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Article about tom ford single man film:
—Editor Although fashion and film have always been closely intertwined, Tom Ford may ... The Mourning After: Tom Ford on A Single Man. Although fashion and film have always been closely intertwined, Tom Ford may be the first fashion designer to cross over to the role of filmmaker.
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To be sure, his debut feature, an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man , reflects his immaculate sense of style. But its story, a melancholy tale of a day in the life of a middle-aged college professor (Colin Firth) who is still mourning the unexpected death of his longtime lover Jim (Matthew Goode), is a far cry from the sex-saturated tableaus that Ford created for the fashion world. The novel, which at its inception reflected Isherwood’s own fear of losing his lover Don Bachardy to another man, is a very internal work, capturing through its interior dialogue the profound questions that the most banal events in one’s life inspire. To translate the book to film, Ford reworked its plot so that protagonist George Falconer now plans to commit suicide at day’s end, making his every moment charged for us by the realization that it is among the last of his life. His dalliance with an infatuated college student (Nicholas Hoult), his drunken dinner with Charley (Julianne Moore), his best friend from London, and even his painful run-ins with dolefully conventional neighbors the Strunks all resonate with the singular sense of mortality. The novel’s title, after all, underscores the inescapable individuality by which each of us must confront life and death as much as it does George’s marital status. When Ford left the design house Gucci five years ago, he talked about wanting to make a feature film, although what and when remained open questions. In 2006, he acquired the rights to Isherwood’s A Single Man , started reading up on directing, and wrote and rewrote the script about 15 times. Ford secured financing from two large investors, and then lost it when the market tumbled. Instead of looking elsewhere, Ford financed the entire $7 million budget himself. He got an immediate “yes” when he offered Charley to Julianne Moore but was originally turned down when he approached Colin Firth for the lead. Only later, after his second choice dropped out and Ford appealed personally to Firth, did the British actor sign on. To assist him with his screen debut, Ford reached out to a team of both seasoned (costume designer Arianne Phillips and production designer Dan Bishop) and relatively new talents (d.p. Eduard Grau and composer Abel Korzeniowski). After premiering at Venice, where Firth won the best actor award, A Single Man was acquired by the Weinstein Company in Toronto and then launched in an Oscar-qualifying run at year’s end. Filmmaker: You read Isherwood’s novel when you were young. When you reread it with an eye toward adapting it to a film, how had the story changed for you? Ford: In my twenties what spoke to me in the book was the character of George. I’d really developed a crush on George. My first boyfriend, Ian Falconer, who lived with David Hockney, introduced me to Christopher Isherwood. I read everything he’d done. But in my early twenties, I didn’t grasp the spiritual side of the story, or its midlife crisis. In my forties, rereading it, it was something different. The book is written in the third person, but I didn’t originally understand the significance of that. Reading it again in my forties, I see it is about the true self or soul watching the false self, or material self, go through the day with a certain detachment. The spirit of the story is summed up in the first line: “Waking up begins with saying am and now .” It’s about learning to live in the present, learning to share your connection with the rest of the universe, and those things really spoke to me after I had left Gucci and couldn’t see my own future. I had had every material advantage that one can have, and a wonderful boyfriend I have been with for 23 years, and yet I wasn’t seeing all those things. That’s why the book resonated with me. Filmmaker: In the documentary Chris and Don , Don Bachardy talks about the origin of the book. Did you speak to Bachardy about it? Ford: Oh yes, I got to know Don quite well. I had met him once in the ’80s, but he didn’t remember me. Why should he—I was just a kid then. But I got to know him quite well while working on this. Anytime I had a question about something I talked to him. And he loved the movie, which made me feel very happy. Filmmaker: Supposedly Isherwood wrote this when Bachardy was going to leave him. Ford: Well, he did leave, according to what Don told me. He moved to New York with somebody else for eight months. So Chris [Isherwood] imagined that Don was dead and that he was single. But they got back together. I don’t know if he finished the book before they got back together or after, but Don thought of the title “A Single Man.” He said it is one of Christopher’s favorite books. Filmmaker: What is it about the book that conveys spirituality to you?