Dec. 9, 2013 11:18 p.m. ET
The film director John Lee Hancock was never a particularly avid "Mary Poppins" fan, so when the script for "Saving Mr. Banks" landed on his desk, he didn't imagine he'd warm to the project.
That all changed when he read the script, by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, which explores the contentious relationship between "Mary Poppins" author P.L. Travers and studio head Walt Disney[1] DIS +0.20% [2] Walt Disney Co.[3] U.S.: NYSE $71.25 +0.14 +0.20% Dec. 10, 2013 11:16 am Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1.72M P/E Ratio 20.86 Market Cap $124.96 Billion Dividend Yield 1.21% Rev. per Employee $257,377 12/09/13 New Look at 'Mary Poppins'[4] 12/08/13 'Frozen' Cools Off 'The Hunger...[5] 12/01/13 'Hunger Games: Catching Fire,'...[6] More quote details and news »[7] over the movie rights to her books. The script also explores Ms. Travers's childhood and her relationship with her alcoholic father. "I didn't know anything about the tragic origin story of Mary Poppins. I certainly didn't know anything about P.L. Travers," Mr. Hancock said. "I was just entranced by it."
Mr. Hancock says Emma Thompson (who took on the role of Travers) and Tom Hanks (who plays Disney) were his first choices for the film, and both actors took a pay cut to be in the production.
"Studios don't make adult dramas and so when they do, they really try to keep the cost down," said Mr. Hancock, who also directed the 2009 film "The Blind Side," and said the budgets for the two films are similar, in the "low 30s."
"They'll spend $200 million on a big tentpole, but if they look at something and don't think teenage boys will be interested in seeing it, they hold you down around $30 million," he said.
Mr. Hancock talked with the Journal about the film. Edited excerpts follow.
What kind of research did you do into Travers and Disney's relationship?
We have tapes of the rehearsal room, which is Don DaGradi, the Sherman Brothers and P.L. To my knowledge there are no tapes of Walt and P.L. We know that they had meetings, that over the course of 15 to 20 years, he chased the rights. We know that he was in London lots of times because he always stayed at the Dorchester. We're pretty sure at least one of those times, they had a meeting where he tried to convince her to sell the rights. There's a lot of correspondence between P.L. and Walt, between Disney's lawyers and P.L.'s agent and lawyer. The dance they did back and forth is pretty intriguing.
Did you listen to all those rehearsal tapes?
I probably listened to about six or seven hours' worth. It was funny because somebody had brought up, when I first cast Emma Thompson, "Why didn't they cast an Australian?" They didn't know anything, of course. P.L. was born in Australia to parents who were from elsewhere. She moved to London and never looked back, and turned into a very proper British woman with a very proper British accent. When I heard those tapes, I knew that was Emma was the right choice.
The film's portrayal of Walt Disney includes his smoking and drinking. How did you decide what to include and how much?
I really, really liked all the people at Disney we dealt with, and I love working with them. But I don't think they could have developed the script inside the walls. I think they would have chipped away at it, especially the depiction of Walt, to a degree that it would have sanitized it.
This was completely developed outside, through Hopscotch [Films] in Australia, through BBC Films in the U.K. and especially Alison Owen and Kelly Marcel. So when it was presented to Disney and they said they wanted to make it, my first concern was, am I going to be able to make this movie, the one that's on the page? I expressed my fear. I said, I just don't want it to be the 11th hour and somebody come down from Disney and say, "Can you take out the Scotch, the cigarette and the curse? Oh, and could he please invite her to the premiere now?"
We had laid in one thing that came from Richard Sherman, which is that you could tell Walt was coming because you heard his smoker's hack. We used that three different times in the movie to announce Walt. Also, we know that he died of lung cancer just a few years later. I think it would have been disingenuous not to acknowledge the fact that he was a smoker. At the end of the day I was still fearful that they were going to come back and say, "Let's just take it out," and that I was going to have a fight on my hands. But they never did. When Bob Iger[8] saw the movie he said, "I think you guys handled it well."
You include some details about Walt Disney's background, but not his controversial activities during McCarthyism. Did you entertain the idea of putting that in the film?
No. As far as I know, for those two weeks in 1961, he did no union busting [laughs] or anything else. We actually know pretty well what he did in those two weeks. He had to spend a little time with P.L. Travers and then went down to Smoke Tree Ranch and caught up on meetings. Nothing terribly controversial.
At the premiere of "Mary Poppins," P.L. Travers wept. The film seems to suggest it's a catharsis for her, but some accounts suggest she hated the film.
She didn't like the movie. We know that she cried during the premiere, but she never talked about why she cried. We asked people who knew P.L. and they said, "I can promise you if she was angry or disturbed or sad about the movie, crying would not be the response that you would get from her." So we don't know precisely why she was crying. Kelly Marcel did a giant what if? What if this has nothing to do with the movie, that these two weeks in 1961 caused her to have to dredge up that tragic origin story and come to terms with her relationship with her father?
Write to Barbara Chai at barbara.chai@wsj.com[9]
References
- ^ Walt Disney (quotes.wsj.com)
- ^ DIS +0.20% (quotes.wsj.com)
- ^ Walt Disney Co. (quotes.wsj.com)
- ^ New Look at 'Mary Poppins' (online.wsj.com)
- ^ 'Frozen' Cools Off 'The Hunger... (online.wsj.com)
- ^ 'Hunger Games: Catching Fire,'... (online.wsj.com)
- ^ More quote details and news » (quotes.wsj.com)
- ^ Bob Iger (topics.wsj.com)
- ^ barbara.chai@wsj.com (online.wsj.com)
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