wasn’t sure that she had the range to bring Larita to bear, but she surprised me.
SE: That’s the best thing you could ever possibly say to me. That’s what I was banking on. Coward had originally written Larita as a little bit older. This sassy, ballsy, American divorcee who marries this younger man. I actually looked at a lot of actresses a little bit older and a lot of them had done similar (work). It’s very similar to what I did with (Terence) Stamp in “Priscilla,” which is look outside the box. When I met Jessica, there was something incredibly fresh about her. I realized that she’s got this baggage of being called “the most beautiful woman in the world,” which she’s been voted several times. There’s a part of her that’s fighting to get out of that and stretch.… And she worked her guts out. I’ve never seen anybody work that hard. She got up every morning and fought her way through it and that was just a joy to behold. Within about two days of shooting the film, Colin Firth spun around, looked at me and said, “She’s going to steal this movie.”…
GS: Both “…Priscilla…” and “…Woop Woop…” had wonderful soundtracks, and so does “Easy Virtue.” I was especially struck by the period arrangements of modern tunes such as Rose Royce’s “Car Wash,” Billy Ocean’s “When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Going” and Tom Jones’ “Sexbomb.”
SE: Honestly, I’m a frustrated composer. It’s funny, I fell into this job and actually all I’ve ever wanted to do is write music. Usually before I start anywhere, I start with a strong musical concept of what I want to do. In this instance, I wanted to stretch myself a little bit.
GS: Something that I noticed in the movie is the use of reflections — in mirrors, windows, and even the eight ball on the billiards table.
SE: That was very deliberate. When Coward wrote this play, he was very young. The original play is very vicious. It wasn’t funny, it was really rather cruel. He was having a go at the English. The Coward that we know and love, which is quite a lot lighter, he became that later in his career. Part of what my thinking was — Coward’s known as the master, I wonder what the master would have done if he’d approached the same material when he was older. That became what we were doing in the writing department. Most people don’t know this, but a very young Alfred Hitchcock shot the original “Easy Virtue” as a silent movie as his second movie. It was Coward’s second play and Hitchcock’s second movie.
GS: Kind of ironic.
SE: Yes! When you look at the (original) film, it’s not very good, because it was a small black-and-white movie. … Hitchcock wasn’t even Hitchcock yet. If we’re going to attack the script from the perspective of what the older Coward would have done if he’d rewritten it, I thought to myself, what would the older Hitchcock have done if he’d done it in his prime, rather than when he was 20 years old. A lot of the visuals throughout the film (are) classic Hitchcock in his prime.
GS: I don’t think I’m ruining it for anybody, but the movie contains the unfortunate death of the family dog.
SE: Ah, yes.
GS: Are you worried about PETA or animal rights activists making a fuss?
SE: No. It actually happened to a girlfriend of mine. She’d met a guy, and when she went to meet the family for the first time, she was so nervous, she actually sat on the family Chihuahua the minute she walked in the house. All hell broke loose and there were tears. She went away and they bought the family a new dog, and when they came back for a second meeting with the family she was so nervous about doing anything wrong. She went looking for the toilet, couldn’t find it and rather than keep asking where the toilet was, she shut the door, locked herself in the bathroom, pulled down her pants and jumped up on the sink to go to the toilet. The sink snapped off and she knocked herself out. They eventually broke the door down about two hours later and found herself unconscious in a pile of her own piddle with her underpants around her ankles. You’ll be happy to know that that was the end of that relationship. They never got past the second one (laughs).
GS: There were signs that it was not meant to be.
SE: It was not meant to be. I’ve actually been trying to do this gag for quite some time.
GS: How does being a gay man influence your work, if at all?
SE: There’s a single theme that I’ve only recognized in the last couple of years, but there is definitely a feeling through every film and in everything I’ve ever written that has only recently dawned on me – and that is that I’ve always felt like a bit of an outsider. Every film I’ve done is about an outsider not fitting in. I have never not fit in. I’ve always fit in fine. But I guess going back to my early teens, it was probably a traumatic experience, as I think it probably is for most gay and lesbians when they don’t fit in.
