This year, we’ve gotten the well-reviewed "Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale" and the reboot of "The Naked Gun." Then, after those, we got the best of both worlds with the period spoof movie, "Fackham Hall." Now, this new comedy has some pretty clear (and very funny) parallels to "Downton Abbey." So, when I spoke with the director, I asked him how they paid tribute to the beloved Julian Fellowes series (and I didn't see his responses coming).
When I interviewed "Fackham Hall’s" director Jim O’Hanlon, I knew I had to ask about "Downton Abbey" parallels. He noted a whole bunch of them, too. Making it very clear to me that this great parody movie was made out of love for period dramas, he detailed a few spoof gags that also “take the mickey out of” the genre. For example, the deafening loud cutlery in the dining room that makes it hard to hear anyone talking is a play on the “awkward silence” that always happens during dinner scenes.
00:00I love period movies and I love period, I love Gosford Park particularly, I love Downton Abbey,
00:05I've directed period stuff for the BBC, it's great, I love the costumes, I love the beautiful
00:10settings and the lavish locations and the drawing rooms and the cutlery and all that sort of stuff
00:16is great. So what we wanted to do with this movie is have all that stuff there so that you can enjoy
00:21that and watch that and get the pleasure you get from watching those period movies. But there's a
00:26lot to laugh at too, there's a tendency to play what can often be sort of slightly soapy soap opera
00:33type storylines with a very very portentous seriousness and take themselves very seriously
00:39and we wanted to sort of laugh at that, at the sort of seriousness with which those movies take
00:47everything that happens in them from the use of cutlery and which fork you use and which spoon you
00:52use right through to you know whether the whole house is going to fall into the wrong hands. So
00:58that was the kind of stuff we wanted to take the mickey out of while allowing people to enjoy what
01:04it looks like and the nice things about period dramas as well. We looked at a lot of these period
01:10movies and we took the tropes from them and one of my favourite scenes is in the dining room and it
01:15was based off a scene I'd shot myself in a period drama where you know you always show that there's an awkward
01:22silence by the little clinkety clank of the cutlery and so we thought what's the funny version of that? How do you
01:27exaggerate that? And so it just became clinky clanks. It's so loud that Lord Davenport can't be heard over it and this was our way of sort of
01:33homage to those guys. Anyone who's watched those movies will recognise that scene. We also have a lovely scene at the beginning of the film where the maids are doing their chopping of their herbs.
01:45If you watch Downton Abbey you'll see that they do a lot of herb chopping. As a director I can tell you that's probably because it's an easy reset. You can just chop the herbs. If you have to go again you just get another set of herbs and chop them.
01:57So we thought what's the funny version of that and I won't give away what it is but yeah we have our maids making a particular blend of herb that you wouldn't get in Downton Abbey should we say.
02:09So again you'll see when you're running Eric's running through the village fate there's a little patch of green and we thought if that was Downton Abbey they'd be playing croquet on the lawn there and we thought what's the funny version of croquet on the lawn.
02:21So you'll see I think the only two professional sumo wrestlers in Britain are wrestling on the lawn if you see it but they go by in a flash.
02:29You know these are all stuff you'll want to see a second time. Hopefully people will see it in the theatre first time because those things do ping out and because it's a big laugh out loud comedy and that's the way to experience comedy.
02:39But I think it will reward a second viewing where you go did I just see two sumo wrestlers in the back of shot there.
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