By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Wright as rave: Joe W. on the ecstacy of his imagery
Do some research, ask the right questions, everybody’s got stories. Joe Wright “hasn’t had a drink for nine months, which, to anyone who knew him a few years ago, will be a surprise,” Jason Solomons writes in the Guardian. “Wright hit the London rave scene in the early Nineties, when he and a friend, Adam Smith (currently directing hit TV show Skins) were part of an outfit called Vegetable Vision, creating visuals for acts including the Chemical Brothers, Darren Emerson and Andrew Weatherall. ‘I was definitely off my head on ecstasy for quite a few years,’ he admits. ‘I was up a scaffold, 60ft above this seething mass of people, matching visuals to music from these amazing DJs. I’d put a slide of raw meat next to maggots, or a shot of police in riot uniform next to Campbell’s tinned soup and I’d flash between the two to the music and the crowd.'” Solomon gets Wright to arrive at this: “[P]roducers who were part of the rave generation themselves are trusting directors influenced by it with bigger budgets now. I know I managed to get that rave feeling into Pride and Prejudice, just little suggestions of it in all the pastoral beauty. I love dawn shots, or shots after the rain has stopped, because I always loved staying up all night till dawn, when it all got still and calm. Scenes like that act as emotional recall for me and I’m sure for anyone who was doing ecstasy back then. Those feelings are in Atonement, too. [The extended tracking shot on the beach is] like one big rave, a really trippy scene… And then there’s the use of the graphics in the earlier scene when Bryony reads the wrong, lewd letter from Robbie to Cecilia. I managed to get the word “cunt” to fill the screen in old Courier font – we used to do that for Underworld lightshows.’ I can’t believe that Joe has had the chutzpah to get a Best Picture nomination for a film that does indeed flash up the C word three times. On the plane over to LA, I watch Atonement again on the in-flight movie channel. As the scene of Robbie typing his fateful letter to Cecilia comes up, I glance along the cabin to see the C-word emblazoned on dozens of little seat-back screens. When you’re hot in Hollywood, you can get away with anything.”