Word: bennette
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During the location shooting of The Madness of King George, one fellow looked out of place. Or thought he did. "We're in this country house," Alan Bennett recalls, "with all the vans and caravans and the whole invading army of mercenaries. And I felt that everyone had something purposeful to do there-except me." No matter that director Nicholas Hytner and the crew were, like expert midwives, carefully bringing Bennett's 1991 play to the screen; the creator was still adrift. "I'd started it all by telling the story," he says, "but I felt as if I didn...
...Yorkshire butcher, Bennett may be wishing against wish for a good honest job that bloodies the hands. Instead, this Oxford grad with a fretful, donnish air is stuck with his reputation as Britain's most endearing man of letters. A reluctant star since the early '60s, when he beguiled London and Broadway with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller in the Beyond the Fringe comedy revue, Bennett has proved to be the surprise marathoner of that dazzling quartet. In his plays (A Question of Attribution, The Wind in the Willows), film scripts (A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears...
Last week, like Robert Redford and John Travolta, Bennett was nominated for an Oscar. King George received nods for Nigel Hawthorne (Best Actor), Helen Mirren (Best Supporting Actress) and Bennett for Screenplay Adaptation. His reaction is mildly pleased: "I'm happy, because it means more people will see the film...
Recognition at this advanced stage of an exemplary career can hardly cow this very private public man. In Writing Home, his delightful prose collection recently published in Britain and due out in the U.S. later this year, Bennett describes himself as "one who can scarcely remove his tie without having a police cordon thrown around the building." His sly art is an anti-striptease: he reveals only edges and crinkles of himself in the pith of an essay or dramatic monologue. "Bennett has become a major figure in the English landscape despite versatility and his steadfast wish to remain hidden...
...while Prime Minister William Pitt (Julian Wadham) fights to retain his power. But at its heart King George is an intimate family drama. It can be seen as satirical parable-"The film is really as much about the royal family today as it is about the 18th century," says Bennett-or as domestic tragedy, a kind of Mr. and Mrs. King Lear. Father is slipping away; what are Mother (Mirren) and the children...