Guillem Morales interview
Off the back of his work on Inside No. 9, Guillem Morales has quickly become one of the most in-demand directors in British TV comedy. Here he talks about overseeing the filming on Decline And Fall.
What were your first reactions on reading the script?
This is the first time that Decline And Fall has been made for TV. The pros are that there are no references because it's never been done before, so that allows you to be the first person to explore a world, to make some decisions and feel completely free creatively, which is good.
The disadvantage of that is that you are the first person... A lot of people love that book, but of course, when you've got voices and faces such as Jack Whitehall, Eva Longoria, Stephen Graham, David Suchet, Vincent Franklin, Douglas Hodge, you think that you're in a safe position to deliver something that people will love.
This is reportedly Evelyn Waugh's favourite book, and that he was very fond of reciting passages and acting out the characters and so on...
I've been thinking about what Evelyn Waugh would think about this adaptation. I don't know.
I think what Evelyn Waugh would have made of this adaptation is for it to have been funny and I think that we have done something very, very funny and that for me is the important thing.
How modern did it feel to you when you first read the novel?
The first time I read the novel, I felt it was a bit dated, because it's British satire in 1928; and then I read it again and I found that it's a young man who goes through a society which is elitist, classist, xenophobic, racist, corrupt, amoral and I thought: "Well, maybe society hasn't changed so much since then, so maybe it's not so dated." Decline And Fall is about a generation ruining the next one.
Then the Referendum happened and the majority of young people voted to stay and the majority of old people voted to leave, and then I realised that it was disturbingly familiar.
It's interesting with the Grimes character. Is he simply a monster?
They are monsters! You follow Paul Pennyfeather, you empathise with Paul Pennyfeather. Paul carries the motion, but the rest of the characters are monsters. Some of them are more beautiful than others but they are social monsters, and for me that was very, very clear right from the beginning. Captain Grimes is probably the biggest monster but you love him so much. That's why he's one of the best characters ever.
In terms of the team as a whole, you are very much creating a world. How was that?
The intention of my approach was really trying to be as cinematic as possible. That's the reason that we used wide lenses rather than long lenses. The look is more cinematic but that demands more effort from everyone, because you can see the background more clearly. The Director Of Photography needs more light; I like to place the camera very, very close to the actors, as close as possible without distorting their faces, so that's problematic for the sound as well. The make-up has to be more subtle. It makes things slightly more complicated but it's more rewarding because the look is more cinematic and they wanted that right from the beginning, so most of my crew came from feature films and had more cinematic experience, put it that way; and so we worked together in trying to be as cinematic as possible, to get the best quality.
Can you talk a little about how you approached the humour in the piece?
I wanted to take down the comedy. That's the point. Decline And Fall is a satire: the dialogue is hilarious and the characters are bigger than life and the situations are really, really funny. There's so much comedy in the dialogue and in the characters and in the situations that what I wanted it to be very realistic in everything else - the locations, the light, the colours, the sound, the music.