An Anonymous Chat With John Orloff

We recently chatted with John Orloff, the screenwriter behind Legend of the Guardians and Bryan Singer's planned big screen version of Battlestar Galactica, about his new film Anonymous, which claims the works of William Shakespeare were really penned by Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans). The film says De Vere sought to use his art as a political weapon against his hated father-in-law, Sir William Cecil (David Thewlis), the oldest and most trusted adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, and Cecil's scheming son, Robert.

Here's what Orloff had to tell us about the controversial, Roland Emmerich-directed film. Be aware, though, of SPOILERS.

---

IGN Movies: What I like about Anonymous is that as much as it's about writers, it's more about the threat of writing really. Can you talk about the original conceit for the project and perhaps how it altered once Emmerich came aboard?

John Orloff: Yeah, it originally wasn't about that, what you just said. It was really just about the relationship between the characters the Earl of Oxford, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare, sort of the deal they all made amongst the three of them and how that bargain destroyed all three of their lives. None of them were happy. It was a tragedy that they made this deal. That was what the script was really about. It was about censorship and art and the need to express yourself. That's the script that Roland read. He went away and made The Day After Tomorrow, but while he was making that, he was reading all about the Shakespeare authorship issue. And there was new research since I had written my script, it was five years since I had written my script. There were new theories about Oxford and why he wrote what he wrote, if he did in fact write them. And he came back, and he said, "John, there's this theory that's really interesting. I wonder if we can add it into the script." Namely, the theory was that Queen Elizabeth and Oxford had a lovechild, and that lovechild, while a bastard, would still be the heir to the throne.


Suddenly, if we did that, and at the end of her life Elizabeth had no heir except for this bastard, the movie would totally change. It became about the intersection of art and politics and how they relate to each other and how one can inform the other one. That was incredibly exciting to me, and that was Roland's sort of raw idea. Then on top of it, it became this Shakespearean drama. We were suddenly dealing with the themes that were in Shakespeare's plays. You know, the uncrowned heir, incest, who will be the next king, the machinations of making a king, all of these things that Shakespeare discusses in his dramas we were going to discuss. So, in a sense, we took a script that was pretty good and made into an Elizabethan melodrama, and it was really cool.

IGN: Some of the characters -- at least for folks who might only know about the Elizabethan story through films like Elizabeth -- some of the people who are "good guys" in that kind of take on the story are bad guys in this one, such as David Thewlis' character William Cecil and his son Robert.

Orloff: I think the truth is a little bit in-between. (Cecil) wasn't all that great, and he wasn't all that bad. He was a very complicated man. With any film, you have to paint with broad strokes, especially one with so many characters where you don't have that much time to explain that much about every character. But that said, I actually look at the Thewlis character in our film, and I don't think he's a bad guy. I just think he has an agenda, and that agenda is selfish. He's not a bad guy. He's a very practical man. He's a man of his times as much as Oxford is a man of his times. They just happen to want different things.

IGN: How much material is out there on the actual, biographical background of Oxford? Because for most people, this will be the first time they're hearing of this fella, and the more you dig, the more all the theories -- especially the ones presented by the film -- begin to kind of add up.

Orloff: Yeah, it's pretty interesting, especially when you add in the little we know about Shakespeare. The first hurtle somebody has to have is, "Wait a minute. Of course Shakespeare wrote the plays, right?" But then you say, "Well, wait a minute. Let me respond to that. Did you know that not a single piece of paper has ever been found written by William Shakespeare?," and people are kind of taken aback. Then you say, "Well, do you know that nobody in Stratford-upon-Avon ever said he wrote a play until 10 years after he was dead?" I mean, those are very interesting things. Then you have to say, "Well, if it's not Shakespeare, then who is it?" Then when you start to study Edward De Vere and you learn about not just his biography, but that he was obsessed with theater. He had acting companies, he was the leaseholder of the Blackfriars Theatre, he was William Byrd's patron. He was this incredibly art-obsessed man, and there were contemporary references that he was the greatest playwright of his time, except he had to write anonymously. Again, there's no smoking gun that says absolutely that De Vere wrote these plays, but I would argue that there's no smoking gun that Shakespeare wrote these plays. So, I think it's an interesting question, it's an interesting dialogue to have, and let the chips fall where they may. Let people make their own decisions. My best friend is a lawyer and thinks I'm crazy, and I respect that!


IGN: The backstory for De Vere is an interesting one because he is essentially a prodigy. At least, that's how the film portrays him.

Orloff: Yeah, the film might over-exaggerate that. He did write poetry at a young age. The film makes him be a little bit more of a prodigy than he might have been, but that was just a dramatic flair.

IGN: As far as the portrayal of Shakespeare himself in the film, he pretty much comes across as a drunken, skirt-chasing buffoon.

Orloff: Can I disagree with you? I think he does, but not basically. I think he's that and more. He's also incredibly intelligent, incredibly ruthless, incredibly ambitious and very, very smart.

IGN: Of all the elements you had to juggle in this movie, which one was perhaps the most challenging? Once you commit to the idea that Shakespeare didn't write these works, then you have to start lining all the other ducks in a row. Which kind of aspect of the story was the most difficult to try and pin down? Was it the whole relationship with Elizabeth, was it his own family drama that was going on?

Orloff: There's nothing easy in this movie from a writing standpoint. Structurally, it's incredibly difficult. It's a very complicated, fractured structure. The characters are incredibly hard to write. Imagine trying to write dialogue for the greatest writer of dialogue who ever lived, whether it's Shakespeare or Oxford. Either way, I'm f***ed. Then imagine trying to make Shakespeare believable, make the conceit believable. There's that scene in the movie where Ben Jonson calls Shakespeare on his literacy and asks him to write something in front of them.

IGN: That was probably my favorite scene in the movie.

Orloff: But it's a tricky scene! You've got to believe it that he can walk away from that room with everybody still thinking he can write. That's not easy. It's a very tricky scene. Or the scene where the spoiler is revealed, and Robert Cecil says the things that he says to Oxford at the end of the movie. That's a very hard scene because it can be incredibly stupid or cheesy or unbelievable very, very easily. And yet, you put a little humor in there, and everybody loves that scene. As soon as he says, "But you never know with the Tudors. They have such strange bedfellows," suddenly, everybody's tension is released, and they go, "Oh, okay. This is fun. It's just a movie!" It's an interesting moment when I watch the movie with an audience because everybody's like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. What? What?!" Then he says that line, and everybody chuckles and goes, "Uh huh. That's fun!" I mean, I wrote 20 drafts of the script. There is nothing simple or easy. Everything was hard.


IGN: Which character was perhaps -- you've talked about the dialogue -- how difficult is it to write a character like Ben Jonson without--

Orloff: Well, he's the easiest character. You know why he's the easiest character? Because he's me. He was the young playwright who's come to London to make his fortune, and I was the young screenwriter in L.A. trying to make a career. So, everything that Ben Jonson says is exactly what I would say in his situation. He was a character I could relate to. I couldn't relate to Oxford. He's too f***ing brilliant. He was almost an alien to me he's so smart and deep-thought and deep-feeling. He's a god. And Shakespeare is obviously our fool, our buffoon, so I couldn't relate to him. But Jonson is me.

IGN: What about trying to write for Elizabeth I, one of the most revered and picked over people in history? How is it to try and humanize her?

Orloff: For me, the key was to show her vulnerability, particularly at the end of her reign. She's in her 60s. I know people in their 60s. They're not quite what they were in their 40s or 30s. We don't see that when Elizabeth has been portrayed in films. She's always this incredible alpha female. I was interested in exploring a different side to her. I really got a kick out of it in trying to figure out, you know, "Well, how crazy is she? Or is she crazy at all? Is this all an act because she's sensing she's losing power, and now she's going to try and manipulate everybody as they try to manipulate her? How deep is this game going?" And I wrote the script not knowing that answer. I figured Vanessa would figure out whether she felt that Elizabeth was truly losing it or just acting like she's losing it.

IGN: I first talked with you about this film probably seven years ago.

Orloff: Yeah. It's an amazing thing. Listen, I've wanted to be a screenwriter almost my whole life, or a filmmaker at least, and then a screenwriter for a lot of it. To have an early idea for a movie when you're very young and right out of college, and 20 some odd years later, to actually see your dream come true on such a scale made by such a group of people, not just Roland, but Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance and David Thewlis and Vanessa Redgrave, it's a dream come true. But it's more than that. I don't even know how to describe what it is. It's amazing.

Anonymous opens October 28.

• More Movies Features
• Latest Movies News, Reviews, and Videos