Bill - Ben Willbond and Laurence Rickard Interview

Spang to celebrate the release of bill in UK cinemas from the 18th of September we sat down with the writers and stars of the film Ben Wilfong and Lawrence record to talk about making Shakespeare Bunny what are you doing in a pie it's a disguise oh well might say I despise gonna start with a very obvious one you probably asked it a lot what's your favorite Shakespeare play mmm good we have benefit because it's one of those questions but every time you think you've come up with the best answer someone else says one and you go oh no that's great I think mine's much much ado yeah I love that I just lot and I love every adaptation I've seen on it I've seen of it it's just so it's I do is just so vibrant and cheeky and I love all the kind of misunderstandings it's it's perfect of it I don't get the plot in what you do it's great the balance of the plot yeah I mean it's just yeah and in treatment of people want to keep me I really like King Lear as a dramas and by I like Merry Wives of Windsor just because Falstaff is just such a brilliant idea we thought as you may have noticed we quite like idiotic characters so why did you guys choose to do Shakespeare as your you know you film why was why was that the historical area you went for um the honest answer is that we we um when we first start talking about film he was the most obvious place to start with in in history like what everyone knows about Shakespeare so it's kind of touched on character to introduce yeah you can go oh it's from I think okay fine and also the history of Shakespeare is sort of really enticing for us as writers because there's this black hole in his life and people know what happened in his early life but and in his later life but this this thought a few years in the middle where no one's got a clue so that's a really intriguing little hole into which you can put anything so we put a really City story and talking about the the lost years what do you think he actually did I mean do you think he did this he was a so I mean yeah I think he what's he definitely dressed up as a tomato no I mean I think that's what great about it because no one of those things no one will currently unless there's some great research uncovered no one can tell you we're wrong we might be right I think it's unlikely I think it's probably like what happened with most writers and actors when they try and start out which was a few years of struggling and living in London and trying to make ends meet Wally I'm sure you had some sounds great evenings seeking out the drinking dens of various writers and you know meeting Marlow and meeting Johnson and meeting these interesting I'm sure and it was I bet it was really cool I'd love to go back there yes you know and then leave really quickly so I didn't get ill this goes great into my next question in terms of accuracy obviously you've made up a lot of the facts of what Shakespeare was up to but on a scale of one to ten with ten being you travel back in time and you double checked and won bin Braveheart how accurate is the movie I would I think we can say surprisingly accurate the story is clearly ridiculous but where it's being silly it's so clear it's being silly I think what we tried to do with the backdrop of it historically is be quite quite accurate what was happening politically and you know it can Philip it's been ridiculous character but he was you know constantly trying to kill the Queen Elizabeth or dethrone her and sort of convert England Catholicism and to say in terms of what we've done with Shakespeare's life apart from our silly plot in the middle that the book ends of that story are pretty pretty accurate and we tried to make the we said we said to our design that we wanted it to be as filthy and look as dirty and cold and horrible as it was if it feel like you feel like you're there there was a lot grime in yeah very sort of I hope their joke she had jokes about prostitution suicide and what about pornography I mean you know this is an all-ages comedy ostensibly how far was too far with those sort of jokes I think we try and have this sort of role where the most things can be read innocently and there's very few things where you you look at them and we're telling you something that you didn't know so there aren't their parents who are going well there was a slightly awkward conversation on the train where they were going we didn't understand that bit while you were laughing but it's not that they've suddenly been taught something awful it's just that there are a couple of which might hear over some children's heads but I mean I think we've always tried to do things the same with with the Underland where there's a joke there's jokes for everyone and then this jokes for a slightly older younger audience and some which are more for the adults but I think hopefully it means yeah not something obviously I was coming from you know your TV work as well what was the big sort of difference coming from a TV background going into sort of a feature film that time now I think it's just the narrative you know writing writing a narrative of that length is a big step up because you've got to it's real trial and error but then once you've cracked it you it feels great but it takes a long time to to write a screenplay it's going to play out the plot yeah and we made all the mistakes you know we went down all the yeah I mean might be people would go and see this and say well the mistakes are still in but believe me we've proved that about 99 percent of a mistake we hope I was gonna say it's a very looping screenplay at the end and everything comes comes together quite well and what's next like are you gonna use one of your earlier ideas well we've we've we're working with BBC films again on another screenplay tell you any more about it man so yeah it's very funny this is really there's a really good fit with the Stara voice man that's worse than answering the question last question how hard was it to not ask make a joke about Anne Hathaway it's really particularly with kids when with you know doing screenings and previews and things and we say and this is of course Martha who's playing Anne Hathaway and that's a really confusing concept again but she is an actress then why you got an actress playing another actress yeah but no we I think we really early on p.m. toyed with and then and rejected the idea it's a bit too an actress you

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Views: 14,002

Rating: 4.9156117 out of 5

Keywords: Whatculture, What Culture, Top, Best, New, Film, WWE, Games, Shocking, Leaked, Alex Leadbeater, Ben Willbond (Film Writer), Laurence Rickard (Person), Comedy (Theater Genre), Film (Film), Bill, William Shakespeare (Author), Horrible Histories (TV Program), Interview, Footage, Exclusive, Peep Show (TV Program), The Mighty Boosh (Musical Group), Interviews, Rare, British, BBFC, United Kingdom (Country), BFI London Film Festival (Film Festival), BFI

Id: KpGyt82pCXs

Length: 6min 25sec (385 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2015