The Making of the Potterverse (11 page)

Members of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital claimed that the Harry Potter novels were aiding patients both physically and emotionally. Lisa Lewer, a clinical nurse, noted, “Harry Potter’s predicaments are similar to the problems that face young people generally. Problems like dealing with the loss or separation from parents and family or the anxiety of forming new relationships in
unfamiliar places. But the different ways Harry tackles them demonstrates to children that by exploring their own struggles they can often find ways of overcoming them.”

One of the praises offered to the first film was that it felt thoroughly British, even to the point of using British terms that Americans might not get. Emphasized director Chris Columbus, “I vowed to make the film as British as possible. Did they redub
A Hard Day’s Night
? Did they redub
A Man For All Seasons
? No, and we’re not going to do it with this one.”

Some American Harry fans were undaunted by the fact that
Sorcerer’s Stone
opened in Britain a week before it did so in America, going so far as to fly overseas for a screening.

In an interview with the BBC, Chris Columbus revealed a bit of information about
Chamber of Secrets
, noting that they had shot sequences involving a flying car and a giant spider.

J.K. Rowling used her considerable clout to raise awareness and funds to help fight child poverty, particularly in one-parent families. Said Rowling, “Lone parents and their children are the poorest groups in our society. We are a wealthy nation, yet we have one of the worst records of child poverty in the industrialized world. It is a scandal.”

Numerous interested parties had approached J.K. Rowling about stage rights to her novels, but the author has emphasized that she won’t even entertain such offers until, at the very earliest, 2007. As her agent Christopher Little told the newspaper the
Stage,
“We have had requests every week from all over the world in connection with the stage rights to
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
. It would be difficult to give a figure, but it is in the hundreds.”

Customs officers in Hong Kong arrested 10 people and charged them with bringing bootleg copies of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
into the country.

A Johannesburg, South Africa, woman named her newborn daughter after Hermione Granger.

The
ABC
television network announced that they had acquired the broadcast rights to
Sorcerer’s Stone
and its sequels in a deal that would span 10 years.

In time for the film’s release, certain actors and filmmakers met with the press, and what follows are highlights from sessions with Robbie Coltrane, who plays Hagrid; director Chris Columbus; and the late Richard Harris, who originated the role of Professor Dumbledore.

(Hagrid the Giant)

QUESTION:
Children are going to be your biggest critics, right?

COLTRANE:
Absolutely. I got a letter from a woman the other day, and it started off very sweetly, “I’ve been a big fan of yours for X amount of years,” and then, she said, “We’re so glad that you’re playing Hagrid because it’s going to be very, very difficult to get that
blend between scariness and humor and millions of children throughout the world are relying on you.” So, I thought, “No pressure there, then” [laughs], and of course, she was right.

QUESTION:
Are they really tough with you on this one?

COLTRANE:
Well no, it’s their little world, you know. I have to treat it with respect.

QUESTION:
How did they pull off the effect of making you appear to be a giant?

COLTRANE:
I couldn’t tell you that, because it would spoil the magic, you know. I mean, it’s like Orson [Welles] says, “Everyone knows that the lady don’t really get cut in two,” and so, I’m leaving that one. It really would spoil it. If you knew, you would agree with me, trust me.

QUESTION:
You mentioned achieving a balance. Was that really tough to do?

COLTRANE:
No, it isn’t, because you see, he is very scary. I mean, he’s half a giant, and the giants aren’t very nice as you will discover later on, and so, he has to have that edge to him, and they did it very cleverly. They said, when he kicks the door in and then says, “Sorry,” I mean, that’s the real Hagrid, do you know what I mean? He forgets how strong he is and he could break your neck with a snap of his finger.

QUESTION:
Does it change the way you approach a character when people expect you to do it a certain way?

COLTRANE:
[Laughs] No, not really. I mean, it was quite clear to me how the character should be played in the books and also, of course, Jo [Rowling] and I, we’re great friends, we talked on the telephone for hours like a couple of adolescents about everything.

QUESTION:
Like what?

Robbie Coltrane got the role of Hagrid, the lovable giant. (Diane Bondareff/AP Photo)

COLTRANE:
Well, the books are about everything. The books are about friendship and peer group pressure and how you discover your individuality and are you prepared to be unpopular and all those things that fuel your childhood, really. The magic, in a sense, is not really what they’re about, I would suggest. That’s the icing on the cake, I think.

QUESTION:
What did J.K. Rowling reveal to you about Hagrid’s character?

COLTRANE:
Well, she said, “Imagine a Hell’s Angel who gets off his Harley Davidson and comes into the part, but doesn’t really move like in the biblical epic, you know, with the Red Sea.” So, he starts with a cup of tea and talks about his garden — I thought that was great, because I have known people like that, but if you say anything rude about their garden, they will take you out and beat [you up], of course. That’s Hagrid, really.

QUESTION:
Was there a period where you had to determine the balance in Hagrid between humor and being serious?

COLTRANE:
Well, it’s quite clear, really, in the writing where he’s supposed to be funny. I mean, Hagrid’s problem is that when he starts talking, he doesn’t know when to stop. He actually gives away the three major plotlines in here. So, that has to be an established part of his character, and otherwise, it just sounds like he’s giving away plotlines, and so, he had to sound very natural, and that sort of became a bit of a catchphrase in the shooting because he does it about three times, and one of the things that I like about him is that he’s not completely fearless. I think the fact that he calls that dog Fluffy is just hilarious.

QUESTION:
Do you think this movie will be judged on two different standards?

COLTRANE:
Oh absolutely, and children, as you know, are terrible sticklers for detail. They will know every single thing, and that’s more scary for Chris [Columbus] than for anyone else.

QUESTION:
Did you look like the Hagrid you imagined when you read the book?

COLTRANE:
Yes, absolutely, and the makeup girls did a great job, they really did. That outfit weighed about sixty-five pounds.

QUESTION:
Was it difficult to establish chemistry with the kids you were acting with?

COLTRANE:
Not at all with these kids. I have to say the reason that actors don’t like working with kids is because they don’t have a very good emotional memory. If you say to them, “Imagine yourself at so and so, imagine when you were last really, really angry,” and they have to be really, really angry fourteen times, and I mean, it’s bad enough when you’re an adult. So, what you do is that you always have fifteen takes with everything? It’s the same with bloody animals — little Fluffy will only hit the mark once in forty takes. Then it’s
three in the morning and you want to go home, and so, they print the take that Fluffy hit the spot on, and you perhaps weren’t very good in that take, and that’s what that’s about. But the kids were great. I have to say, as much as it goes against the grain to be nice about the director, Columbus is wonderful with children. Well, you can tell from seeing it. He really knows how to get the best out of them, because they were doing a lot of really subtle stuff, weren’t they? Normally, kids in movies are either being cute or they’re just being ghastly, aren’t they? He managed to get all sorts of subtleties. You know, the way their friendships develop, and the way [Hermione] is sort of unlikable to start with, and then, you start to think, “Oh well, she’s really alright,” just like in the book. So, they were fine and they’re proper children.

QUESTION:
Did you get the sense from talking to J.K. Rowling that faithfulness to the book was important?

COLTRANE:
Oh, absolutely. She got offered millions of pounds and you wouldn’t believe the list of directors that wanted to do this who were turned down.

(Director —
Sorcerer’s Stone
and
Chamber of Secrets
)

QUESTION:
Does criticism from the press affect you at all?

COLUMBUS:
Actually, no, because I think that the movie speaks for itself. I initially didn’t want to do a film like this because of the visual effects. I wasn’t interested in working with the visual effects. But now, visual effects are at such a point where it’s actually fun to work with them. My feeling has always been that you shouldn’t let the
effects overtake the story. I’ve seen it happen in so many films, where it’s all about the effects, but our goal in
Harry
was to make it just like the book, about the characters. The effects are icing on the cake.

QUESTION:
At what point did they ask you to do the second film?

COLUMBUS:
It just seemed like a smooth transition, and I do remember in the initial conversation with Warner Brothers, they did say, “Could you do two back to back?” and I said, “I think so, as long as I get the editing worked out with the preproduction of the first” — we were editing while we were shooting, and so, I felt that I could do it. So, it was already in my mind anyway. I think they probably felt that, “Well, if he doesn’t turn out to be a complete loss, we’ll let him do two.” I said to my cinematographer and production designer, “We need to push this film visually beyond anything that I’ve ever done.” I said, “It has to be visually stunning, more than anything, more important than anything.” Then I told the actors, “Your performances have to be incredibly real, naturalistic.” My feeling, again, with Hogwarts and the whole world, it would have been easy to take this into some fantastical place that exists only in the imagination, but I felt when I read the books that Jo Rowling spoke to every eleven-year-old and said, “You know, you could potentially get a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” That gave these kids some hope in their lives and I thought, “That’s what I want the film to be like,” that you could actually, potentially get this letter. You want to make them believe in magic in a weird way, and I know that sounds corny, but it really is. You want kids to believe in the magic of it all.