One of the most riveting scenes in A Single Man, Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel about a gay man in bereavement, comes early on in the film, when the story’s protagonist, George–played by Colin Firth–receives a telephone call and learns that his partner of 16 years has been killed in a car accident.
In a fury of anguish and despair, George runs out into a rain storm, and winds up, a soggy mess in every way, at the doorstep of his best friend, Charlotte (Julianne Moore), where he collapses in her arms. It’s one of the only times in the entire film that George lets his guard down. Otherwise, he’s as starched and wrinkle-free as the dress shirts he unwraps from their tissue paper every morning and puts on.
It’s the kind of scene that requires supreme concentration and focus from an actor; when the outside world has to absolutely stay outside.
“I don’t think there’s any difference between heterosexual love and gay love,” Firth said. “It’s a love story, and [George] is not a character who flaunts his sexuality, anyway. So I think most of us completely forgot about that fact.”
On the evening of November 4, 2008, that was a hard thing to do.
“I remember shooting that scene when we got the news that Obama won,” Firth said, the day after A Single Man screened at the Toronto Film Festival. “That was all going on in the background, people were kind of listening to radios and watching TV. Fortunately, we got most of [the scene] done, but there was a moment when I said, ‘Don’t ask me to do another take right now, because it’ll be one of joy.’”
The news caused a “general euphoria” on the set, Firth said—though “one or two Teamsters were disappointed.”
The mood fizzled, however, when, later in the night, it was announced that California had passed Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. “It was hugely ironic and depressing, especially given that, we weren’t making a political film, but given the fact that [the film takes place] in 1962, and now California had voted to take us back past 1962,” said Firth.
“I remember going to and from work, past people with placards—families who looked just like the Strunks [his character George’s Leave it to Beaver neighbors], with lovely-looking, WASPy families, saying ‘Support Prop 8’ with their children—saying: Deny the rights for some people to love each other. And I thought it was just shocking and horrible.”
In Toronto, the Weinstein Co. bought A Single Man on Tuesday and plans to release it this year. In an interview, Firth had on a very George-like ensemble: black suit and crisp, white shirt that was open at the collar. The But his demeanor was far more relaxed and chatty, as he discussed what it was like playing a gay man in a film that proudly showcases homosexuality in a way that some have called fetishistic, and that includes some rather baring–in every sense of that word—scenes.
Firth shook his head at the notion that this film was any different from the ones in which it’s women he turns into stuttering, Bridget Jones-like school girls.
“I don’t think there’s any difference between heterosexual love and gay love,” Firth said. “It’s a love story, and [George] is not a character who flaunts his sexuality, anyway. So I think most of us completely forgot about that fact.”
Firth was filming Dorian Gray (which he was also promoting at Toronto), when he was first contacted by Ford about starring in A Single Man. “I got an email from Tom, whom I’d met a couple of times, but we hadn’t exchanged e-mails, so it was a surprise to see his name. He wrote me a letter about [the project], and it was eloquent and compelling. I was surprised, because I didn’t know he had any intentions in that direction.”
The two then met and discussed the role, at which point, Firth was in. “There’s something very, very convincing about Tom, and rightly so. And so, that first conversation, before he’d even sent me the script, I knew it had to be a very, very intriguing film.”
To prepare for the role, he brushed up on his Isherwood—though he was a fan of works such as Goodbye to Berlin and Mr. Norris Changes Trains, he’d never read A Single Man—and studied the documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story, about Isherwood’s relationship with the artist Don Bachardy. The night before, at the Single Man screening, Ford explained that the grief and loss George feels in the film was based on Isherwood’s own feelings when he was separated from Bachardy for a prolonged period of time.
Firth met Bachardy halfway though shooting A Single Man, when Bachardy came to visit the set. Asked what his reaction was, Firth said, smiling: “Not much.”
“I find him quite enigmatic—what he really thinks. He said wonderful things about the film, but I don’t know what it must be like for him.
“But I know he treated Tom very, very warmly, even passionately, after he saw the film. And he felt Tom had made it his own. Don had told me that Isherwood felt it was important that when you’re adapting something, you reinvent it. Otherwise, slavish adaptations–being, punctiliously observant adaptations–are likely to be a dead doornail. Whatever you’re dealing with, there has to be some freedom of the imagination.
“And I’m all for it. It’s the same with Dorian Gray. You’re not copying the original. In order to be faithful, you have to usurp the original material.”
Nicole LaPorte is the senior West Coast correspondent for The Daily Beast. A former film reporter for Variety, she has also written for The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Observer, and W.
