Ol Parker interview

Now Is Good uses Brighton as the backdrop to its sad yet strangely uplifting teenage story. The film’s director Ol Parker explains his love affair with the city, the story and more to Victoria Nangle

Now Is Good stars Dakota Fanning as Tessa, a teenager with terminal leukemia determined to fulfill everything on her young ‘bucket list’. Based on the book Before I Die by Jenny Downham, when director/screenwriter
Ol Parker (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) came across it he was determined to adopt it as his next project – and to set the story in Brighton…

So, what’s your love affair with Brighton?
“My love affair with Brighton started nearly 20 years ago. I wrote a play and it was put on at the Brighton Comedy Festival. It went to Edinburgh and then some nice producers who were running the Brighton Comedy Festival asked if it could be on there, and I had never been. I must have been 21… 22, and I’d never been. So we went down and had the best week putting on the play but also enjoying the town, so that’s where it began, and has continued ever since.”

I really like the way you use settings to echo what’s going on in the protagonist’s mind; when it was busy you were in the Lanes and when it was peaceful, you were in the woods. You seem to love the environment and utilise it well…
“Thank you very much, well, that is the plan and it’s just a fantastic place to be and it’s just beautiful. The book the film is based on is utterly lovely and extremely bleak, and I wanted to try and open it out and give it a bit more vigour and life, and paradoxically, optimism. Yeah, so I immediately set it in Brighton because it’s the repository of all of those things.”

How did you find working with such a young cast after you’ve been working with a more senior cast recently?
“A contrast, put it that way. But actually Dakota is one of the oldest 17 year olds you’ll ever meet and she can rival many with her maturity, so that was fine. I loved it, it was great. They are fantastic kids and I feel very paternal describing them as kids, but it was great, they really helped me. I mean, there’s always a risk when you’re in your early 40s and you’re trying to make a film about teenagers and the capacity for embarrassment is vast. And so they were very gentle with me and directed me often and wisely.”

There seem to be a lot of films at the moment that have quite young female protagonists in them, like The Hunger Games and Hanna – very strong young females. Do you think this is a fad or do you see it as a trend in the way Hollywood is seeing young women?
“I hope it’s a trend, yeah, let’s go with the trend. There are plenty of fantastically strong women and maybe Hollywood is, however late, responding to that finally. But yeah, definitely a trend and I’m happy to be part of it.”

Why did you cast the American Dakota Fanning to play the English main character Tessa?
“Because she’s ace. I mean, did you not think so?”

I thought she was very good…
“Thank you very much. I don’t know why I’m saying ‘thank you’, it wasn’t even me! She really wanted it, which was one thing. I was meeting British actresses, and I had a strong idea it would be one of them. She read the script and despite being a great big movie star, knowing that there were British actresses up for it she fought for the part rather than sitting back and waiting to be offered it, or expecting to be offered it. It convinced me really quickly of her absolute passion and commitment. And then she turned into a movie star. And I don’t mean beyond the film or on the poster, I just mean in the film she does something completely riveting that a movie star does to make you fascinated with them and what’s going on behind their eyes all the time.

It was about a year from her getting the part to her doing the part, and it went through various stop starts, and she was completely loyal and calmly perfected her accent. She worked her ass off.

In fact, she’s genuinely one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. She’s the only person I’ve ever worked with who, at the end of the shoot, wrote thank you letters to the entire cast and crew. What a remarkable thing she was and we were blessed with her presence.”

What did she give you?
“She knitted me a scarf, which I haven’t worn. But this is how nice she was – she also knitted scarves for my kids which they have worn and wear often, being as they are completely fascinated by her. My youngest daughter is confused because she watched Dreamer, a brilliant film Dakota did, and she thinks it’s a documentary so she was slightly confused when Dakota was in her house and didn’t appear to own a horse called Dreamer.”

Your supporting cast were very good. Paddy Considine particularly made me cry, he just had a look…
“Yeah, I got lucky, didn’t I? We met and I offered it to him with a prayer, as one does, and I think before he read it it didn’t sound like his bag of chips, but I said: ‘No, I know I didn’t think it sounded like mine either but read it – it might not be the movie you think it’s going to be’. Then he read it and we had a drink and he said: ‘You know, I think I’m gonna try to be quite still and quite quiet and not do what you’ve seen me do before,’ and I was like, ‘Great! I’d love that’. And yeah, from day one I was thinking ‘oh my god, he’s awesome’. I mean, it’s a cliché that when things are working on set, that frequently means they don’t work: if it’s working on the day, it’s not always working for the audience. If the crew are laughing then you’ve got a problem, but I mean the crew were sobbing at Paddy so I figured we were doing something right.”

You wrote and directed it. Did it become your story?
“Well, I have daughters so Paddy’s story was very much the way in for me. I mean, I wrote a scene – and it’s a reasonably free adaptation as most adaptations are – where Paddy is meeting Tessa’s boyfriend for the first time and it’s not in the book, it’s very much coming from my horror at my daughters and their boyfriends. So yeah, it always becomes your story, or you hope it does.”

I love that scene…
“Thank you very much, it’s good. He has a line which I’ve said to my daughters which is: ‘it’s a terrible day in a dad’s life when his daughter brings a boy home, and I thought that if I killed the first one, word would get around’. And my daughter saw it and said, ‘wait a second, he talks like you!’”

Jeremy Irvine, who plays Tessa’s boyfriend, is adorable then too.
“He’s ridiculous isn’t he? Preposterously handsome. We cast him just before he did War Horse. He was great and he did a brilliant audition and, God bless him, after War Horse he went away and came back after four months and had gained three inches and lost about two stone. And he was just insanely handsome. He was already a brilliant actor and he had just become, like, ‘whoa what happened there!’ – so that felt good. We had a preview the other night, with sobbing 16 year olds saying, ‘he’s the man I wish I had lost my virginity to’. The best compliment you could get!”

Now Is Good, directed by Ol Parker, starring Dakota Fanning, Jeremy Irvine, Paddy Considine and Olivia Williams is on general release in cinemas from Friday 21 September 2012