Nanny G = Nanny McPhee

[barwars]

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 'Nanny McPhee'
By Hanh Nguyen
Monday , January 23, 2006
12:01 PM PT

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - The hardest part of making "Nanny McPhee" for Emma Thompson wasn't the appalling makeup and prosthetics she had to wear, but writing the script. Even though she earned an Oscar in 1996 for adapting Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," she discovered that pulling together a single, coherent narrative from Christianna Brand's meandering "Nurse Matilda" stories would take five years of anguish and sacrifice.
Her first stab at writing about the chaotic Brown household and its magical nanny was too ambitious: there were 35 children in the family. After persistent prodding by producers and friends, saner heads prevailed.

"They were like, 'You can't have that. It's too expensive.' I was like, 'Okay, 29.' Then I slowly went down to 17, 13, 11, nine," explains Thompson. "I said, 'I'm not going any less than nine. It's not going to make sense and there's not going to be enough kids.' But then I realized I could not chart nine kids in an hour and a half."


Getting rid of kids wasn't the only writing casualty. Thompson also ended up killing off poor Mrs. Brown, the matriarch responsible for giving birth to the children -- numbering only seven now -- leaving Mr. Brown, an undertaker, to struggle with raising his brood on insufficient funds. Thompson didn't shy away from death in the story because she felt it was important to the film's darkly funny, yet touching tone.

"Children understand much better than we do that life and death exist together simultaneously," she says. "As we grow older and try to make sense of it all ... our tectonic plates start to ossify and nothing shifts anymore. But children are always moving. They understand that sometimes death comes and it can be like that. They're not angry about death. They're angry about no communication, no time and no listening -- the really sensible things."

To aid the hapless Mr. Brown, Thompson sent along the stern Nanny McPhee in addition to a surprise romantic interest.

"It wasn't as arbitrary as it sounds. I just thought of all those kids movies, and 'The Sound of Music' is a perfect example," she says. "I loved the love story when I was a child between Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, and the fact that it makes sense for the family. Chaos within a child's life generally speaking has to do with the absence or the loss of a parent. And that means that everything is out of whack.

"When I started to work out what myth 'Nanny McPhee' actually was, I realized that she was more like 'Shane' than anything else," she adds, referring to the story of a stranger who helps Wyoming homesteaders defeat a corrupt rancher. "In fact, that story form is probably very ancient and it has to do with chaos. A stranger or an outsider comes in and restores balance or harmony or order and then has to leave or die."

Despite the challenges of plotting "Nanny McPhee," storytelling is a basic part of Thompson. As an actress who sells fantasies to the masses, she's also become a natural raconteur. During the press conference for the film, she relates several behind-the-scenes anecdotes with the ease of old friends chatting over tea.

Much of the fun on set derived from Nanny McPhee's unsightly appearance, created by Oscar-winning makeup artist Peter King who outfitted Thompson with warts, a unibrow and a prosthetic nose. The disguise was so convincing, the children on set didn't recognize her at first.

"We just said, 'Nanny McPhee is here.' I would walk in and I said, 'Hello. What are you doing? What's your name?'" recalls Thompson. "It was rather formal and well behaved and then one of the little ones said, 'What have you done with Emma?' I said, 'I've had her killed.' Then they knew it was me. They knew that no grownup would ever say anything so terrible except for me."

The actress didn't confine her mischief to just the child actors. In the climactic food fight scene, a misfired pie lands in the face of Great Aunt Adelaide, played by Angela Lansbury. Since none of the crewmembers wanted to offend the grande dame, Thompson stepped forward to throw the pie.

"I was kneeling down in front of her behind the camera and I lifted up my hand with the pie," she says. "I suddenly thought in my head, 'I can't do this. I'm going to miss.' So I handed over responsibility to the pie. It was like Luke Skywalker with that thing that he had to drop down the hole of the Death Star. I just said, 'Use the Force. Just let the pie leave my hand and hit Angela's face.' And wham, right there. One take. It's one of the best moments in my life apart from giving birth."

"Nanny McPhee" opens nationwide on Friday, Jan. 27.

http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/st...-27662,00.html