Much as he (Newell) admires the first two "Harry Potter" flicks crafted by U.S. filmmaker Chris Columbus and the one made by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, Newell felt he brought the one thing his predecessors lacked: Intimate knowledge about the quirks of a British education.
"It wasn't possible for them to get that right. They'd never been to such a school," Newell said. "English schools are very, very eccentric. They're not like any other. I know they've changed now, but when I was in school in the '50s, I was beaten with a cane, a rattan cane, as thick as my little finger.
"And that was a very common occurrence, and so they were kind of dangerous and violent places, but they also were very funny and anarchic places. I wanted to get the sense of the school as a character, having a character, so that the kind of crazinesses that she, Jo (Rowling) is so good at, I wanted to find an organization into which that kind of stuff could fit and bring the two things together. Bring the individuals and the institution together. So I think that's something I could bring in a major way to the table."
To that end, Newell rewrote a scene to add a glint of schoolboy mischievousness and the corporal punishment it provokes, in which dour Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) bonks Harry and Ron in the head with a book for goofing off during a study period.
Radcliffe notes it was the first time the filmmakers had slipped something into one of the movies that was not in the book.
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Much as he (Newell) admires the first two "Harry Potter" flicks crafted by U.S. filmmaker Chris Columbus and the one made by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, Newell felt he brought the one thing his predecessors lacked: Intimate knowledge about the quirks of a British education.
"It wasn't possible for them to get that right. They'd never been to such a school," Newell said. "English schools are very, very eccentric. They're not like any other. I know they've changed now, but when I was in school in the '50s, I was beaten with a cane, a rattan cane, as thick as my little finger.
"And that was a very common occurrence, and so they were kind of dangerous and violent places, but they also were very funny and anarchic places. I wanted to get the sense of the school as a character, having a character, so that the kind of crazinesses that she, Jo (Rowling) is so good at, I wanted to find an organization into which that kind of stuff could fit and bring the two things together. Bring the individuals and the institution together. So I think that's something I could bring in a major way to the table."
To that end, Newell rewrote a scene to add a glint of schoolboy mischievousness and the corporal punishment it provokes, in which dour Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) bonks Harry and Ron in the head with a book for goofing off during a study period.
Radcliffe notes it was the first time the filmmakers had slipped something into one of the movies that was not in the book.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051118/ap_en_mo/film_mike_newell