Dean film set to boost the region

By Nic Rigby
BBC News Website, Norwich

The movie Dean Spanley stars Peter O'Toole and Sam Neill

A whimsical 1936 novella about a conversation with a dean who believes he was a dog in a previous life might not seem to lend itself to film.

But the movie, starring Peter O'Toole, and filmed predominantly in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, has been a hit with audiences and critics.

The film Dean Spanley, has also been supported by a £250,000 investment from Screen East.

Screen East also helped the crew find locations for the film.

Co-producer of the film Alan Harris said the team was "blown away" by the great locations in the East of England to use for the film - which is set in turn-of-the-century England.

Locations used included Peckover House, Wisbech and Fenland Museum (Cambridgeshire), Elveden Hall (Suffolk), Holkham Hall and Norwich Cathedral (Norfolk).

One of the key locations in the film is Peckover House in Wisbech

"It was very, very useful to have all these locations in the same area," said Mr Harris.

He said he was drawn to the story because it was "so unusual" and also because of the quality of the writing of the screenwriter Alan Sharp - whose other works include Rob Roy and The Osterman Weekend.

The film had to be more than just a conversation - the original novella by Lord Dunsany was titled Mr Talks with Dean Spanley - and so a new story was built around it.

This included the relationship between a son, played by Jeremy Northam and his ailing father who is played by Peter O'Toole.

Peter O'Toole told BBC Look East: "It is about a father who is separated from his son emotionally and unable to face some very harsh truths.

Elveden Hall is the setting the first meeting with Dean Spanley

"He does face them and the father and son are reconciled through a most amazingly complex and very funny journey."

The part of Dean Spanley is played by Sam Neill, but he took some persuading.

Mr Harris said: "From very early on we wanted Sam Neill to play the dean, but Sam turned us down three times."

Laurie Hayward, chief executive of Screen East, said: "We really want to use this as a platform to show what the region can do both from indigenous talent and the sort of films that can be made in the East of England.

"I must admit we are all very proud to be associated with it."

At one preview screening in a small venue in Toronto, he said: "I was sitting next to a guy at the end he had a few tears in his eyes."

"I'm elated it is a film that can move people," he said.

He said a lot of people told him they wanted to stay to "find out where it was filmed".

Carol French, of the National Trust's Georgian town house Peckover House - which is used as the location the father's home, is also hopeful it will encourage people to come to the property.

Peter O'Toole plays the ailing father of the narrator

"I hope everyone will go and see the film and then come to the house to see the settings, and not just the house, but the town [of Wisbech]," she said.

Mr Harris said he was pleased with the help from Screen East - which helps support film and television in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

He said one of the future projects he is working on is an adaptation of Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of Fox-hunting Man - a humorous coming-of-age novel set in the years running up to World War I.

"That region would be my first port of call," said Mr Harris.