Waiting to meet Michael Grandage at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City I took a moment to examine the strange artifacts that hung from the cavernous walls of the lobby. Everything from medicine bottles, to whale’s teeth, all of which seemed to manifest from the very depths of someone’s subconscious. The low lighting and intense burgundy of the walls and rugs made me think of the house from Sunset Blvd. imagined by Mark Rothko. An “appropriate” thought to have, since Grandage won a Tony Award for his direction of Red, which dealt with the personal life of the famous painter. Red was written by John Logan, with whom Grandage has re-teamed to make his feature length debut in Genius, a handsome, classic “bromance” about the relationship between the troubled Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) and his editor Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth).

In Genius, Grandage brings to the equation the sense of space ownership that can only come from working in theatre. Every single room, office, and even street, that appears in the film is filled with detail; a sense of existing beyond the confines of the set and the camera. Grandage also brings his expert touch with actors, commanding exquisite performances from all his players, particularly Law (who gets better each passing year) and Nicole Kidman who plays Wolfe’s lover, Aline Bernstein. Genius suggests a very bright future for Grandage onscreen; actors will most likely give anything to work with him, and he already has lined up his next project: an adaptation of Guys and Dolls.

When I finally sat down with the director, I asked him about the lobby and commented I half expected Norma Desmond to pop out of somewhere. His hearty laugh marked a great start to what was a delightful, often illuminating, conversation:

There are few things harder to capture on film than the writing process. Was this a challenge that attracted you to take on Genius?

It’s funny you say that because it’s a become a question in many different forms, that’s been asked since. So I reckon I didn’t know that literature onscreen is potentially inert. Obviously writing is because it’s done by a single person in a room, but I knew we weren’t exploring that bit of the process, instead we explored where he engages with an editor. So two bigger, more fundamental things came out of it, first the friendship which is at the center of the film, which was universal to what we wanted. But there was also the very specific relationship between editor and writer, which did interest me enormously. I thought it would be interesting, because I saw a little bit of the work a director does in what Max Perkins does. We have the privilege of working with very talented people, one of our jobs is to hone their work, and edit it, and certainly the biggest part of the work is bringing it to the public. I saw something personal there.

I thought it was fascinating when we hear him wonder if he’s muting the writers and changing things that are actually brilliant.

Actors like to listen, you give them notes which they use in the performance, and you watch what you asked them to do, and wonder “have I ruined a beautiful piece of acting?”

We see so many characters in the film also establishing that literature is the highest art. Maxwell tells Thomas he doesn’t like music, one of Max’s children mocks films, and then we see Thomas make fun of Louise’s plays, which he thinks are inferior to books. Is this something you encountered as you moved from stage to film?

No, people onstage don’t hold film in a lower esteem, I think actors want to do film because many people go to films. Stage is the poor relation to film, that’s defined by the coverage film gets in newspapers, because of their universal reach. I think you’re right in identifying that the film places literature in such a high regard, but that’s because it’s the vocation of these people. Whenever you talk to people who are at the top of their profession, they’ve been doing it forever, so these people in the film have been brought up on books. When you’re immersed in specific worlds you can’t get out of them.

You initiated a project in the UK that allowed over 100 thousand people to come to see theatre for the first time because you lowered the prices. You mentioned that film reaches a wider audience, so this isn’t a proper question actually, but are there parallels at all there?

It’s cheaper to go to the movies, so there is an accessible seating policy there already. I made the central ethos of my company that we were doing something to try and develop the audience of the future. Because even though it probably won’t affect me in my lifetime, that middle class, middle aged, predominantly white audience that holds up the theatre in England - which we can’t do without because there would be no theatre - they will be dead in 30 years! So we need to build diversity around them, to make sure there is an audience coming through to replace them. That’s what the access policy was about, film doesn’t have that problem. Film is accessible to all through pricing and now streaming. Unlike theatre it’s also there for all time, to be referenced again. One of the things I can’t even get my head around coming from the theatre, is that there are people not yet born who will be able to watch Genius, but the same can’t be said for my plays, once the run is done, they’re gone forever.

And yet, the UK is much more advanced than Broadway in preserving plays and musicals on film so others can watch them.

That’s a new thing though. I think that will develop on Broadway soon. We also need to get much better at it, are we trying to show an archived performance? Are we trying to be more filmic? What is that transmission of that live performance? At the moment it sits between two worlds.

So let me ask you about Guys and Dolls, you did it in the West End and will be doing the film. I’m crossing my fingers so that Ewan McGregor and Jane Krakowski will be in it…

(Laughs)

...but how much of your work making the film will be evoking the stage version?

There’s no question there at all for me. I don’t want the film version to have anything to do with theatre, and I think that’s the great thing about film which is that it’s a different medium, you can do different things you can’t do onstage. Closeups obviously, but thinking about choreography for instance, maybe we’ll design the whole of the set of Guys and Dolls so choreography can work through the design. When you put it onstage it works just on the proscenium, but when you have a camera being able to do something like go through buildings, or up streets, then you can choreograph accordingly, or the set could be built for the dance. You can’t do that onstage. I don’t want to do a stage version of Guys and Dolls, I want to do a film.

You’ve worked with John Logan in Red and Genius, both of which are about dark real life artists. Will there be another chapter to round out this trilogy of male misery?

(Laughs) Red is about mentors and students, Genius is about editor and writer, you’re right there’s definitely themes that John likes visiting. It’s funny, I know him very well now, he’s a good friend, but I don’t know anything about his father, and yet he’s obviously central to everything he writes. Selfishly all I’ve done is approach his work thinking about my relationship with my own father. That’s partly because what we all do, my job as a director is to approach the writing as the audience. John’s experience is already there, so the director needs to bring his.

You went from acting to directing theatre. Do you remember the motivations between that change being similar to what drew you from theatre to film?

No, the transition from acting to directing was so specific because it was born out of stage fright, I had to get out, basically I couldn’t do the job I had chosen to do anymore. I loved that job and all of a sudden I couldn’t go onstage! It was in 1990-something and it was the wrong period to get analyzed about it, I guess now you go to therapy, work through it and go back on stage, but then it just seemed like the end of the world. I couldn’t physically go onstage without passing out. It was really bad. I was looking for another job and thought I wouldn’t mind having a go at directing, because I liked the idea, but wasn’t sure if I’d be good at it. I did it, and had great clarity from that moment onwards. It was as if I’d found my life, because a wonderful peace came to my head.

Moving from theatre to film was a very natural progression. One was very traumatic, specific, the other was “I’m desperate to do a film but I can’t because I’m running a theatre”, now I have my own company, so I set up a company that can do film, stage, television, which makes more sense.

That sounds horrifying, the first part I mean. Did you consider going back to acting after all these years?

I’m not even very good in public spaces. Even last night we did the premiere of the movie and I was told I needed to give a speech, and it was nerve wracking.

Does your work with the actors change in each medium?

No, it’s still a search for purity. The worst thing you can say to an actor is “I don’t believe you”. It’s a terrible thing, you never want to say that to them. The bit that was the least different was actually directing actors, everything else was new, like what the camera was doing, or editors, I’m the editor in the theatre.

Out of all the stage productions you’ve made is there one particular night or performance that you can recall, that you would have loved to capture on film?

No, I wish there were. I’ve directed some things in rehearsal rooms where I’ve been watching and seeing what the actor has done in front of me has literally taken my breath away. I have no idea how they achieve it. I hold on to those moments as a kind of immense privilege of my job, which is to see great actors like Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi and all of those, but also actors who you haven’t heard of who are there to support someone and manage to find something in the breath, and you’re sitting there asking yourself “where did that come from? How did they know to do that?” Those beautiful moments I do carry with me, but they’re all rehearsal moments.

I have a million Nicole Kidman questions.

(Laughs) Ask them.

I’m sorry I’m asking this cliché question, but her character Aline is a stage designer, and I wondered if there was any of [your partner, theatre designer] Christopher’s input in her?

(Laughs) He didn’t have any input because I asked him if he wanted to be part of the film, but he’d done a film years ago and hadn’t enjoyed the experience, so he said no. He’s very much a stage person. So we agreed I’d do the film. I told him one of the characters was a stage designer but he didn’t get involved.

So there was none of him pointing out stage designers don’t do this or that…

(Laughs) Interestingly enough, most actors have a good eye, so Nicole had become Aline Bernstein. She was behaving like a stage designer, so it was wonderful to watch. There’s no parallels at all with my private life though.

You were already working with Nicole on Genius before you found Photograph 51. For the record, Anna Ziegler is a genius.

She is!

Anyway, I thought how interesting it was that both Aline and Rosalind Franklin from Photograph 51, are women who history has kinda forgotten, because they were overshadowed by men.

You’re right. Nicole came to me about wanting to play Aline Bernstein, she was very clear that she’s at a place in her life now where she wants to take on strong women, with something to say. Who are clear minded, who are existing in a man’s world trying to fight through. Everything about that is the same for Rosalind Franklin. The parallel is quite simply that Nicole Kidman, where she is now in her life at her age, is phenomenally focused on taking on those kind of roles. It just happens one came up in the theatre, the other on film and they were both directed by me. I’m the beneficiary of it, because she’s absolutely embraced them.

I was so sad Photograph 51 didn’t come to Broadway.

We’re still trying, we don’t know if we will be able to because availability is all over the place, but if we can bring it, we will.

John Logan  also wrote the screenplay for Sweeney Todd, you did one of the most important Sondheim revivals with Merrily We Roll Along. Did you ever discuss about making that a film?

No I haven’t actually, and I don’t know that Merrily would make a great film because it’s so innately theatrical going back in time and watching the actors without considering we need to see them age, or deage. On film, being a naturalistic medium you’d have to go into a place of prosthetics. The great joy about the theatre is that a boy can announce “I’m going to be 40 in a minute, but right now I’m 20”, and we go along with him. You wouldn’t do that on film. Merrily is a theatrical piece, bizarrely enough I did the British premiere 24 years after the American premiere, and we used the original script even though Sondheim and George Furth spent years rewriting it. We went back to the original and made it work, my theory is it was just so ahead of its time when it came out that nobody could deal with it at all! I wasn’t there, so maybe it was terrible, but I don’t believe it was. The VHS had just been invented, and people could rewind, now we’re used to that, but when the show came out the idea of going back was so new for the brain to get around. It was just a few years ahead of its time.

Like most Sondheim.

Right.

You produced Passion too.

That’s a hard musical for audiences. As I get older I realize history is going to treat Sondheim very well. Look at Thomas Wolfe, history didn’t treat him well, he got taken off the curriculum in the 70s and now there’s three generations who don’t know who he is. But the more I listen to things like Sunday in the Park with George, which is just a masterpiece - there is no other word for it - Sweeney Todd is a masterpiece. You can’t put masterpieces away, they’re there for the cultural heritage of the world.

Speaking of Fosca, you have worked with Elena Roger many times, and similarly you’ve worked with people from Genius in theatre. Is it important for you to have a troupe?

I like the idea of a troupe, I also like the idea of working with new people in every job I do. I think you become too stagnated if you work with the same people time and time again, I like a mix. Every play I do, and maybe now every film I do, I want to work with new people and also have someone I know. I like the idea that you can grow old with people. I like the idea of growing old with Jude Law, do King Lear when he’s ready, if I’m not dead myself. I like the idea they can grow into older roles, I grow old as a director, all of us are trying to stay young, so that fantastic mix is a good thing to be around for a while.

That sounds like Sunset Blvd. again.

It does. A little bit too close actually...

Genius is now in theaters