Interview: Director Simon Curtis Realizes ‘My Week With Marilyn’

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CHICAGO – Marilyn Monroe will never go away. The iconic actress of a long-gone era is the subject of a new film, “My Week with Marilyn,” directed by Simon Curtis. Ms. Monroe is portrayed during a in collaboration with Sir Lawrence Olivier, and their characters are played with sublime grace by Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh.

Director Simon Curtis was tapped to bring these actors – plus Julia Ormond, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson and Dame Judi Dench – to occupy another time and place with the image of Marilyn Monroe. Curtis was able to fully interpret the Adrian Hodges screenplay adaptation, in addition to balancing the public image and private dread of the Monroe essence. Admirers of both Monroe and Olivier will be transported.

She Wants to Loved By You: Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in ‘My Week with Marilyn’
She Wants to Loved By You: Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in ‘My Week with Marilyn’
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

British born Simon Curtis has risen through the TV spectrum as a producer and director. He began in 1991, directing John Malkovich, Kate Nelligan and Miranda Richardson in a TV adaptation of a Harold Pinter play, “Old Times,” for the BBC. From there he worked in 1996 directing the “Tracey Takes On…” series with Tracey Ullman, and various other television programs, including as director of the popular show “Cranford,” with Judi Dench, from 2007-2009. “My Week with Marilyn” is his first feature film.

Simon Curtis sat at a roundtable during last month’s Chicago International Film Festival, and answered questions for HollywoodChicago,com and other outlets.

HollywoodChicago: What fascinates you most about the movie star and production system of the mid 1950s and how did you communicate that in this film?

Simon Curtis: My way into this film was reading Colin Clark’s Diaries [he is the “My” in the title] and seeing the detail how a film would be made in 1956. It is a particular moment in cultural history, the clash between the English way of working and the American way of working, and the nuances in all that, which appealed to me.

HollywoodChicago: So much depended on the casting of Marilyn Monroe. Did Michelle Williams exceed your expectations?

Curtis: Yeah! But wait, actually no, because my expectations were high. [laughs] I think she is just super smart, super talented and super brave. She took this on and did everything a human being can do to pull it off – fantastic research and just incredibly talent. This film would be nothing without delivering Marilyn. I feel lucky that A, Michelle Williams did it, and B, she did it so brilliantly.

HollywoodChicago: What element of the Marilyn Monroe character was Michelle William’s most concerned about capturing…the public movie star persona or the personal, conflicted madness?

Curtis: In our film there was the three Marilyns – the public Marilyn, the private Marilyn and the Marilyn playing the part in the film [”The Prince and the Showgirl”] within the film. I think all of them are challenges in a different way.

HollywoodChicago: How did it feel to be directing such talented actors and actresses in your debut film?

Curtis: Well, it felt great. [laughs] I’ve been very lucky in my career to direct the actors I’ve had previously on television, and my wife is an American actress [Elizabeth McGovern] living in London, so it’s a terrain I know a little about. Having said that, there has been nothing more exciting in my career than seeing Marilyn Monroe and Michelle Williams on my set. Judi Dench is a wonderful human being, playing actress Sybil Thorndike, who was also a wonderful human being.

HollywoodChicago: In all the sets you’ve worked on in the past, have you seen the scenario in the film, where an assistant will become enamored with the ‘star,’ not obviously as deep as the movie, but in any other way?

Curtis: There is no specific stories, but there are some curious connections. Often people think, ‘so-and-so did that film, it must be about the star director.’ But that director is so busy, it will be the Assistant Director, the Make-up person or the Dresser that the ‘star’ with which the star spends the most time. That is the weird and wonderful thing about a film set.

HollywoodChicago: What did you note in original ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’ that you wanted to make sure was in your making-of-the-movie narrative?

Curtis: It’s a mixed bag, that film, some of it is wonderful and some of it isn’t so wonderful. We gravitated toward the music, because in some ways – as Colin says in the film – it was the great play that became a not-so-great film. Only because these two mega-stars wanted to it, it kind of just happened. Marilyn had become her own producer at this point, and bizarrely chose the exact same part she was trying to get away from, a ditzy showgirl.

Michelle Williams and Simon Curtis On Set in ‘My Week with Marilyn’
Michelle Williams and Simon Curtis On Set in ‘My Week with Marilyn’
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

HollywoodChicago: In your opinion, how did Kenneth Branagh capture the agony and ecstasy of being Sir Lawrence Olivier? Did the comic elements he brought out balance what we know about Marilyn?

Curtis: Well, Kenneth Branagh had been compared to Sir Lawrence for years. It was right that he was the same age when he played the part as Olivier was in 1956, and there was a real empathy there. I been thrilled with the amount of laughter from start to finish, and it’s a poignant film, a sweet film, and the fact that it’s married to that laughter is really pleasing to me.

HollywoodChicago: You used many famous photographs of Marilyn Monroe as a template for the look of your film. What fantasy elements of the ‘movie star’ from the 1950s era fascinated you the most and how did you want to capture it in the film?

Curtis: There has probably never been a film with so much research material out there. Obviously the film itself, the character of Milton Greene – who was a phenomenal photographer – and all the legendary photographers of Monroe. I don’t know how they influenced us, but they certainly did.

HollywoodChicago: So many teenagers had or have a poster of Marilyn Monroe hanging on their wall. What is it about Marilyn that teens have an understanding of or connection to?

Curtis: I think what it is, is that they know the brand…the image, the photographs, more than they know the movies. She was a prototype celebrity since she was a talking point, in a way modern celebrities are, as much as for their private life as for their work.

HollywoodChicago: The character of Colin Clark certainly lived out many fantasies, in the sense he starts at a low level and ends up developing a relationship with Monroe…

Curtis: I like to think of it as a dream first job. [laughs] He was a privileged young man, but I wanted to make the point that it doesn’t matter where you start, success in the end is dependent on doing the job well. Eddie [Redmayne] has a great combination of innocence and emotional intelligence as a man himself.

HollywoodChicago: What was the decision behind having Michelle Williams sing some famous Monroe songs as bookends in the film?

Curtis: We wanted to present, after the timeline of the film, the Marilyn that they think they know, because the film does so much in telling you about the Marilyn you don’t know. We wanted to combine the two. Since it emerged that Michelle has such a gorgeous voice, it was an opportunity we had to take.

Simon Curtis in Chicago, October 13th, 2011
Simon Curtis in Chicago, October 13th, 2011
Photo credit: Patrick McDonald for HollywoodChicago.com

HollywoodChicago: What was the process of creating Marilyn Monroe’s particular look for Michelle Williams? Did it come fairly quickly or was there a trial and error period?

Curtis: Again, as with everything having to do with Michelle and her attention to detail, we were so lucky to have Jennie Cooper, the legendary make-up artist. She and Michelle worked hard on it, as well as with costumer Jill Taylor, it was a 360 degree process.

HollywoodChicago: In your opinion, was Marilyn Monroe’s eventual demise due to the elements of the life around her and what was demanded of her as a Hollywood star, or her own unbalanced mental state?

Curtis: I don’t know, when somebody goes like she did there seems to be an inevitability surrounding it, but actually was or not I don’t know. We know she was troubled from a very early age and there were obviously issues, worsened by substance abuse. But we tried to focus on her being a troubled woman doing her best. In 1956, she was really trying to change her life. She left Hollywood, moved to New York City and surrounded herself with the intellectual elite, which she felt would give her credibility. She came to London to work with Olivier, she was a producer and was married to the great Arthur Miller. The story of our film is really those fine aspirations collapsing around her.

HollywoodChicago: What do you hope an audience will take away about Marilyn Monroe, in the context of your film?

Curtis: That she was an intelligent woman who, in Peter Bogdanovich words, ‘she was in bad trouble from the day she was born.’ This was a woman, given that, did phenomenally well in life, and left a legacy very few people have left. Yes, she was troubled, but she was trying to do better. That’s all any of us can do, really.

HollywoodChicago: Did working on this film make you wish you could have worked with Monroe, or did projecting her difficult personality kind of turn you off?

Curtis: It would be good for my career if I had worked with Monroe, I would have become quite a legend. [laughs] That’s my first thought. She wasn’t easy for directors, but I wouldn’t care.

”My Week with Marilyn” opens everywhere on November 23rd. Featuring Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson, Julia Ormond and Judi Dench, Screenplay Adaptation by Adrian Hodges, directed by Simon Curtis. Rated “R”

HollywoodChicago.com senior staff writer Patrick McDonald

By PATRICK McDONALD
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

© 2011 Patrick McDonald, HollywoodChicago.com

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