The entry begins:If my book One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858 were to be adapted as a film, I would choose some of Britain’s most admired and award-winning actors, and an award-winning director.Rosemary Ashton is Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature, University College London.
My first choice of director would be Sir Nicholas Hytner, until recently Director of the National Theatre in London, and now Director of a new theatre, the Bridge Theatre, which is due to open in October 2017. Hytner has directed for theatre, opera, and film. Two of his most acclaimed films are adaptations of plays by Alan Bennett: the award-winning The Madness of King George (1994) adapted from the stage play, The Madness of George III, which Hytner also directed, at the National Theatre in 1991, and The History Boys (National Theatre 2004, film version 2006). He also directed the hugely successful farce by Richard Bean, One Man, Two Guvnors (2011).
I would choose fine English actors to play the three main characters.
Charles Dickens was 46 in summer 1858 and undergoing a crisis in his domestic life, fearing he would lose his adoring public when his separation from his wife of 22 years, and rumours about his affair with an 18-year-old actress, became headline news. Dickens would be played by Rufus...[read on]
Learn more about One Hot Summer at the Yale University Press website.
My Book, The Movie: One Hot Summer.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
