Blockbuster.co.uk - The Making of Last Chance Harvey

The mutually appreciative cast and crew of enchanting romantic drama Last Chance Harvey invite Blockbuster.co.uk behind the scenes.

Filmmaker Joel Hopkins' quirky feature film debut Jump Tomorrow (2001) charmed critics on both sides of the Atlantic and won him the 2002 BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. It also attracted the attention of actress Emma Thompson, who was intrigued enough to sit down with Hopkins to discuss working together on a future project.

"She said she liked my work and I'm obviously a big fan of hers," says Hopkins. "So I went away and thought of an idea for a character she could play. That was the beginning of this character Kate, who I just knew that Emma would be perfect for."

For producer Nicola Usborne, the film was a great collaboration between the stars and their director, and ultimately a very personal film for Hopkins. "He came up with the idea, he wrote it, he developed this great relationship for Kate and Harvey. He grew up in London but spent a lot of time in America and I think it's not a coincidence that this film is about an American in London as sort of a fusion of Joel's two worlds."

According to Tim Perell, who also produced Jump Tomorrow with Usborne, it was the writer/director's utter lack of cynicism that caught Thompson's eye. "She was interested in doing some kind of love story and Joel is one of these very people who sees the world in a very warm, rosy way. I don't know if it's that he's completely naïve or he just lacks that irony gene that the rest of us all seem to have. But I think that's one of the things that Emma really responded to in him. There is such warmth coming out of everything he does. He wrote such a richly detailed character that she responded positively to it."

Hoffman and Thompson worked previously together, for the first time, on Stranger Than Fiction (2006). "We only had a couple of scenes together in that film," says Hoffman. "We used to walk the streets, learning our lines. We'd try to say them so people would think we were really just having a conversation that they were eavesdropping on. We really liked each other and responded to the way each other works. So at the end of the shoot, we said someday maybe we'll get to make a movie together where we have bigger parts. And then she called me back in about a year. She'd met Joel Hopkins and he wrote something and I read it and we thought, wonderful - we can work together."

"Dustin and I knew that we had chemistry," says Thompson. "That is just something that happens sometimes - but not as often as you'd like. When Joel contacted me and asked if I had any thoughts about Last Chance Harvey, I said this would really suit me and Dustin down to the ground. If you make it specifically for him, I think this could work.

"Normally these things never work," adds the actress. "It all sounds lovely - somebody who's written his second script for two specific actors. It sounds like a no brainer, but it never gets made. It's only because Dustin agreed to do it, and for a lot less than he would normally be paid, that it happened."

For Hopkins, the opportunity to explore the idea of a more mature love affair between two very different characters was irresistible. "I think slightly older characters are just so much more interesting," says the filmmaker. "They've experienced so many more things and they've got so much more baggage, which is good. Baggage is always interesting."

Hoffman concurs. "I think one of the things that happens when a marriage fails is that you realise you don't know what you think you know. You knew that this person was the one for you - or you thought you did - and it shatters your belief system and you shut down. What makes this film interesting is that these are two people who are no longer in the flush of youth. They've been so pained by the expectation of what they thought they were going to have, that they very much do not want to get involved with each other and I think that gives the film tension."

As Thompson points out, "In fact, I think, falling in love when you're older is devastating. It's an enormous thing to happen, especially when you don't think it's going to come your way. Both of these characters in some way or other have resigned themselves. Not without effort, not without still wanting to work and do good things and have an interesting life. They still want all that, but the opportunities seem to be just out of their reach.

"I want to see people who I actually believe exist, who are vaguely like me, falling in love," she adds. "People who aren't perfect, who aren't so beautiful that anyone would go for them. You don't see love stories about that, you just see very beautiful people falling in love with each other and I'm just bored witless. I don't care about them!"

Thompson says she based her performance on real women she knows who just haven't found the right person. "It doesn't really matter what the age is," she says. "It's just not quite being able to find to find that connection - and not from want of trying. Kate does try. But it's only somebody like Harvey who just happens into her life and won't give up that makes her let her defences down."

Thompson, an Oscar-winning screenwriter herself, says she usually cautions against writers directing their own material. "But Joel had written and directed Jump Tomorrow, which I really loved and so I knew he was more than capable of directing his own script. For a young man on his second movie to be directing a movie legend like Hoffman is extraordinary. I don't think Joel had ever worked with an actor who found their way towards the lines in quite such a unique fashion."

Hopkins admits he learned something new every day on the shoot. "It's been a pretty humbling experience, but amazing fun. I got very used to watching the actors but then suddenly I'd see them on the monitor, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, that's Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson and I'm directing them!'"

"Kate and Harvey are at similar sticky points in their lives when they more or less collide," Hopkins explains. "There aren't many more chances. I think Dustin's character is feeling the clock ticking and he's looking for a chance to reshape things. He had decided his fate was this one thing and suddenly he gets this shot of energy that he's determined to make the most of."

Hoffman observes that Hopkins is the kind of director who visualises every shot before he ever sets foot on set but still allows improvisation. "He recognised the energy Emma and I have together and he was responsive to it," says the actor. "We didn't know the way the scenes would go. Sometimes we would see a scene that he had written and say to him, 'We don't think we have to say all of these lines, to make the scene work.' I think Joel liked it."

Working with two extraordinarily gifted and experienced players, says Hopkins, made him reconsider some of his preconceived notions about the film. "I learned that I actually have a better sense of what I'm after than I thought I did. It allows me to hopefully be a bit free-er ultimately, because I know I do have a quite good sense of what the essence of each scene is. The flipside is that I can probably be a bit precious with it and say, 'That's not how I wrote it.' The challenge was to be open to what's happening and to realise when what's happening on set is better than what I wrote."

Tim Perell observes that everyone involved with Last Chance Harvey, from the stars to the studio, took a leap of faith in putting the project in the hands of a fledgling filmmaker. "Joel's first movie was a million dollar movie with great actors, but no movie stars and a very small crew," says the producer. "This was a huge jump for him. None of us knew what it was going be like, but he did an extraordinary job. He made a movie with a studio for the first time, with an enormous crew and a lot of money on the line. He had two major movie stars who needed him throughout the production and he was able to manage them and support them and give to them in a great way. You can see the connection that Dustin and Emma had with Joel, and the trust that they had in him, up there on the screen."

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