I think there are several reasons. He spoke to some of them in interviews, and then other ones I kind of gathered from talking to people around him. I think [he felt] there was an untapped audience who didn’t know the original and like anybody, he wanted to communicate. He knew that in America there was a small handful of people who’d seen the original on PBS. In England, it had been a huge success. He was a bit of a household name there. I think he felt there was this audience that didn’t know his stuff and he was interested in communicating to more people, and also to a new generation. It had been 15 years since he wrote the first, and there were people who had never heard of it here. I think that was part of it.
I think that he had changed in his life, in terms of how he saw himself. He was much mellower and more human towards himself towards the end of his life. This character was so much an autobiographical character that I think there was an impulse to go back and reexamine himself a little bit in a new light, given what he learned in growing older and proceeding towards the end of his life. To sort of give himself a reexamination with new hope or at least more room for redemption. I think he was less bitter than when he wrote the first piece. I think that was intriguing to him.
On a simple kind of obvious level, [Potter] said that noir was more of an American art form. He said it was always a cheat to have it done in England and that maybe it should have been done in America in the first place. That was another thing that he wanted to go back and try to do.
What type of reception has the film gotten from fans of the series?
It’s gotten the entire range. We screened it last night and I had a couple of people come up to me and say, “I loved the original but I loved this just as much or maybe even more.” People [have also said], “It’s sacrilegious. How could you do this? The original was untouchable and this is horrible. You should never have done it and Potter should never have done it.” That’s sort of something I anticipated going in. You’ve got something that’s almost legendary. Some people are going to make comparisons favorable, and some unfavorably.
We’ve gotten every possible reaction. Sometimes I’ve gotten reactions from people who haven’t even seen it yet. I did one interview with a journalist who had not seen the film yet, who started by saying, “Where do you get the balls to repaint the Sistine Chapel?” That was how he started (laughing). I was like, “You haven’t even seen it yet!” He said, “And I don’t even want to.” You know, with somebody like that, there’s not much you can say.
That must have been a real friendly interview.
The person was really angry. I’ve actually encountered anger more than I’ve expected. I was kind of frustrated by it because it was Potter’s desire and intent. I understand that anger. I got it from when the production was first announced. I got things saying, “Here Hollywood goes again and takes something wonderful and turns it into commercial trash.” I tried to respond to as many people as I could, even directly saying, “It’s the guy’s idea. He wanted to do this and it certainly isn’t commercial trash.” You can say the idea is trash but we’re not making it [commercial]. Nobody is expecting to get rich off on this. We’re doing it out of love and respect for a guy’s work, not out of an attempt to suddenly capitalize on it and make money on it.
People just weren’t getting the fact that Potter wrote the script?
Exactly. Paramount Classics has actually tried to put some real energy into as much as possible making that point in the press stuff. It’s amazing how with some fans of the original, it didn’t matter how much we would say that. We still encountered the attitude as if we had done exactly that. As if we had just come along and sort of taken somebody’s stuff. One person said Potter always referred to this as his Last Will and Testament – this rewrite. It was something he really wanted to see get done. It’s been a strange thing. That’s certainly something I haven’t dealt with before in a project.
It must be extremely frustrating.
Yes, I’ve got to say that it has been. That has been frustrating and sometimes when you get critics responding in a way - all they are doing is comparing it to the original and not liking anything that’s different, mostly because it is different rather than analyzing why perhaps he made certain changes. If somebody analyzes the changes between the two and then critically says, “I don’t like this change and here’s why.” I think that’s fine. But the kind of knee-jerk of, “Well, the original had this in it and this doesn’t have that.” And it’s like, “Yes, and there’s a reason. Just kind of let that sink in before you decide it doesn’t work for you.”
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