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BEDTIME STORIES: THOMPSON AND DORAN MEET NURSE MATILDA
Emma Thompson and Lindsay Doran have been working together as a screenwriting/producing team since 1990 when they met on the production of "Dead Again," which Thompson starred in and Doran produced. At the time, Doran was in the 10th year of her search for someone to adapt Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" into a feature film. When she saw some episodes of a comedy TV series that Thompson had written (titled, appropriately, "Thompson"), she felt sure she had found the right person for the adaptation, even though Thompson had never written a feature screenplay.
Being a devotee of Austen's work, Thompson took the assignment just as she was finishing up her role in "Dead Again," and five years later "Sense and Sensibility" was released. The critical and box office hit was nominated for seven Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, and won Thompson the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture - Drama and the Best Film award from BAFTA.
"Emma is an extraordinary writer," says Doran. "She has a wonderful sense of both comic and dramatic rhythms, and her writing can be heartbreakingly emotional without ever being sentimental. She also has a remarkable ability to write period language in a way that feels absolutely accurate while at the same time being accessible to the modern ear. Even her stage directions are delicious to read. Every word is considered and precisely chosen."
Following their experience on "Sense and Sensibility," Thompson and Doran looked for something else they could work on together, hoping to find the kind of passion project that "Sense and Sensibility" had been for both of them. Though they often contacted one another with ideas, nothing lit a fire with either of them until Thompson told Doran about the Nurse Matilda series of English children's books over lunch in 1997. "I had never heard of them," recalls Doran, who at the time was President of United Artists Pictures. "I thought maybe it was just me, but later I learned that very few people have heard of these books, even in England."
"I found the books on my bookshelf," Thompson says. "They weren't my main fare but I loved them and I loved the illustrations. The books were very dry and witty and dark, but also very sweet. I came across the first book again about seven years ago and thought, there's something rather interesting about this."
"Emma told me the most basic premise of the story at that lunch," Doran continues. "And without hearing anything else, without reading the books, without knowing anything except what she told me that day, I thought it was a terrific idea for a movie. As the days went by, the basic concept kept growing on me. I kept thinking about how this would work and how that could work and how it could be funny and how it could be emotional. For me, that's the best way to begin the development process - in a state of high excitement and enthusiasm."
After tracking down the three out-of-print books (Nurse Matilda, Nurse Matilda Goes to Town, and Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital) in a public library, Doran optioned them for Thompson to adapt and the development for "Nanny McPhee" began.
The books, written in the early 1960s by Christianna Brand, recount the legend of an unsettling-looking magical nanny who tames a large family of extremely unruly children. She uses magic to teach them lessons, and as they learn the lessons her appearance seems to change. The tales of Nurse Matilda were orally passed down for generations through the author's family. Christianna Brand was a pen name for Mary Christianna Lewis, an award-winning mystery writer, and she first wrote about the character in her anthology "Naughty Children" (illustrated by her cousin, the famous children's book illustrator Edward Ardizzone) and then later in her three books.
The books contained a rich well of material that resonated with Thompson and Doran who both felt that the characters, situations and relationships had universal appeal. "What parents would not want to have somebody around who could bang a stick and make their children good?" asks Doran. "Who wouldn't want that? And what group of children wouldn't want a magical person to come into their house, even if they were the victims of her magic for a while? It's just fun to have somebody around who can bang a stick and make a donkey dance. Everybody understands the wish-fulfillment of that.
The process of adapting Brand's books had more "blood, sweat and tears" in the writing than "Sense and Sensibility" because with the Jane Austen text, Thompson adapted everything in the book, then distilled it down to its essence. Nurse Matilda, she says, "was much more a creation because the books don't have any plot. There are so many disciplines - drama, comedy, physical comedy, farce, spookiness. But the process has been much more beguiling than anything I've ever done before because it's so multi-layered."
As Thompson worked on shaping the material into a story, she often turned for aid and comfort to Doran, as she had during the writing of "Sense and Sensibility." "Lindsay epitomizes the word 'producer,'" says Thompson. "There's no other person I've ever worked with who has her qualities - because she's also a great script editor. My scripts wouldn't be what they are without her. Especially since I was just beginning with 'Sense and Sensibility,' I would never have gotten that done without her shaping and formulating. She is extraordinary."
One of the first things Doran and Thompson agreed to change was the nanny's name. At the time in which the story is set, the word 'nurse' was synonymous with the word 'nanny.' "But after a number of people asked me about my 'nurse project' with Emma Thompson, it was clear we had to change the word from 'nurse' to 'nanny,'" recalls Doran. There was also the Roald Dahl book and film adaptation of "Matilda" to contend with, and that was another reason to make the change. "We went through a couple of possibilities, but eventually our nanny emerged as Nanny McPhee," says Doran. "It was Emma's mother [the actress, Phyllida Law] who came up with 'McPhee,' and it immediately sounded right." It is also Phyllida Law who intones the words Mr. Brown hears many times at the beginning of the film: "The person you need is Nanny McPhee."
By 2002, the five-year process of writing the screenplay was done and "Nanny McPhee" began its search for a director.
EATING THE BABY: DIRECTOR KIRK JONES JOINS THE COMPANY
When Doran heard that Kirk Jones wanted to meet with her about directing "Nanny McPhee," she expected to meet someone much older. Jones was the writer/director of "Waking Ned" but had not directed another feature since that film's release in 1998. "A lot of people thought Kirk Jones was a ninety-year-old Irish gentleman," Doran says. "It made perfect sense - he made this movie about very old Irish people and then nobody in America heard from him again, so there was this assumption that he had probably died, poor old chap. It was a big shock to me when I found that Kirk Jones was thirty-six years old and not even Irish."
"Waking Ned" - an emotional comedy about an old man who dies of shock upon learning he has won the lottery, and the small Irish village that bands together to try to claim the money - struck a chord with audiences all over the world.
"'Waking Ned' is a great film he made for tuppence ha'penny," comments Thompson, "and it made so much money because Kirk made something universal out of it. The tone of it was exactly what we wanted, funnily enough, because it was about somebody dying, and much of the emotion in 'Nanny McPhee' comes from the subject of the dead mother, while much of the comedy comes from Mr. Brown's job at the funeral parlour."
This deft touch at coaxing humour out of dark situations and bringing emotion and humanity to a wickedly funny scenario put Jones permanently on Doran's radar. "'Waking Ned' has humour that actually makes you laugh out loud," she comments. "You don't just smile, you laugh, and that's very important to me. Audiences loved that movie and it was an enormous hit all over the world because it's a story that works everywhere. That kind of universality was exactly what we were striving for in 'Nanny McPhee,' and it was clear that Kirk knew instinctively how to provide it."
A successful commercials director who had won awards, including the 1996 Silver Lion at Cannes, Jones had been looking for a project he believed in since making "Waking Ned." "After directing my first film, I found it very difficult to commit to another project," he explains. "Finding a script is like buying a house - it might take years to find it, the choice might at times be confusing, but when you finally walk through the door of the right one, you suddenly feel at home."
Jones responded to Thompson's screenplay just as Thompson and Doran had responded to "Waking Ned." The relief at finding the right script was enormous. "When I read 'Nanny McPhee' I knew immediately that this was a project that I wanted to direct," Jones says. "It had a great sense of theatre and magic; it was full of charm, humor and emotion, but above all, it was obvious to me that it had been carefully crafted and nurtured in a way which already made it feel like a classic."
"This is perfect territory for Kirk," says Glynis Murray, Jones's producing partner for over a decade, who co-produced "Nanny McPhee." "Kirk has a genuineness with which he portrays people. He has an ability to see the whole character, not only the more exaggerated characteristics."
Doran recognised these qualities in Jones in their very first meeting when he confided that one of his favourite characters in the script was Mrs. Brown's chair. "Kirk spoke with incredible passion about this chair," Doran says. "He said if he did his job right, the chair would get a Supporting Actress nomination. It was clear he completely understood the emotion that went with the chair, and he completely understood why it's both funny and moving when Nanny McPhee bows to the chair as though there's somebody in it."
"It was a detail in the script which absolutely fascinated me," Jones explains. "Mr Brown used to sit in front of the fire in the evening and share his concerns with his wife, and he has just gone on doing that in the year since she died by talking to the little pink chair where she sued to sit. I thought Emma had succeeded in making an inanimate object one of the most important, moving and memorable characters in the whole film." Jones's preoccupation with Mrs. Brown's chair continued through the shoot, particularly when it was injured in a fall. "Colin fell back on it during the tea party scene and one of the legs broke," he recalls. "I stood over the carpenter as he drilled into the body of the chair, making sure I was at the chair's side during the whole operation."
Jones's strong affinity for the material brought dimensions and scope to the project that even Thompson had not anticipated. "You don't write a screenplay in order to preserve it," says Thompson. "You try to write it and build it so well that when a director comes in and starts making changes, it's still all there but it's evolved into something larger than what it was originally. The whole point is to find someone with a vision and a sensibility that complements yours."
Plus, she adds, "the wonderful notion of the children pretending to eat the baby is Kirk's. He found a reference in one of the Nurse Matilda books to the children pretending to eat a boy and he desperately wanted to get something like that into the movie."
Pumping up the children's naughtiness was an exercise Jones savoured. "Putting glue on a door handle was replaced with electric wires on the door handle," he recounts. "I also thought it was important that Mrs. Quickly actually ate the worm in the tea party scene rather than just put it near her mouth. (Celia Imrie actually did pop a worm in her mouth during this scene). I just know from having two boys of my own that they react very positively to acts which are truly naughty."
Thompson made it clear from day one that although she was very involved in the project as writer and star, this was Jones's film. "I never had any concerns about approaching her with changes which developed as the shoot progressed," he says. "She works very hard to get the script as good as it can be before the shoot, but once we started shooting, if a change needed to be made, if a scene wasn't playing as well as expected, if the dialogue needed attention then she would address it. She is not precious about the word on the page; she will change it if she thinks it can be improved. I would say, 'Emma, we need four extra lines of dialogue,' and she would give them straight back and they would be brilliant. No thinking time, no reading of the script, no discussion. She is completely in tune with each and every one of the characters that she has created."
THE ZEN MASTER: BREATHING LIFE INTO NANNY MCPHEE
After finishing the shooting script for the film and incorporating Jones's notes, Thompson's work on "Nanny McPhee" was only half-complete. "She said from the very beginning that she wanted to play the magical nanny," recalls Lindsay Doran, "She thought it would be a really fun part."
Nanny McPhee is a departure for an actress known for poignant, comedic and very human portrayals throughout her stage and screen career. Thompson likens the figure to an eastern Zen Master - from the moment that Nanny McPhee appears at the family's door, she interacts with their chaotic lives from an inner reservoir of absolute calm. "She's a kind of chimera but her presence is very powerful," Thompson describes. "To be a Zen Master doesn't mean that you're a vacuum but what you present is an atmosphere or an influence that is utterly non-judgmental. It therefore wields an extremely powerful influence because it allows people the space to see themselves and feel themselves in ways they can't under normal circumstances."
This nanny, Thompson points out, does not tell the Browns what to do; rather, she guides them using her extraordinary methods into trusting themselves to find their own right paths. "The whole point of the Zen Master is the dissolution of ego," she says. "Nanny McPhee has got no ego at all. There's no person there as we understand a person to be, but there is a calm and a peace and total lovingness right from the start."
In the script, Thompson remained faithful to Christianna Brand's physical description of the character and Edward Ardizzone's simple yet exacting illustrations. But breathing life into this particular character would become a group effort. After a seven-year journey from conception to production, Thompson finally appeared at a costume test in full Nanny McPhee regalia - complete with two large ears, two hairy warts, thick eyebrows that join in the middle, and what Christianna Brand described as "a nose like two potatoes and a tombstone tooth" (all crafted by Academy Award-winning make-up effects artist Peter King). She was dressed, much like the Ardizzone drawings portrayed her, in shape-altering body prosthetics and a dramatic yet whimsical costume designed by costumer Nick Ede.
"Suddenly, two days before we started filming, this complete stranger turned up and introduced herself as Nanny McPhee," remembers Jones.
The entire cast and crew watched the character come to life before their eyes. "The minute she came onto the set, the effect was so moving," Doran recalls. "The character just grew out of the look. Suddenly there was a voice and an accent and a way of moving and a tilt of the head that belonged entirely to Nanny McPhee. She doesn't blink. She looks at people as though she's never quite seen people before, a weird way of observing that has a slight otherworldly, space alien quality. And none of this had been there in any of the other incarnations that we'd seen while she was rehearsing with the children."
"We saw this big, fat, humungous lady in a black costume and two warts and a squashed tomato nose, and Holly and Sam were just like, 'Ha! Who's that?" remembers 12-year-old Eliza Bennett, who plays Tora. "And then she goes, 'Hello, I'm Nanny McPhee.'"
"It just wasn't Emma," adds Jones. "With most actors, no matter how convincing their performance, you can identify them beneath the surface. When I saw Nanny McPhee, the disguise was so complete and Emma's posture and performance were so convincing that I couldn't see Emma Thompson anywhere, not even beneath the disguise. There was another person on set, someone I had never met before… and I wasn't sure I liked the look of her," he adds.
"She pretended that she killed Emma Thompson," Daykin remembers with a smile. "So all the children were like, 'Ah! Nanny McPhee's on set!'"
THAT WHICH IS LOVED: THE TRANSFORMATION OF NANNY MCPHEE
When Nanny McPhee arrives at the Brown house, the children are immediately suspicious. "They don't really like her," says nine-year-old Jennifer Rae Daykin, who plays Lily. "They think she's ugly, really nasty and maybe a witch. A spooky, scary nanny."
Nanny McPhee has five deceptively simple lessons to teach the family: To go to bed when they're told. To get up when they're told. To get dressed when they're told. To listen. To do what they're told.
With each lesson comes a little magic, a day's adventure, and the necessity for the children to use their own resourcefulness and child wisdom to put things to right. "There are silly food fights and ridiculous behavior, but these badly behaved kids are little lost souls, really," says Kelly Macdonald. "And Nanny McPhee teaches them how to save themselves."
For Simon, the oldest and perhaps most wounded by his father's distance, learning what this particular nanny has to teach is the rockiest journey. "At first, Simon wants to get rid of her, straight away, like with all the other nannies, and then she doesn't go," Sangster says. "She defends herself; she's got this stick that makes magical things happen. So, he grows slightly more respectful of her over the course of the film, and by the end he really likes her."
Their receptiveness to her methods hinges on gaining, and giving, trust. As the story progresses, Simon finds himself venturing to Nanny McPhee's room, where none of the children has yet been, to test out a plan of his and secure her blessing. "When Simon goes to her room, he asks for her help in a very respectful, trusting way," says Doran. "He trusts she's on their side, he trusts she'll keep her side of the bargain, and he trusts that she cares about them. Which is partly why he succeeds in his conversation with her; he trusts her before he says anything. And this is exactly the kind of trust that was missing in his previous conversation with his father."
Her lessons seem designed to give the children a slightly clearer picture of the consequences of their actions, and the role each of them plays in his or her fate. Thompson likens Nanny McPhee's effect to a balanced pull of gravity: "She becomes this still centre and all these people, all just up in the air, slowly start to move around her like little quiet planets until suddenly she goes, leaving this settled constellation, a family that's found its own orbit and is just moving gently and quietly as it should … with the occasional collision."
They also effect subtle changes in Nanny McPhee's appearance. Sam Honywood expresses the children's point of view succinctly, "As we get nicer, one of her ugly bits goes away."
"The moments at which she changes are very specific," explains Doran. "When they say 'please' for the first time willingly, she changes. But does she change because they've said 'please'? Does she change because they've started to love her? Does she change because she's started to love them? Does she actually change at all? It's really up to the audience to decide, just as Christianna Brand left it up to the reader in her books."
As the Brown family begins to find room for her in their hearts, what Thompson calls her "large wartiness" is no longer visible to them, leaving the children to behold their beautiful Nanny, a vision Thompson describes as "the memory of someone who adored them. She's as loving and good at the beginning as she is at the end."
"Nanny McPhee walks into a family full of good people with good intentions and makes them all see their own goodness and each other's goodness," says Jones. "Once they all love and trust each other again, it's time for her to go. She doesn't make them good. She shows them that they're already good."
THE CAST TALK ABOUT THE CHARACTERS
LARGE WARTINESS: NICK EDE AND PETER KING TRANSFORM THE CAST
A HOUSE ANY CHILD WOULD LOVE TO LIVE IN: CREATING THE WORLD OF "NANNY MCPHEE"
EMMA THOMPSON & DIRECTOR KIRK JONES
EMMA THOMPSON'S PRODUCTION DIARIES
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