Joe Wright on Tom Stoppard: “He loved sweets, smoking, words and women – in reverse order” | film

IIn 2010, I was preparing to direct Anna Karenina and I told producer Tim Bevan that if anyone was to adapt a Tolstoy novel, it should be Stoppard. Surprisingly – because he was already a hero – Tom agreed to the meeting.

I went to his apartment and we talked about the novel and the idea of ​​love as a form of madness. It was a very personal topic for him. I think he lived that so many times, it became his adaptation thesis. Tom simply reviewed the book and removed anything that was not relevant to it.

At that first meeting, it was immediately clear that he loved smoking a lot – something we shared. He also loved wine gum, and like all great smokers, he knew the trick of keeping candy on hand, to use as a palate cleanser between cigarettes. He loved sweets, smoking, words, and women, perhaps in reverse order.

At the time, I was expecting my first son and staying with my then-in-laws in Encinitas, north of San Diego. Tom came to work with me on the script, which was very brave of him. He always traveled with a portable library that he made for himself: a wooden case with an open, folded top, filled with the latest hardcover books.

We tried to book him into the nicest hotel in the area but it didn’t have rooms with balconies and so wasn’t able to smoke, so he ended up in a completely crappy place instead.

He would come every day to my in-laws’ garage where we worked. It wasn’t really fancy. One day we went to Los Angeles and had lunch with Mick Jagger He was Extravagant. But Tom was right at home on the more posh end of the spectrum and the less posh end. In Encinitas he was never identified; He was somewhere else, but those people who knew him didn’t rush in and bomb him. Rather, they placed themselves before him graciously.

The entire script was handwritten in blue ink on a foolscap board, with very little scratching out. He formed the scenes in his head and then wrote them down. The script was then handed over to his assistant and written in screenplay form. He then annotates it with notes, returns it, and she hands over a written script.

He wrote the film as a straightforward natural drama. But then, due to budgetary pressures, we turned it into something completely different, mostly set in a theater. He was incredibly supportive and liked the idea of ​​us illustrating his script differently. He came to the set a few times, but he didn’t like being there because he didn’t have a role to fill. I think he found it all a bit noisy and busy.

And then, around that time, he fell in love with Sabrina Gaines and it was amazing. I remember a long, magical ride with them in Manhattan. It was one of those wonderful autumn evenings in the city and they shared stories from their amazing lives. There was no codependency, just mutual love and admiration – and the connection allowed them the freedom to be themselves.

My relationship with Tom was easy and clean, without any burdens or blunders. My life at that time was a mess and I think he recognized that and never judged. During our relationship, I tried to subtly force him to become a surrogate father – my father died when I was 18.

It didn’t work. I would ask Tom for personal advice but he would always resist offering it, saying, “I don’t know anything about that.” But later, he would sometimes come up with a little story related to the question I had asked; An anecdote from his life might help.

We made each other laugh. I think he thought I was vaguely silly and that I would treat him with a level of respect, but not too much respect. I liked teasing him, a little, about things like knighthood. I remember the porter in his building calling him Sir Tom, and Tom never asked him not to. I also asked him why he had a Czech accent, given that he left the country when he was two years old. “How do you still talk with that sexy Eastern European voice? I think you do.” He was laughing at that. There was damage done to him.

As someone who left school at 16 with no qualifications, I’m really inspired that someone as smart as Tom didn’t go to Oxbridge. He never stopped learning. Everything interested him, and everyone he met was a teacher in some way. There are those smart people who make you feel small; He was one of those very smart people who makes you feel so much bigger than you are.

He had this talent to lift you up and make you feel intellectually empowered just by his attention. He listened with amazing kindness, which is why I think people – especially women – loved him so much. Tom was just a truly lovely human being who loved to be loved. And I loved him.