Interview
Interview: WAMG Talks To EFFIE GRAY Producer Donald Rosenfeld
Coming to theater on April 3rd is the film EFFIE GRAY.
The film explores the fascinating, true story of the relationship between Victorian England’s greatest mind, John Ruskin, and his teenage bride, Euphemia “Effie” Gray, who leaves him for the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais.
EFFIE GRAY is the first original screenplay written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Emma Thompson. In this impeccably crafted period drama, Thompson delicately and incisively probes the marital politics of the Victorian Era, and beyond.
Dakota Fanning stars as Effie Gray Ruskin. The cast includes Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Tom Sturridge, David Suchet, Greg Wise, Claudia Cardinale, James Fox, Sir Derek Jacobi and Robbie Coltrane.
The film is produced by Andreas Roald (Terrence Malick’s VOYAGE OF TIME) and Donald Rosenfeld (Malick’s TREE OF LIFE and VOYAGE OF TIME).
Producer Donald Rosenfeld spent 1987 to 1998 as President of Merchant Ivory Productions, in charge of the financing and production of such titles as James Ivory’s “Mr and Mrs Bridge” (1990), Simon Callow’s “The Ballad of the Sad Café (1991), James Ivory’s “Howards End” (1992) and “The Remains of the Day” (1993), Christopher Menaul’s “Feast of July” (1995) and James Ivory’s “Jefferson In Paris” (1995), and “Surviving Picasso”, among others.
He produced Chris Munch’s “Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day” (1996), which won Best Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, for which he recreated the Yosemite Valley narrow Gauge Railroad. Rosenfeld produced Ric Burns’ “New York: A Documentary Film” (1996-2003) and was executive producer of Taran Davies’ film about the people of Chechnya, “Mountain Men and Holy Wars” (2003).
He produced the romantic drama “Forty Shades of Blue”, which won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance in 2005. He produced Ric Burns’ first feature film, the four hours long “Andy Warhol” (2006), and he made “Anton Chekhov’s The Duel”, directed by the Georgian director Dover Kashashvili.
In-between, he was the executive producer of “Jodorowsky’s Dune”, the story of the Chilean director’s doomed attempt at bringing Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel to the screen.
EFFIE GRAY marks Rosenfeld’s third collaboration with Emma Thompson.
I spoke with the producer about EFFIE GRAY and what went into making this beautiful film with modern feminist themes.
WAMG: EFFIE GRAY is such a gorgeous, visceral movie. It’s magnificent.
Donald Rosenfeld: Thank you. We did strive for beautiful production values and we tried to do it at a low cost. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I hope we will continue for another fifty more.
WAMG: What is the film about?
DR: It’s the story of a marriage out of a horror movie. John Ruskin was a child genius who turned into a major thinker in the Victorian Era. He marries a girl two decades younger than him. She is placed in a house with nothing to do while he does his work. His parents psychologically abuse her. It’s the story of a failed marriage and her escape. It’s the story of an early divorce because in Victorian England it was pretty rare. I think there are two divorces on record.
Effie conspires with a local, aristocratic lady whose husband runs the Royal Academy that employs Ruskin. Lady Eastlake, played by Emma Thompson, orchestrates her escape and the divorce. It’s an intriguing, suspense film. A little bit of horror, but it’s also a period marriage.
The film is filled with so much beauty as it was shot in Venice, Scotland and England.
WAMG: When did you get involved in the movie?
DR: I had previously worked with Emma on HOWARD’S END and REMAINS OF THE DAY. I cast her in HOWARD’S END – she was an unknown then and then went onto win the Oscar. On REMAINS OF THE DAY, the financers wanted Anjelica Huston because at the time she was the bigger star. I fought for Emma. I said look at Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. It will be looked at by the audience as sort of a sequel – from HOWARD’S END to REMAINS OF THE DAY.
In the end, Emma was cast. Then we went onto to make another movie in Chile eight years later about the Pinochet regime and the Chilean singer, Víctor Jara, but in the end because of various actual death threats from the Chilean Junta that were still in power, we had to get out of there. We were even threatened in Paraguay on the way home. We decided not to make that movie – it was a life or death decision. I said, one day we’ll do something else.
She called me one day, five years ago and said she had written a script set in Victorian England. I told her I had written my college thesis on Victorian England, let’s do this. It was set in 1851 and we went onto make it.
WAMG: It looks like a period film, but it doesn’t feel like the viewer is in Victorian England. It has more of a modern vibe to it and it segues between the two.
DR: Exactly. It’s the beginning of the modern age. All these ideas that we formed about art and life seemed to have started there. When Mr. Ruskin talks about his new carriage or the money that he’s made and what it can buy, he sounds like a person from today. It’s a kind of post-war materialism, it’s incredible. I think you’re right and it’s totally relevant.
I think Emma wrote the female characters with the mind of today too because I think she wanted them to have, in a sense, the vision that women do today of both their rights and empowerment that weren’t really available to women then.
Effie is a great exception that she was able to take this, and generally she would have either been sent to an insane asylum or she would have been locked away. That’s how they dealt with a difficult wife, not like today. We gave her her freedom and in reality Effie falls in love with John Everett Millais at the end of the movie. They had eight children together.
WAMG: 20 year old actress Dakota Fanning carries the film and her portrayal will resonate with women. She’s superb as Effie.
DR: She is unbelievable. The casting director called me one day and we were looking for women around 20 years old and ideally English because of the accent. Celestia Fox who did HOWARD’S END and REMAINS OF THE DAY with me suggested Dakota Fanning. I had just seen her in a film where she was seven years old and that was ten years ago. Now she was seventeen. I met her and offered her the part immediately. The director, Richard Laxton, asked me later, “don’t I have anything to say?” I said no, not in this case. (laughs)
She went to work on the movie and we cast her little sister, Elle Fanning, as the little sister Sophie Gray six months before we started. But two months before we started, Elle had grown four inches taller than Dakota, so we couldn’t make her the little sister in the film. We had to recast it, but Elle and I are going to make another movie called OLIVE’S OCEAN. It is sad, but sometimes you have to recast based on things like that when people are young and they change rapidly.
WAMG: Emma Thompson writes the unemotional Ruskin (Thompson’s real-life husband Greg Wise) with some sense of sympathy.
DR: She says it was very hard to get used to Greg when they first got married because he was from the north of England, right at the border of Scotland and he’s very Victorian. She said it was hard to communicate with him in the beginning, but eventually warmed him up. It was in his nature to be that character – it was sort of going back to their beginnings. He was kind of this cold fish from Newcastle. Who knew that Newcastle created this lack of warmth, it was very funny.
WAMG: How was composer Paul Cantelon (THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL and THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY) chosen for the movie? His score, with the piano motif, is both haunting and simply lovely.
DR: I had just done a movie the year before where the composer lived in Florida. I kept having to go down there and I literally said, “I want somebody next door.” We were editing on 12th Street and this agent called and said there’s this guy Paul Cantelon and he’s about a block away from you. I went to see him and realized he did THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY and I loved that score.
His music for EFFIE GRAY is breathtaking and I thought he did a great job.
WAMG: It’s perfect with cinematographer Andrew Dunn’s (“Gosford Park”, “The Madness of King George”) scenes of the Scottish Highlands, London, and Venice, Italy.
DR: It’s wonderful. I think it all comes together in a real depiction. We wanted to make those paintings come to life and match the landscape to them. Andrew Dunn is a genius and I’m so glad we got him. He was such a voice of reason. The Scottish train – we didn’t have more than one shot. He operated his own camera and he’s just a lovely guy.
WAMG: What’s your next project?
DR: The next one is called THE TUNNELS OF CU CHI written by Gary Trudeau who wrote “Doonesbury.” It’s set in 1968 Vietnam and it’s a war movie.
WAMG: You were producer on Terrence Malick’s TREE OF LIFE, one of my favorite movies of the decade. Every time I watch it I find something new.
DR: Thank you. It’s true and I think that’s how he works.
WAMG: And once again on the THE VOYAGE OF TIME.
DR: If you liked TREE OF LIFE you will love THE VOYAGE OF TIME. It’s magnificent. It will come in a forty minute IMAX version and a feature.
THE VOYAGE OF TIME was being worked on before TREE OF LIFE. When I first met Terrence, we were going to make a movie about Che Guevara in Bolivia where he’s executed, but with the other film CHE the field was too crowded. I asked him, “what do you really want to do?” He said, “I want to make this movie about nature and the beginning of the universe.”
We’re making the whole thing for about $20 million and it’s been wonderful. Douglas Trumbull (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) has been doing the special effects.
WAMG: Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are still attached?
DR: Both have always been there. By the way, Emma Thompson did some voice overs at Abbey Studios with Terry, but Cate was much more right for the part. As Terry said, Emma was a little too English.
WAMG: Is there a release date yet for THE VOYAGE OF TIME?
DR: It will come out at Cannes ideally in 2017.
WAMG: What would you like for audiences to take away from EFFIE GRAY?
DR: No matter how bad the world gets, you can fight for your freedom. If you find yourself in a terrible situation get yourself out of it. I think she did and she finds a perfect life for herself. That’s the next movie and we don’t show that here.
One of the distributors early on wanted me to add a text that says she went on to marry Millais. I don’t do that. If I don’t film it, I don’t put a text in. In MR. AND MRS. BRIDGE, Miramax wanted us to put a coda in at the end and my feeling is make the movie you make and let the audience dream a little afterwards. You don’t have to make everything all sealed up, all packed up.
Imagine if we did what one of the minor financers on TREE OF LIFE wanted – to take out the nature footage?
WAMG: There’s definitely an audience out there for EFFIE GRAY.
DR: I think so. You don’t see movies like this too often.
EFFIE GRAY opens in theaters
Friday, April 3
ORDER THE SOUNDTRACK ALBUM: http://bit.ly/EffieGrayOST
EFFIE GRAY is edited by Emmy nominee Kate Williams (“Empire Falls”, “Anton Chekhov’s The Duel”). Emmy-winner James Merifield (“Little Dorrit”) is the production designer, with Juliana Overmeer (“Anton Chekhov’s The Duel”) and threetime Emmy-winner Paul Ghirardani (“Game of Thrones”, “Little Dorrit”) as art directors. Twice Academy Award-nominated Ruth Myers (“LA Confidential”, “Emma”) designed the costumes and the hair and make-up was designed by Konnie Daniel (“Mr Selfridge”).
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