The Libertine
The Libertine director Laurence Dunmore
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SuicideGirls.com
January 5, 2006
With The Libertine, director Laurence Dunmore has faithfully committed to film one of the most colorful men in history, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester [Johnny Depp]. The film follows the Earl's adventures in London, from his passionate romance with a young actress, Elizabeth Barry [Samantha Morton], to the writing of a scurrilous play which blisteringly and bawdily lampoons the very monarch who commissioned it, Charles II [John Malkovich], leading to the Earl's banishment and eventual downfall.
Daniel Robert Epstein: How
did The Libertine
come together?
Laurence Dunmore: John Malkovich thrust a script into my hand after a very pleasurable couple of days working on a commercial together. I had a look at this unbelievable offer in front of me and decided that I would take the bit between my teeth and try and give this a go.
What was the commercial you were doing with John?
We did a commercial for the wonderful train called the Eurostar that runs between the British mainland and France. John had promised a script at the end of it. I just thought that it was just John being a thoroughly decent bloke in saying that he’ll send something to me. But it did actually materialize and it was an incredible script. But as a British director I was primed and ready to do an East End gangster movie. Instead I got the portrayal of John Wilmot, the most brilliant and wonderful writer of recent history who betrayed his talents for debauchery, wine, women and song.
Which is not the worst thing in the world to betray your talents for.
No, if you’re going to betray it, you might as well do it for that rather than the pursuit of liberal education of fixing tires or something.
[Laughs] Had you been looking for a screenplay or was it just that this one was so good?
I had been, I suppose. I’d found the opportunity with John after being able to bend his ear towards my desire to make a film. It was a desire that had been festering for a while. The wonderful thing about John is that he’s an incredibly astute and very clever man who never gives away anything to anybody unless he believes they are deserving of it. Be that a good or a bad thing, it meant that he thought I was the right person to take on The Libertine as a project. It was one that was very close to his heart because he had spent five years prior to me becoming involved trying to make this movie himself. He’d played it onstage in Chicago with the Steppenwolf Theater Company. What we had together in those first couple of days was a complete commitment and passion for filmmaking that he found inspiring. Certainly I got that from him because John is one of these very contagious characters, who really does breed a lust for life. The Libertine script really ignited that fire and made me believe that this, even though it was my first script that I’d ever read, was one that I needed to make into film. We had this incredible script that Stephen Jeffries and I worked on for six months to a year after my becoming involved. It was this magnetism that seduced Johnny into playing this role and to work with me as a first time director.
Did John remind you of
Rochester in terms of his lust
for the work?
Both John and Johnny [Depp] are very passionate people in life and wonderful human beings. They both possess the quality that you need to make a project like this, which is a carefree abandon of what preconceptions are and what people would expect and decide to do something that will provoke and contrive to be its own individual voice. So we all very much bit upon the same apple that seduced us into another world.
Directors usually have to do something exciting and special in order to portray writers on screen. I think of movies like Barton Fink and Naked Lunch. But with this character you definitely didn’t have to make his life exciting.
[Writer] Stephen Jeffries once said that the biggest problem that he had with the story that it wasn’t about what you could write about, it was about what you had to leave out. The reality of it was this was a man who lived a life far beyond the passion, the hurt, the betrayal, the lust, the vigor and all of the emotive qualities that life should be lived at. He took them to an excess. This was a time when Charles II and Rochester were living a life that was based on the idea that there was no consequence to action, that the pursuit of pleasure was one that would have no consequence. The truth was always going to be far more over the top than we could ever imagine. Rochester was a man who never suffered the criticism of life he led. He was a man who lived to excess and made his apologies for it, but never atoned to it. He was somebody who was a master of both the pathetic and the delusional. He was a man who could take us from one emotion to another in a heartbeat. He was a genius who could write a play when everybody else struggled for a word.
As an artist yourself, have you ever had the chance to squander your talents the way that Rochester did?
Working in advertising, you squander that chance every day. I love the medium of advertising, it’s been very good to me and it’s something I’d do just for the pure passion and adrenaline of working that subject. But it is a squandering of talent on every front because you’re selling something to the lowest common denominator. Everyone believes that you’re actually creating something earth-shattering when ultimately you’re selling a piece of sheet metal with four rubber tires on it.
Did you connect with the
screenplay through that idea?
The reality is that I’ve always been very obsessed with history and with the influence of history. The script that I was sent threw the logs onto a fire that was a quest to find the man who resonated through the centuries through to where we are now. He had so many parallels in the people that we admire and respect and hate throughout our recent history. Wilmot was someone who was able to surpass all of the rules and the regulations that defined society in the way that the average person would anticipate and regulate it. He was able to ignite the passionate side of life but with passion there’s always a danger. But it is a danger that is worth sacrificing for the sake of the integrity of belief in the unbridled approach to life.
How on board was everyone with not shying away from how dirty this film needed to be?
There was a total commitment throughout the cast and crew of this movie. Nobody at any stage turned around and said “Laurence, what the fuck are you thinking about?” It was the most enlightening and rewarding process to work with such great actors and crew across the board. Everybody bought into this vision and there isn’t anybody who can be blamed or ridiculed for what we produced because at the end of the day everybody realized a very personal vision. They made a fragile dream into an incredible reality and to have a group of people who can make that dream come alive and be something that is so personal is a very important move forward in terms of filmmaking and in terms of the way that people interpret films.
As a first time feature director, how do you direct someone like Johnny Depp?
Johnny just sat and listened to a bunch of dreams, thoughts and ideas. He bought into those dreams, ideas and thoughts and brought into it this character of John Wilmot who transformed everything that I thought about. Johnny empowered me with his belief in this project and it made it very easy for me to actually realize the filming the way we did because we were making a film that we all saw and understood.
What were the most difficult
things directing wise?
That’s a hard one, because making the film was the hardest and the easiest thing. Sitting there with a camera on my shoulder filming Johnny performing with one of the most brilliant casts that surrounded him was in equal amounts the most inspired and the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. But it was a complete pleasure; it was like leaving the city and standing in the countryside and taking a breath of fresh air. It’s exciting, it’s invigorating, it’s heady, it takes you somewhere else that you haven’t been for such a long while. It’s so refreshing and yet the opportunities that it offers are so daunting at the same moment because there is such a cleanliness to it, there is such a passion and a vigor to it, that you don’t want to breathe again for a moment.
Johnny and everybody else brought such a fire into my life that was realized through making this film. That’s why it’s such a personal picture. It’s such an individual film because we didn’t have to suffer the compromise of anybody else on it.
Do you know what film you’re doing next?
No, I have several projects, of which Johnny’s a part of and I have other projects which I will hope will come through as well. I think I have to do something for my three boys who can’t always be sitting there wondering why I’m not doing Pirates of the Caribbean 20 with Johnny.
You can make the East End gangster film for your sons.
[Laughs] No, they want me for more than that. They said, “Look Dad, why can’t you have a hobbit in a film or somebody with wings.” But I’ve worked with the most incredible bunch of people on the crew and the cast from the last movie that it makes it difficult to think about where the next movie goes. I just want to do something that has the same resonance, the same power, the same unashamed provocation of what the understanding of life and its interpretation is from one person to an audience. I just hope that people will sit with me and understand that it’s made with a desire to be truthful to emotion rather than to sensationalism.