From Author To Auteur

It seems appropriate to be meeting William Boyd in the "Pembroke Room" of the Lowell Hotel in Manhattan. It's the kind of genteel tearoom where the British expatriate characters from one of his novels might gather. The prize-winning novelist's books, such as "A Good Man in Africa," "An Ice-Cream War" and "The Blue Afternoon," have earned him well-deserved comparisons to Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. (Indeed, his latest project is an adaptation of Waugh's "Sword of Honor" trilogy for the BBC.)

Now the novelist has taken on a new role: filmmaker. Having written screenplays for films from "Chaplin" to "Mr. Johnson," Boyd has took his seat in the director's chair to make "The Trench," a somber ensemble piece set in the 24 hours before the Battle of the Somme. He spoke to Andrea C. Basora about his interest in filmmaking and his ongoing fascination with the First World War.

NEWSWEEK: What makes someone turn from a prolific novel-writing career to directing films?
WIilliam Boyd: I've always had a film job alongside my novel writing. I've co-produced a film. I've gotten involved in casting films. So it became almost inevitable. The ambition was always there lurking, and I suddenly realized it was possible at a certain stage. But I wanted to do something that, a) I was passionate about, and b) was feasible. So I wrote "The Trench." It was really a very personal project, an attempt to get World War I right on celluloid in a way I had thought I'd got it right in print. I had total artistic control. I feel about "The Trench" as I do about one of my novels. No compromises were made and the film has ended up as I hoped it would.

You have been a screenwriter, and screenwriters traditionally do not have much control over the final product. Was that part of the motivation to make this film?
Partly, although I've always had quite a good working relationship with my fellow directors and producers. I tend to only work with friends, which helps. I think it was more to try to make the First World War real. [The war] is very present in British imaginations, but often distorted, mythologized and romanticized. I wanted to get that experience right on film. Funny enough, there's a character in my book "New Confessions" who's a filmmaker who tries to make a film during World War I which is going to be called "Aftermath of Battle." It's never shown because it's too shocking. In a way, "The Trench" is my "Aftermath of Battle."

Did you feel at all intimidated by the classic films on the subject, such as "Paths of Glory" and "All Quiet on the Western Front"?
They are great movies, but I think my aims were different. And my film is in color, which is a very funny thing to point out, but World War I is a monochrome experience to us. All the photographs are in sepia, the films are all in black and white. So to see a World War I movie in the living color in which it was is already a jump forward. Also, there were elements of realism, such as the language--soldiers swear like troopers--that I could bring in, which weren't available to those filmmakers. It's a different animal, although still part of that genre.

What about the First World War fascinates you?
Well, my grandfather survived it, and my great uncle. My great uncle was actually wounded at the battle of the Somme. It was part of the family lore. And the more I looked at it, trying to get your head around what it was like is a challenge to the imagination. So when you write a novel about it, it's like time-traveling in your imagination. You ask yourself, how would I have coped? I think the answers are still very vague. It seems so extraordinary that it happened. Of course, the argument goes that it did shape the 20th century. It shaped the modern world--the rise of Hitler, the Russian Revolution, America's power--all that sort of thing happened as a result of the First World War. It's the defining event of the modern age. But more particularly, it's about how did someone like my grandfather, who was 23, how did he survive two years in the trenches?