Bright Star Interviews

[Malia]

Hi Everyone,
Thought I'd create a topic thread for any interview videos made regarding Bright Star.
Here's a recent interview of Jane Campion by Charlie Rose (he has a well-known talk show here in America). It contains several clips from the movie that I haven't seen anywhere else including an interesting exchange between Charles Brown and Fanny Brawne after Keats has sailed for Italy. Great look into Brown's character.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10607

[Aquarius]

Interview with Paul Schneider about playing Charles Brown and building a camaraderie with Ben.

http://www.tribute.ca/interviews/Paul+Schneider/starchat/716

Also, this isn't a video, but a print interview with Ben Whishaw. It's 3 pages long, but it's really fascinating, and goes into depth with the film making experience of Bright Star, how he and Cornish built up their relationship, etc.

http://www.movieline.com/2009/09/bright-stars-ben-whishaw.php?page=1

[Malia]

A very quick interview of Paul Schneider. This is from "Flicks with Patrick Stoner" a 'filler' program that airs on public television in between longer shows. It's about 4 minutes long.

http://www.whyy.org/tv12/flicks.html

[Saturn]

Another great interview, this time with Jane Campion:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/jane-campion,33148/

[Aquarius]

Thanks for that link, Saturn. I like Campion's quote about how strong Fanny must have been, as a young girl to handle Keats' letters to her. His letters to her were sometimes very demanding and yet sometimes very passionate and tender, but I think some girls wouldn't have known how to react to them.

[Malia]

Yes, I imagine Fanny would have had to have had a strong sense of self in order to endure some of the things Keats wrote to her. Whenever I read his letters to her I am almost amazed by how quickly his emotions and sentiment could turn. He loves her then he hates her. He needs her then he distrusts her--sometimes in the same sentence. Keats was wracked by a lot of internal tensions and fears (some having their origin in his childhood) and I think he tended to project them out on to Fanny. That is one of the reasons I don't think Fanny was some terrible flirt who just used Keats. His letters, read without any kind of analysis into the person who wrote them, might suggest that Fanny was heartless and inconsiderate. But when we consider his personal struggles, we realize (I think) that we are looking through a distorted lens at Fanny--his account of her personality is not a fully accurate one, I think.

[Raphael]

Thanks for that link, Saturn. I like Campion's quote about how strong Fanny must have been, as a young girl to handle Keats' letters to her. His letters to her were sometimes very demanding and yet sometimes very passionate and tender, but I think some girls wouldn't have known how to react to them.

Yes, I imagine Fanny would have had to have had a strong sense of self in order to endure some of the things Keats wrote to her. Whenever I read his letters to her I am almost amazed by how quickly his emotions and sentiment could turn. He loves her then he hates her. He needs her then he distrusts her--sometimes in the same sentence. Keats was wracked by a lot of internal tensions and fears (some having their origin in his childhood) and I think he tended to project them out on to Fanny. That is one of the reasons I don't think Fanny was some terrible flirt who just used Keats. His letters, read without any kind of analysis into the person who wrote them, might suggest that Fanny was heartless and inconsiderate. But when we consider his personal struggles, we realize (I think) that we are looking through a distorted lens at Fanny--his account of her personality is not a fully accurate one, I think.

I so agree with you both- I think Fanny was strong and composed- she also absolutely loved John and I think she must have had some understanding of who he was to continue the reltionship. I think she must have understood his passionate nature, and of course later on the effects of consumption on his health and being. I don't know how some people doubt she loved him- after all when he had passed she wore widow's clothes for a few years after and wrote very kind, mature supportive letters to John's sisiter. A silly vacuous girl (as some people paint her to be) would not have stayed loyal to a dying poet who could not marry her; she would have ended the ralitionship and found another suitor.
I haven't seen many of what he wrote to her ( only what's been quoted on here and in the tow biographies I have), so I don't know the extent of what he wrote, but it's enough to see that the letters were very passionate and intense which could have scared her off! But she didn't seem to get scared off. I don't know how I could have coped with letters like this when I was 18 to be honest; I wouldn't have known what to write in return. or how to react.

[Malia]

Someone on the imdb board for Bright Star posted the following snippet of an article. These are Jane Campion's thoughts at visiting Keats's gravesite. My heart was moved by it!

Here is the complete article:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 895812.ece

Here is the excerpt posted on the imdb message board:

"My film journey with Keats ended the day we finished shooting in Italy in June, 2008. We re-enacted a version of Keats’s coffin being carried from his lodgings, across the Spanish Steps and into the waiting funeral carriage before clattering along the empty morning streets,on its way to the Protestant cemetery. After we had celebrated the end of our shoot, a few of us made the journey to the cemetery and finally, after all this time, a century or two for Keats and six years for me, I was standing as near to Keats’s mortal remains as I ever could. Cats of all kinds strolled among the graves or along walls. An old tomcat curled his tail around Keats’s gravestone, rubbing his battered head back and forth. Someone had left a tiny souvenir bear with a red T-shirt on the grave and our designer scooped it up, explaining to the bear and to Keats that she would take it to her daughter in Australia. Behind the headstone was a bunch of Cellophane wrapped around rotting flowers.

I knelt and kissed the grave. I felt the sun on my back, the cool of the stone; I remember the bright, waxy new foliage in shadow and speckled sun, and all my many complicated human feelings and thoughts were all together there with me at Keats’s grave.

His poems were my portals into poetry, and his life and letters staged for me a revived creative relationship with myself — as well as faith in the Divine; there is no other explanation for his best poetry. The beautiful human Keats opened himself, he was 'a bright torch, and a casement ope at night, to let the warm love in!' Perhaps I will be 93 and mumbling: 'Darkling I listen; and for many a time/ I have been half in love with easeful Death,/ Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme.'”

[dks]

Oh, what a beautiful, poetic account!...thanks so much for posting that, Malia! I know I'll be 93 mumbling his verses still--and also still posting on here...asking Stephen to change my avatar every week to another picture from 40 years back!!

[Raphael]

Wow- that was moving. I have a feeling Jane really feels respect and admiration for John Keats. I hope his grave is taken care of over there in Rome. Has anyone here ever been?

[BrokenLyre]

Thank you so much Malia for finding this Campion link! She gives the most wonderful accounting of her discovery of Keats that I have read. So much of what she wrote resembled my own poetic conversion. I just love her heart and the way Keats touches her. I guess it tells me I'm not crazy after all. Oh how I want to go to Rome to see what she saw! I agree with her response completely and I am forever grateful that she put so much of Ode to a Nightingale in the movie! Forever grateful to her.

[Malia]

Here's an interview with Ben Whishaw about Bright Star. It appears it was done at Wentworth Place.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film ... -Star.html

[Raphael]

That was lovely- thanks so much x