Interview: Lucinda Coxon's 11 Years With "The Danish Girl"

One of this season's most talked about movies, The Danish Girl, set tongues wagging long before anyone had seen a single frame. Years before in fact. It wasn't just the subject matter, though the subject matter would have been enough. The Danish Girl tells the true story of married painters Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) and Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) who struggle to come to grips with Einar's true identity, Lili Elbe. Lili was one of the first trans women to ever undergo gender confirmation surgery which was then an experimental series of surgery. It's a difficult subject to dramatize, and a difficult subject to talk about particularly given how quickly the verbiage and discourse has changed across the decades. People didn't know how to talk about it in 1930 when the story was a very current sensation in Denmark and Germany and do people really know how to talk about it now? A quick perusal of any trans story around the internet will tell you the answer is still no. 

It's always a particular challenge for heavily buzzed pictures to get out into the marketplace and form their own identity outside of everyone's pre-screening perceptions of them. Oscar winner Tom Hooper's (The King's Speech) latest is definitely no exception. Even the casting, which wouldn't have been all that controversial even a handful of years ago other than in a rubber-necking kind of "Oscar bait" way, has been the subject of spirited debates along the lines of "shouldn't a trans actor be playing the part?" But films take a long time to make. Who could have known the happy development in the past few years in regards to trans visibility in Transparent, Tangerine, Orange is the New Black. 

The Danish Girl's complicated gestation period is where I began when i sat down with the woman who'd been with the project the longest, its screenwriter Lucinda Coxon. Our interview is after the jump... 

Lucinda Coxon at the premiere

NATHANIEL R: Lucinda, when I was first heard about it this film it was a Nicole Kidman project. It went through various actresses after that for what seemed like years but perhaps I'm remembering it wrong. Were you attached through each incarnation? 

LUCINDA COXON: I was always the screenwriter, I’m the only one. So I started eleven years ago. 

NATHANIEL R: Wow.

LUCINDA COXON: Even before Nicole, there was me! I started eleven years ago, and we’ve been trying to get it made ever since, I won’t lie. 

That’s crazy, but I guess that's normal for movies...

It’s not entirely normal. We had a script relatively quickly, about a year in, that we we felt comfortable going out with, and we never had any trouble attaching talent. We always had directors who wanted to make it, a very distinguished list of directors who tried to make it. Nicole and Charlize were attached at the same time. They were to play opposite one another. Rachel Weisz was also attached. Quite a long list of brilliant actors attached to it. But we could never quite get it on its way and I think that the truth is that the subject matter was considered marginal.

You needed the culture to catch up a little?

That’s the truth. I could not possibly have imagined when we started ten years ago that we would be releasing the film in this environment. Or even five years ago or two years ago.

Broad cultural interest in trans stories happened very quickly in the past handful of years.

It really did. And so all of a sudden, we’re bang on trend, eleven years later.

And you’re like, 'But *I* was going to be a trend-setter'

Well, we tried that and it didn’t go so well! [Laughs] Yeah, but now it looks like we’re bandwagon hopping. But, finally, the culture caught up.

Did you know the novelist David Ebershoff? 

No, I didn’t. But they sent me the book to see if I would be interested in adapting it. I was kind of amazed by the novel, partly by its own qualities and partly when I realized that there was this underlying true story that had been lost to history. It became one of those projects that before I took it on, I was always talking to people about it. I was always sort of boring my husband with it, and boring my friends with it. the 'Lili Elbe bore'. That’s a sign that you need to write the film. And I was endlessly trawling through Gerda’s paintings, and printed out stuff all over the room. [To self] 'It seems like you’ve already started work on this, so you might as well go down the road already.' It’s been with me ever since.

I know that screenwriting can be quite different from project to project but were you finished when you were finished or did you end up rewriting on set. 

No, we rewrote a bit in rehearsal, a little bit of tweaking in rehearsal, and no rewrites on set. I was just on set getting in the way and tripping over things --  the usual writer on set! I was in the edit quite a bit, but I think  [Tom Hooper, the director] and I were pretty clear on what we had.

So when you suddenly had Eddie Redmayne on board, and previously only actresses had been attached, did that prompt a shift in thinking about the screenplay, or did that not matter to you?

I think I was much happier. Only Nicole had been attached to play Lili. The other actresses had been attached to play Gerda. In fact, I had been initially nervous about attaching a woman to play Einar/Lili, partly because dramatically speaking, it takes away a certain amount of Will She/Won’t She element to it. And also, I was nervous about the reveal at the ending in a sense of Lili not emerging as a fully-fledged independent woman, but as a kind of movie star, that always made me nervous. Not only am I a woman...

...I'm also a glamorous star.

Yeah. It’s a little uncomfortable. Also, I’ve known Eddie’s work for a long time from the stage, as well as film, and I think he’s a really remarkable actor. I thought he was perfect for casting. After many meetings with Tom, with him saying, 'You don’t seem so excited we’re making the film." and I’m like, 'Yeah, we’re always making this film, I’ve been making the film for a decade!' And all of a sudden he says, 'Okay, Eddie’s in it.' I’m like, 'Oh, God, we’re making the film! We’re making the film!' [Laughs]

I imagined casting would have to feel that sudden and shocking. With a subject like Lili you wouldn't have been thinking of a particular actor, whereas some screenplays when people write them they have actors in mind.

That’s true. I couldn’t think of Eddie because he would have been in kindergarten. I didn’t need to think of actors because I had the people, my real people. And they documented themselves and they were very keen to take photographs of themselves, and one another, so their lives were well documented in that sense.

For people from the ‘20s that's unusual.

Lili & Gerda were the inspiration for themselves. And then you have to find actors who can do that.

Given how well documented their lives were and the book itself -- books are longer than movies, which have to be short stories in a way. Did you find it hard to pare down? 

You have to make some brutal choices about what you keep and what you lose. Although I think once you’ve made that decision, you never miss things. There are great little stories and interesting facts about their lives that aren’t in the movie, but actually, you don’t miss them, and some day, there’ll be a great documentary about them and it’ll all be collected in one place. And I think the film is, in the places where it is not accurate, it’s because it’s trying to be truthful, and sometimes life is just too complicated. So, we condensed and tried to find the truthfulness, even if it’s not strictly speaking “accurate”.

Ulla the ballerine pays Einar a visit

I was thinking during a few scenes that a filmmaker could have easily made this into a miniseries. Especially because the social circles Lili & Gerda travel in, like Ulla's crowd, only make brief appearances. You get a sense of the couple's larger bohemian world but you're not really in it.

That was agony for me, because they had so many interesting friends, and their friends would crop up in the research. But honestly, the film would have been four hours long -- I would have been shot. I would endlessly be saying, 'The thing is, there is this woman named Einette.' And then, 'No, shut up about that woman.' So the film would have been a miniseries, not a film. There is more detail in all kinds of senses. But the film is the love story. It’s the heart.

I'll admit that I haven’t read the novel, which is in a weird way kind of embarrassing because I've known about the project for so long since I'm a huge Nicole Kidman fan. But I was kind of surprised when I saw the movie at how intimate it is. So much of the film is just Lili & Gerda alone together at home. It's not what I was expecting.

It’s an extraordinary love story about two people who are absolutely committed to one another, but who are also ruthlessly honest. They want the best for each other, but are determined to follow things to the end of the road.

One of the interesting things I would think for a writer for this film in particular -- a lot of the key scenes are all visual. So when you're writing do you just do a short description and the actors and director extrapoloate? A great example is that scene where Lili goes to the peep show, and she’s doing the movements with the dancer.

That’s written, that was scripted.

It’s amazing but there are no words. So are you just trying to picture it as a filmmaker when you write it? 

That's partly what you do, you’re a screenwriter, you write the pictures a lot of the time. I mean, a scene without dialogue still has to be written. The scene where Einar goes to the opera house and strips off and looks at himself in the mirror, that’s all meticulously scripted. There’s no dialogue in it, but it’s a very meticulously scripted scene.

So it’s more like being a novelist a little bit?

Well, no, you’re just trying to stay under the skin of the character, and trying to describe what’s happening, but without words.

It’s an interesting part of the movie given the current identity politics because there’s so much language now that didn’t exist then. People had to feel their way through it instead... 

That’s right, they have no words for it. That’s literally the truth. 

Did you have to tweak anything after seeing Alicia and Eddie together and their rapport? Did seeing actors rehearse help?

Their rapport was great from the word go, and every now and then in rehearsal, there’d be tiny things where we’d realize we could probably do without something or one of them would go,' Wouldn’t it be great if...'  or 'Could I just do this?' You know? So there was a bit of give and take, but we didn’t tweak very much. They were both very committed from very early on to the script we had, and we were very fortunate in that respect.

So, since you’ve been working on it so long, are you at the point now that it's in theaters where you can say goodbye to all this?

You know, I’m in such shock that it's finally released into the world on its own, because I’ve been with it for so long. So no, I’m not over it. I think it’s a job for life, in a way, because there’s more and more research coming out about them, and there’s this very big new exhibition of Gerda’s paintings that’s open in Copenhagen. I’m very excited about that. I’ve just become a sort of groupie now.

Gerda's portrait of Ulla is now on display in Denmark

Groupie and subject matter expert.

I’m so happy for her that there’s this big exhibition and the film bring more attention to it. But you have to just get on with the next job, really. I’m busy with the next job.

 So you have something lined up?

Yeah, I’m making a film next year with Lenny Abrahamson, who just made Room.

Room is so so good.

It’s so good, it’s terrifying. In certain parts, I couldn’t breathe! [Laughs] I just couldn’t breathe. What an extraordinary film! So, yeah, he and I are making a film together next year.

That'll make it easier to say goodbye to this one.

Absolutely, but it’ll be kind of odd to really believe it’s gone. You know, it’s like when you leave college and you wake up in the night ten years later thinking you’ve not done your revisions for your exams. I’ll be waking up having Danish Girl anxiety and people will be like 'No, they've made it. It's over. Move on! 

more Danish Girl... more interviews 

Comments

[catbaskets]

Great interview. That sort of decade-long waiting makes the idea of writing seem utterly terrifying! Interesting that Nicole Kidman was in talks for the role. Now to ponder what she might have done with it.

[filmboymichael]

I wish this were the true story of Lili Elbe - unfortunately this is just a fictional account....le sigh