The misbehaving auteur

Australian-born film director Stephan Elliott has come to terms with his Priscilla success, put behind the years he lost to morphine, and moved on to challenges most unexpected.
-˜You’ve so got the wrong guy’, Elliott said he told the producers when first approached to direct a film version of Easy Virtue, the 1920s period play by Noel Coward.
It was a challenge for me to keep my muzzle on, but in the film you can see me bursting to get out occasionally. It’s still camp and so even though its not full-front guns blazing Elliott it is a real effort to be true to of myself.
It’s already shocked fans of the Merchant Ivory genre, with some crude humour and a soundtrack including a jazzed-up Sex Bomb and Car Wash.
Elliott said his goal was to make a new generation actually like a period film. That also meant taking a gamble on younger stars Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian) as a young aristocrat and Jessica Biel as a beautiful American racing car driver. Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth in supporting roles helped convince the genre’s more traditional fans.
But some scenes, including a can can performed without underpants, caused a stir in Britain, a feeling that he went too far.
I kept thinking what would Coward have done in his later life when he found comedy. What would these guys have done in their absolute prime?
It would be his comeback film following a professional slump and slow recovery from a skiing accident. He kept writing scripts in hospital and credits the morphine-induced memory loss for reinvigorating his creativity.
Elliott had been struggling to find his place when everything he had done was compared to Priscilla -” and not favourably.
I used to be really cranky with it but now I realise it’s a gift, he said.
I call it the Priscilla ball and chain, but I’m damn lucky to have had that ball and chain. I put some diamantes on it and turn it into a mirror ball. That’s how I’m looking at it.
Young people still come up to him and explain how the film gave them the courage to come out, or inspired them to enter the film industry.
I didn’t mean to but it has had that much effect on people. And it’s starting again. If the stage show works in the UK, these guys are going to have companies going worldwide.