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 The Times BFI London Film Festival hosted the European premiere of Stranger Than Fiction on Friday, at the Odeon West End. In attendance were the stars, Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, as well as writer Zach Helm and producer Lindsay Doran. Suchandrika Chakrabarti reports from the red carpet...
Stranger than Fiction, which had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this year, is the tale of a taxman, Harold Crick (Ferrell) who begins to hear a female voice in his head, narrating all of his actions and thoughts (Emma Thompson).
When the voice declares that Harold is facing imminent death, he
realises that he must find out who is writing his story and persuade
her to change the ending. He consults a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman) who suggests that Harold must find the author who is writing his story and stop her... before she ends him. So the race against time begins.
When asked what attracted him to the role, the surprisingly softly-spoken Ferrell answered: "The very lucrative paycheque." However, aside from such concerns, all three of the stars cited the innovative ideas - which have much in common with movies such as Being John Malkovich, The Truman Show and Adaptation - and the comic possibilities of their quirky characters. For instance, Ferrell's repressed, job-hating taxman finds a new lease of life, and a lovely new cookie-baking girlfriend who looks remarkably like Maggie Gyllenhaal.
 Hoffman's quietly strange literary expert is clearly related to his barmy detective character in I Heart Huckabee's, and he said that he had great fun with the role. So he should have, with lines like "I'm not a professor in crazy" and "another death will find you [Harold], and I guarantee that it won't be as poetic or as meaningful as her ending." .
Thompson, playing the reclusive, chain-smoking author who is unwittingly controlling Harold's life, gets another opportunity to ugly-up for the silver screen.
When asked if this was a deliberate strategy, to ensure that she looks even better in real life by comparison, Thompson said no, and later on added that her appearance in the film may even frighten viewers: "Encouraging people to smoke? Have you seen me in the film?! "
Like Woody Allen's 2004 feature, Melinda and Melinda, Stranger than Fiction is also concerned with the fine line between comedy and tragedy. The writer, Zach Helm, said: "a choice was made to go back and forth between tragedy and comedy, a sort of tug-of-war." Harold needs his ending to be rewritten as a comedy, despite the fact that Kay Eiffel, the author, is renowned for always killing off her hero.
When asked which tragedy they would rewrite as a comedy, both Zach Helm and Emma Thompson went for Hamlet. Helm said that he would have liked Hamlet "to become king and rule for a bit," whereas Thompson suggested that "Claudius should turn out to be gay... it's all to do with anger and repressed rage."
Hoffman seemed nonplussed at the question, until asked, "Are you going to star in a Baywatch remake?" in reference to his character moonlighting as a lifeguard in the film. Then he had his answer: "I'm trying to work out if this evening is a tragedy, now I know it's a comedy!"
Stranger than Fiction will be released in UK cinemas on 1st December.
To contact the author:
suchandrika@gmail.com
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