Lindsay Duran
Producer Lindsay Duran thought Jane Austen was a "stupid, boring writer" when she first read "Pride and Prejudice" at the age of 13. That this Hollywood kid would later become so devoted to "Sense and Sensibility" that she'd re-read it annually and search 10 years to find the perfect writer to bring it to the screen has an Austen-esque irony.
She finally found her screenwriter and star in one person--Emma Thompson -- and the film will opens on December 13. She talked with SALON recently about this labor of love and an extraordinary Internet friendship she discovered while making it a reality.
Q: What makes this novel so compelling for you?
A: The issues in it are still completely fresh. Do you marry the cad or do you marry the nice guy? Do you go after that dangerous guy who makes you feel so great or do you say "That's not going to do me any good," and line up with the guy who's appreciative and loving and solid and will always be there for you and will never make you feel the way the cad makes you feel. It doesn't stop when you're 19. This is a problem for women all of their lives, and to a certain degree a problem for men.
Q: Which of the two sisters do you identify with?
A: I go back and forth. When Sidney Pollack first read the script there was a conversation in which Marianne says "All I want in a man is someone who rides bravely, dances beautifully, sings with vigor, reads passionately, and whose taste agrees in every point with my own." I remember Sidney saying, "Now, explain this to me: is she an idiot, or is she retarded?" He was completely serious. To him this was nonsensical and how could you ever like a character who expressed herself that way?
Q: Jane Austen was satirizing that kind of attitude.
A: I think what's so great about her and one of the things we wanted to preserve in the movie is that she's completely capable of satirizing it and appreciating it at the same time. She doesn't not know what's great about it. She doesn't not know how great Marianne feels when she's with Willoughby.
Q: What about Marianne's sister, Elinor?
A: A lot of people feel that Elinor is really the part that could be annoying because she's a noodge. She can be a real drag. She pops the bubble all the time. Only Emma Thompson could pull that off so that you don't hate her.
Q: You feel you've found the ideal screenwriter and performer in Emma Thompson?
Yes, absolutely. Satire and romanticism are usually mutually exclusive. People who write satire -- and I know a lot of them -- are usually not romantics because they're so cynical. Romantics are usually so sentimental that they don't have the ability to see the world truly the way the cynic usually does. Trying to find both things in one person --that's what makes Jane Austen such a great writer. Trying to find a screenwriter who could not sacrifice the one in favor of the other is very difficult and literally took 10 years.
Q: Tell me about Brenda Walton, the Orlando, Florida English teacher you exchanged email with during the production.
A: I went on Compuserve trying to find poetry to use as the basis for two songs in the movie. I read something she posted about Keats and thought here's a person who'll know so I emailed her and began corresponding with her and her class. They'd ask me all kinds of questions about the movie and I began describing it almost on a daily basis: The costumer came in today and here's what happens at each casting session and here's what the first day of shooting was like and here's what the wrap party was like. Here are the problems we're having making sure that everything is true to the period. For example: There's a beautiful little yellow flower in a scene with Emma and Hugh Grant riding horses and we were told that that flower wasn't introduced into England until 1879. In fact, Brenda eventually came over to England to make a presentation at Keats' house and she visited the set in Salisbury while we were shooting. Even up to the day she arrived, we'd never talked on the phone, only email and faxes.
Q: You're still in touch with them?
A:I'm still communicating with Brenda and the class all through post production. It was really fun. The letters are great to read because they're a terrific journal. She was extremely helpful to me in thinking about what happens when you show a movie like this to high school students, and how accessible is it. That's important because I hated Jane Austen in high school. I wanted to make a movie that that child that I was in high school would have liked
Q: So this new medium made possible a relationship with someone you never would have met.
A: Our paths never would have crossed. It's my favorite thing, to form a friendship with someone completely out of your world. It's what you want from a penpal when you're seven years old. You want to hear from some Eskimo girl, and you never get to have a correspondance with an Eskimo girl. And that's what this was like.
