A Chat With Stephen Frears, Director of The Deal

The 2003 British TV film The Deal -- from the same creative team as The Queen -- is all about the backroom politics that made Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the superstar statesmen they are today. Immediately after reviewing The Deal's recently released DVD, I talked with director Stephen Frears about the film.

MAJ: The Deal is such a wonky story, so steeped in politicial minutiae, and I think it may be a little bit tough to get into for audiences that don't have intimate knowledge of British politics. How much knowledge about these events do you think audiences need to bring with them? What else would you hope for them to take from the film?

Frears: Well, it's also a human story, isn't it? But was absolutely what was in my mind five years ago. They asked me to make it for cinema and I said, "This is about British domestic politics." But it's also a story of friendship -- one doesn't betray a mate -- the kind of thing everybody loves.

MAJ: For me, the appeal of the film is Tony Blair. He's one of those people that you're appalled with yourself for being fascinated with, and yet you're fascinated with him. How much did you work with Michael Sheen to focus his performance?

Frears: In a way, you do that in the writing, don't you? I don't know where the line is between how much you imitate people and how much you create an original character. Michael largely did that himself. If he'd done something that I objected to I must have spoken to him about. And I know that before The Queen, he and Helen [Mirren] talked, and she said, "Well, Stephen likes this. He doesn't like too much imitating."

MAJ: You didn't initially have David Morrissey in mind for Gordon Brown. What was it about him that won you over?

Frears: Oh, I'm rather conventional, so if it says "Scot," I thought I ought to have a Scottish actor. And David's from Liverpool. But then he convinced me that he could play it. I was jolly lucky -- he was terrific. He's frightfully good.

MAJ: Any plans to do another Gordon Brown film, now that he's prime minister?

Frears: No, but Peter [Morgan]'s writing a third film about Blair and Bill Clinton. I read a first draft about six months ago.

MAJ: I saw in your credits on the Internet Movie Database say that you're in postproduction on a movie called Cheri, and I thought, Oh, you're making a movie about Cherie Blair.

Frears: Yeah, everybody thinks that. [laughs] But it's much more interesting than a film about her. Dreadful thought.

MAJ: You've made a couple of movies about the underbelly of modern society, like Dirty Pretty Things, or about the sneakiness of criminals, like The Grifters. Do you think The Deal is similar in some ways to those?

Frears: The Deal?

MAJ: Yeah, in that it's about backroom dealings and the things we don't usually see?

Frears: [laughs] I can see that in many ways they're crooks, but in many ways they're not crooks. When I read it, I was very struck by it, and then someone said, "This is what's been going on," things we weren't being told. And The Deal has that quality, like Dirty Pretty Things, that makes you say, "Oh, I see, that's who those people are." It explains things that you've seen but not understood before.

MAJ: Are there other aspects of British politics and British politicians that you'd like to explore on film?

Frears: I've no idea. I just sit there and people send me things and I realize I'm very very interested in them. If you'd asked me a day before I read the script of The Deal if I wanted to make a film about this, I would have said no. But then someone wrote about it so interestingly. It was the best account of modern Britain I've come across since Dirty Pretty Things.

MAJ: Did you run into any roadblocks because you were making a movie about something so secretive?

Frears: I did say, "Are we allowed to make this film?" And I said it about The Queen too. But nobody stopped me. Nobody said no.

MAJ: No one's objected since?

Frears: Nobody's been unpleasant to me. They haven't rung me up and given me notes.

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
film reviews and TV blogging at FlickFilosopher.com

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