'Harry Potter' director David Yates is a 'Prince'
On paper, everything about summer 2009 is big. It's been filled with mammoth sequels such as "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "Angels & Demons," mega-series reboots such as "Terminator Salvation" and " Star Trek," and superstar (and super-director) vehicles such as the misspelled "Inglourious Basterds" ( Quentin Tarantino guiding Brad Pitt), opening in August.
But the culture hero to beat is still a bespectacled British schoolboy.
His last outing, " Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," grossed more than $900 million worldwide and was often called the best of its kind.
Fans hungry for more Quidditch cried foul last fall when the producing studio, Warner Bros., moved the release date of the next one, " Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," from Nov. 21 to Wednesday, precisely to capitalize on the warm-weather audience that helped make "Phoenix" such a smash.
But Potter mavens have begun to realize that "Prince" may offer another enthralling fantasy adventure and a glimpse into the future of the franchise. Not only has "Phoenix" director David Yates returned for "Prince," while putting the finishing touches on it, he was also editing "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I" and shooting "Deathly Hallows Part II." Yates' guidance of four Potter movies, twice as many as Chris Columbus (who started the movie series), makes him - after author J.K. Rowling - the person to exert the greatest influence over the series' legacy. Still, Yates, like every other Potter director, deflects all praise back to Rowling.
Anonymity suits him Even when international names such as Alfonso Cuarón ("Children of God") and Mike Newell ("Donnie Brasco") make Harry Potter movies (Cuarón with "The Prisoner of Azkaban" and Newell with "The Goblet of Fire"), Rowling's reputation as the series' original author overshadows them. Two years after "Phoenix" opened, Yates is still better known for directing the BBC miniseries that became the Russell Crowe- Ben Affleck thriller " State of Play."
Although few have given him credit for creating the most broadly successful debut film of all time (not even George Lucas, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson came close with their first features), Yates says his anonymity suits him. Over his cell phone from England, he chalks up his success to "the wonderful franchise bounce."
He says, "I was thrilled we did so well; we weren't expecting to do quite so well. You're always thinking, a string of movies like these could just peter out at the box office, but they show no sign of doing that. It's a remarkable thing."
Judging from "Phoenix" and some of the casting choices on "Deathly Hallows" and "Half- Blood Prince," Yates is bringing the films a more acerbic British flavor and a denser fantasy reality than some of his predecessors, including fellow Englishman Newell, who confessed to Yates that he'd thought of "Goblet of Fire" as a "Bollywood" extravaganza. The splashiest new character in "Prince" is Horace Slughorn, a name-dropping potions professor at Hogwarts played by Oscar winner Jim Broadbent.
"I've worked with Jim before, and that's where you most see my British sensibility," Yates says. "Jim as an actor is a real touchstone of the British sensibility. He understands the people in the British middle class, and their need for social advancement and their need to be recognized that they have achieved social advancement. He's built a career on understanding those characteristics. He has great pathos, but he's also very funny."
His loyal collaborators Kindness, decency and patience are the personal qualities that draw the loyalty of Yates' collaborators. Screenwriter Steve Kloves, a distinguished director himself ("The Fabulous Baker Boys"), has been working with Yates back-to-back-to-back on "Half-Blood Prince" and "Deathly Hallows" I and II. He says Yates' "vast resources of patience" are good to have on Potter films, "since the books are difficult to wrestle to the screen." But "there is something else that separates David Yates," Kloves says. "He is willing to do the heavy lifting, to make the difficult decision when necessary - something which many directors are not willing to do."
Kloves, the adapter of all but one Potter novel ("Phoenix"), writes first drafts that tend "to be both wishful and practical" in his desire to retain Rowling's details and plot twists. "Wishful in the sense that I want to get the entire book on the page and practical in the sense that I know the wishful side of me is insane."
"Prince" presented challenges because of "a series of memories that inform the past and the present." While Yates "enjoyed the flashbacks enormously as separate incidents, he didn't feel they were satisfying within the whole. In other words, they diluted the dramatic experience from his point of view, and he felt we needed to concentrate exclusively on those memories that informed one particular thread of the story - the story I was, by and large, telling."
Yates says he loves the "comic gear changes" he's been watching Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson pull off as Harry and Hermione grow into adolescence. And he's particularly proud of the way Rupert Grint has filled out the part of that British public-school scamp Ron Weasley.
"He's always been the funny one, but he has so much more as an actor than that. In 'Prince,' he has lovely stuff that's funny and true, but in 'Deathly Hallows,' he must be defensive and haunted, and Rupert took to that like a duck to water. I'm always thankful that Jo Rowling gave us a world that allowed us to turn corners with the actors."
Rowling may be thankful for a director who, when it comes to making creative decisions, has, as Kloves puts it, "wicked courage."
