Nicholas Hytner Interview, Director of History Boys

MoviesOnline recently caught up with director Nicholas Hytner at the Los Angeles press day for his new film, "The History Boys." Bringing an entirely fresh and witty perspective to the cinematic tradition of inspirational classroom dramas such as "The Dead Poet’s Society," "Finding Forrester," and "The Emperors Club," "The History Boys" is a sly, funny yet thought-provoking story about the real meaning and value of "getting an education."

Based on the provocative play by Alan Bennett about the anarchy of adolescence, the purpose of education and the nature of history, "The History Boys" follows an unruly bunch of sharp, talented but rough-edged British schoolboys whose worlds are changed forever when two teachers with opposing viewpoints on education engage in a battle to get them into Oxford and Cambridge. Through biting wit and rapid-fire dialogue – not to mention music song, vintage movie scenes, impassioned debates and moments of stark emotional truth -- "The History Boys" humorously brings to the fore the serious subject of how one generation passes its wisdom on to the next.

In May of 2004, "The History Boys" opened at London’s National Theatre under the direction of Nicholas Hytner and was an instant sensation. Rife with mischievous wit, teenage energy, and insistent questions about everything from why anyone reads poetry to the nitty-gritty of sexual ethics, the play drew sell-out crowds and garnered numerous prizes including the Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play, Best Director and Best Actor, as well as the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play. A hugely successful world tour was later followed by a smash hit run on Broadway. Despite its distinctly British setting, the story connected just as strongly with Americans. It went on to sweep the Tony Awards, winning six categories, including Best Play, Best Director, Best Lead Actor and Best Featured Actress.

Even before the play went to Broadway, the massive outpouring of enthusiasm for its themes and characters made it clear that Hytner and Bennett who had previously collaborated on the Oscar-nominated film "The Madness of King George," also from a stage production at the National Theatre, should consider bringing the story to the screen. They decided to work at a lightning pace to retain that magical spark that had been lit on the stage, shooting the film in just five weeks in a brief window between the play’s run at the National Theatre and the start of its world tour.

"The play was rehearsed in depth when we first staged it and not much more than a year later, we made the film," explains Hytner. "Films can take years and years and years and sometimes, by the time they get made, all passion is spent. But Alan wrote the play quickly, in a flash of inspiration, and it’s a play that we never lost our enthusiasm for. In the process of translating it from the stage to film – of rethinking how to tell the story, re-conceiving it, re-visualizing it – there was never any slackening of momentum."

Here’s what Nicholas Hytner had to tell us about the challenges of adapting the play to the big screen:

NICHOLAS HYTNER: Well, 1983 was the last year that they had seventh term entry and then it was the early 1990s that they dropped the entrance exam completely. Oxford apparently is now thinking of reintroducing it because they think… Everything was done to try and make the playing field level for students from state schools because of the grotesquely disproportionate number of Oxford and Cambridge students still come from the private schools. I think between 40 and 50% still come from the private schools and that’s less than 10% of the school population. And they’re quite genuinely trying to identify the brightest kids from whatever background. I know they now have started to think that the way they’re dealing with it now which is through A-levels which everybody takes which have gotten easier so it’s harder and harder to know through A-level results who’s good and who’s bad. An interview perhaps favors private school students even more because the private school students are articulate, confident, interview terribly well so they’re now thinking they may go back to…at Oxford I know. I know Oxford is doing that. I go back to Cambridge quite a lot and have taught at Oxford so I still remain in touch with both universities.

NH: Yeah, I went to Cambridge. Yeah.

NH: Trinity Hall.

NH: It’s a little bit later. I was there 1974 to 1977.

NH: Very. And the school that the film’s about is very similar to the school I went to. The school that I was at is mentioned by the head master as one of the schools he would like his school to be like. But it was the same category of school, grammar school, which was competitive entry but not fee paying. In other words, a state-run grammar school.

NH: There are all sorts of…they’re all the obvious ones, the challenges that always exist. The theater presents itself to a static point of view. You sit in the middle of the orchestra, you watch it, but you are much more in charge when you sit in the theater of the experience you have than you are when you watch film because you can choose what to look at. One of the things you have to learn how to do as a theater director is to manipulate your point of view on a much bigger and more democratic canvas than you have in films. So obviously the first thing is you have to start thinking of it in terms of a moving camera, in terms of the series of images rather than in terms of just one permanent wide shot which I have to say doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m not a natural filmmaker in that way. I think real born filmmakers edit in their heads. They think in terms of a series… They storyboard in their heads. They think in terms of a series of images and I do not think in terms of people in a space and then wonder how to shoot it. So that was a challenge. The acting challenge was more of a liberation than a challenge because it’s much harder to act on stage. To do a scene like the Drummer Hodge scene on stage, to do it truthfully and naturally and to include a thousand people in, is actually more of a challenge that to do it for each other across a table. I think their performances are all the better because they’ve done it 200 times for a thousand people. I think they’ve found so much in it. But I think to be able just to do it for each other and not to include the house in it was a liberation for me. But I think in many respects the biggest challenge is one where I have no idea how successful we were. This is a very theatrical film. They don’t speak the way people speak.This is a writer with a real signature and although it’s rooted in a real world, and although the characters are based on a degree of modern observation, they’re not by any means supposed to be typical and they don’t speak the way 18 year olds speak. They speak the way a writer with a very distinct voice has them speaking. As a writer, he’s in a great tradition of English speaking comedy and what they say is worth saying because it’s so beautifully expressed which means it’s a very theatrical film and you try to find a balance between a cinematic reality and naturalism.

NH: The Madness of King George. Well, yeah, because I think an audience expects people in powdered wigs and frock coats to speak in a heightened fashion. They’re less willing to accept 18-year-old school boys speaking in a heightened fashion and that’s the thing they had to try and lick, these actors. Together we had to try and make them convincing.

NH: None at all. None at all. For King George I did but that was the first time I did it because it would have served no function. We ran two cameras most of the time. It was shot on very high speed 16mm which meant that it needed very little in the way of lighting which meant that we could run two cameras a lot of the time and I had a very, very clear ideas of…. Actually the idea was one big idea which was this camera should move as fast as they think. That was the idea. And it should be a film about getting close to them and getting behind their eyes and under their skin and there should be… We didn’t worry. You can see we didn’t worry in the conventional sense about opening it up. It’s an enclosed world and we were very happy for it to remain so.

NH: Honestly, there was no pressure form anybody because… there really wasn’t. We had a great experience because we decided to do it for 2 million pounds. That was the first and big decision – do it for 2 million pounds. Actually we asked Kevin Loader and Damian Jones, my two fellow producers, who have made this kind of movie a lot. We said, ‘How little can we make this for?’ I said, ‘I think I can do it in six weeks. They know it backwards.’ I talked to director of photography Andrew Dunn who I did my Madness of King George and The Crucible with and who I learned everything from really and we thought yeah, we can. If we work really hard, we can do this in six weeks. If we can do it in six weeks, how little can we make this for? They produced this budget totally real, really inventive budget, and we then went out and said…we literally went out… actually they went to Cannes. Kevin and Damian went to Cannes which is the story that everybody tells me usually has a horrible ending and said, ‘Here’s a script. Here’s a cast. Here’s a schedule. It’s non-negotiable. They don’t want to do it unless they can do it this way.’ And this was true. And we were absolutely clear that we didn’t want to do it unless we could do it that way. We didn’t have to do it. Well, who will pay $2 million pounds for it? And there were a small handful of takers. In the end, the BBC was perfect. They have a long relationship with Alan Bennett. It was perfect.

NH: Yeah, it’s done really well. It’s already paid for itself and some so everything else is a bonus.

NH: The Queen is a sensational film, I think. It’s absolutely wonderful. Okay, I’ll tell you something about The Queen which is that that is an entirely theatrical cast. That cast is a cast of theater actors and virtually all of them have been on stage at my own theater over the last three years starting with Helen Mirren, Roger Allam, Alex Jennings who plays Prince Charles. I like Helen Mirren who is one of our associates and is on stage at least one a year. Tim McMullan plays his private secretary. Helen McCrory who plays Cherie Blair. Michael Sheen who plays Tony Blair. These are all National Theatre players. 10:00

NH: He’s Australian.

NH: Is he?

NH: Is he? I always thought he was Australian because of Babe the Pig. Yeah, Babe the Pig. Everyone except James Cromwell.

NH: Sylvia Syms? It’s a while since she’s been on stage, and she, to be fair, her pedigree is all those wonderful old 50s movies, those … because she was a little sex bomb, was she not?

NH: Yeah, yeah, she was indeed, but she was from the last glory days of the British cinema although she’s done quite a lot of stage. But I think it’s a really interesting thing about The Queen that one of the reasons they’re so good is they’re all theater actors.

NH: It was important that…I hope it’s more than a record. It was important to us that it was that team. It wouldn’t have been… We wouldn’t have done it without that team.

NH: No, they were all really excited to do it.

NH: Listen, it depends on what the material is. The Queen has a really witty, literate script. I just think the best actors do both.

NH: Well he has such an extraordinary delicacy and his way of exposing that gulf of disappointment that Hector carries with him is so moving and so graceful. He really finds in it depths which I don’t think either Alan or I were anticipating. What he can do with the way he talks about the Hardy poem and Drummer Hodge is so very much more than you would think appeared on the page. He’s someone who can take a hint on the page and because he works in such minute detail and because he works with such subtlety and delicacy, he can make real transformations.

NH: I didn’t quite mean that.

NH: But it’s not. It’s not. I think that’s a really reductive view of what drama, whether on film or on stage, should be. Yes, there’s one kind of film. There’s one kind of play which aims slavishly to recreate the speech patterns that you might hear on the street but no, it’s absolute…no, no, there is a direct line that you can trace from Alan Bennett who generally roots his work in the real world that he grew up in the north of England but nevertheless as a stylist, you can trace him back through Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde right through to Restoration Comedy. He is in the tradition of English comedy and manners. Now, no, you would not find typically at a typical school eight guys this articulate, this witty, this intellectually sure of themselves. But I don’t see that film or theater should be restricted to what is apparently a slavish imitation of reality. Even when Hamlet says that the purpose of playing is to hold the mirror as though it were up to nature, he’s presupposing that when you hold that mirror up, the people reflected in it are spouting back to you in blank verse. If that is a criticism that is being made on the message boards, I would say anonymously no doubt it is extraordinary the way message boards have become part of the discourse. You are journalists, you sign your name to your opinions. I honestly think it’s beneath you to worry about people who will not sign their names to their opinions. I don’t think their opinions are worth squat. But I would say to them, ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right. Well done. Turn out a temporal observation and so what?’

NH: Well I think that’s fine. It’s absolutely fine. I don’t think it’s a film for everybody by any means. I mean it is a literate, old fashioned theatrical kind of experience so I think that’s absolutely fine. If judged…if it’s supposed to be like an average high school movie, then it’s going to be found desperately wanting. Don’t go. I don’t think North America is a problem at all by the way. I mean this was on Broadway somewhat to my surprise. It was not just a kind of critical snob hit. It was a big popular hit. You couldn’t get in for six months. And I think there’s not a problem with that. I think… Listen, there are so many different audiences out there. An audience that wants it to be like its own experience of high school is going to be disappointed. You know, the Cossacks are disappointed by Borat (laughter), but I do genuinely think that the more specific a work of art is… the more specific…I’m not going to call it art. I’m going to call it entertainment. The more specific a novel, or a play, or a film is, the more universal its potential. There is something to me quite debilitating about entertainment based on a kind of corporate idea of what’s universal and even more depressing about the notion that what is universal is, in fact, California. If what is universal is a school in Beverly Hills, then no, this is very, very much not universal. It’s absolutely not. But what’s universal in fact, I think, is what’s authentic and what’s authentic is something that is the product of a fierce individual imagination looking at the real world of that imagination sees around him or her. What’s authentic – and I’m not putting The History Boys in this bracket – but what’s authentic is Almodovar because Almodovar does not dilute the Spanishness of his movies. They are really Spanish but they’re not typically Spanish because the guy has a wild and totally individual and completely inimitable imagination. Life in Spain does not actually unfold the way it does in an Almodovar movie but that doesn’t make them any less Spanish. What they’re sure as hell not is designed to be universal but because – and I’m just talking as a fan of Almodovar – because I completely believe in first the authenticity of his imagination and secondly in the reality, the concrete reality of the world he is transforming through his imagination, I think ‘Hey, universal.’ Another example, actually she’s a big worldwide box office phenomenon, nobody looks at a tinier corner of the world than Jane Austen and yet it’s universal because you know it’s true. You know that the world she’s writing about is the world she lives in and that her imagination transforms it into something undeniable. Well I would say in his own small way, that’s what Alan Bennett does. He looks at a school in Yorkshire in the north of England and he transforms it by the power of his own literacy and imagination and then we do what we can to bring that to life. That’s probably the kind of film which is… well, quite definitely the kind of film which is not of universal appeal. That’s fine by me.

NH: I’m not available. I’m actually not available because I run a theater so I have no film plans at all. And I would very much like to think that I might make another film some day but I actually have a full time job.

NH: No, I really can’t. I genuinely can’t so I’d like to think that if I was available, there’s all sorts of wonderful things that would be offered to me but I don’t know because I’m not. My agents have the easiest job in the world. They just go, ‘not available.’

NH: Yeah, yeah, he does it though without the 15 million pounds a year I get from the government so you can’t knock him.

NH: The play was actually much more mainstream pulp and this is not my period so I had to be helped. Actually I was helped quite a lot by the guys, but also by [inaudible] the music supervisor. I can’t put down that this was the stuff I was listening to in the early 80s. I got stuck back in the 70s and have not wholly kept up since. The thinking was … I found that the music we used in the play was very efficient at evoking period but I thought it was a bit girly and a bit kind of mainstream for smart Yorkshire stage performers. The think that I was really keen on what that there was – even though I wasn’t listening to it. I always listen. I’m exaggerating. I was aware. The music scene in the north in Manchester and Sheffield was really quite vibrant at the beginning of the 80s so we used that as much as we can and made it a little bit more alternative. And you know, groups like The Smiths and New Order and Blue Monday absolutely goes (snaps fingers) wallop and you’re there, and The Cure and The Clash and the much more kind of…they’re more boyish really, they’re more male.

NH: Yeah, it is and because I’m not … because it’s really kind of scary to me and I don’t have a … I don’t instinctively think through a camera being … having to is destabilizing and exciting and I don’t have any… I know that I do have tricks when I’m directing a play and I don’t have any tricks when I’m directing a film because I haven’t learned them so it’s… But yeah, it is exciting to get out and do things on location. It is exciting to find a way of transforming literal surroundings into something that now works in two dimensions. In the end I think I’m more instinctively attuned to the more non-literal world of the stage, you know. I’m more attuned to something standing for something else. You know there’s a very famous definition of what the theater is in the most influential book written in the second half of the twentieth century. It was by Peter Brook called The Empty Space and he said, ‘A man walks across an empty space and another man watches him and that’s all it takes for an act of theater to be engaged.’ And you see, the reason is because when a man walks across an empty space and somebody else watches him, you immediately start thinking, ‘Well, where is this man and who is he and what does it mean and what does this space evoke for me?’ But if you put a camera on that man walking across the empty space, he’s just a man in a room. It’s a more literal medium and it takes a real film artist to make it something other than literal. And I’m not that artist. It takes a real film artist to do that. I’m not that person.

NH: No, there’s nothing. It’s theirs. They’re in charge. I never understand why actors think that somehow they’re more in control when they’re in front of a camera. You do something in front of a camera and by the time it reaches the audience it’s been so fucked with, even if it’s not been re-recorded, but certainly all the ambient sound, the effects, the color, where it stands in relation to the shot before and the shot after. It’s completely in the director’s hands. But on stage, in real time and real space, the director isn’t there. I wasn’t there when… you know … I check up on it once every three weeks. They’re totally in charge. It’s theirs.

NH: Thank you.

"The History Boys" opens in theaters on November 21^st.