I think the tragedy of Wilde is that, really, his downfall came because he denied himself. I don’t think he knew what it was like to be a suffering artist, until he went into the other side of the mirror, as it were. He married a wealthy woman, whom I think he loved, by the way. So, I don’t think he was ever planning on a life and career as a suffering artist. He was also quite lazy, and he loved luxury. ![]() When Gilbert and Sullivan wrote an opera with a character that lampooned him, instead of being upset about it, he suggested he go on tour with them to America, to show the world what the real character that they were lampooning was like. He was quite canny all the way through his life. I don’t think he saw being an artist, from his point of view, as suffering. Do you think he believed he had to suffer for his art? Oscar Wilde is such a complicated character in history. That’s really how I think I got my film to the standard that it is, in terms of the look of it, and the depth of the detail. And I had these three castles in Franconia, which is the southernmost tip of Bavaria, and we shot the whole film in three castles. So by the time we filmed, I had everything in my mind, ready. It took ten years to get together, and I spent all the times when it wasn’t working out well and I had nothing to do, doing my own research, and finding places to shoot. The challenge of creating Neapolitan and Parisian interiors in Munich was one of the things I really loved about my film. Because of the financing, I had to make fifty percent of it in Germany, and none of the story happened there. I find that whole side of things the most fascinating and wonderful and challenging because, on a film like mine, I didn’t have the money to make it all in the studio. After all, costume is the first thing anyone sees. I wanted my film to have that texture and density of design and costume. ![]() I was very keen for my film to have a texture and design worthy of someone like Danilo Donati, or the other great Italian designers I had the luck to work with, like costume designer Piero Tosi. ![]() ![]() I love the production design and art direction of Richard Macdonald. For example, if you look Chinatown, it has such great production design, as does The Day of the Locust. The films of the fifties, by Nicholas Ray, especially with James Dean, all those were very organized looking, the ones I was brought up on, and the Hollywood movies of the 30s, and movies both from the UK and Hollywood of the 70s. I also loved my education in the movies as a viewer. What experiences and aspects of filmmaking inspired or excited you, beyond the feeling that it was necessary to the film getting made, in directing your first feature?ĭesign and costume have always been two of my fascinations in the movies and having started out with my first two movies being quite design-oriented, I found I loved that about them. We spoke to Everett about what inspired him as a first-time director, and he offered his perspective on the man he calls the “patron saint of the LGBTQ community”. The film Everett wrote, directed, and stars in is an unvarnished look at Wilde’s last few years, following his decline after release from a two-year imprisonment for homosexuality. Fans of both Rupert Everett and literary great Oscar Wilde have been patiently waiting for the release of the new film The Happy Prince, which has been 10 years in the making.
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