This article contains spoilers for Paddington, and is probably best read after watching the film.
Heres how it went…
Film making is iterative, and never any less than in the screenwriting phase.
Years ago, I read a Hamish MacColl draft of Paddington that was very different.
Its almost so long ago that I cant remember those dead ends.
Ive been living very much in what we were trying to solve more recently.
Whose journey is this, and how do you create a story when Paddington doesnt have a tremendous arc?
What he has is this journey to finding a home.
Particularly Mr. Brown, when we were trying to find opposition to Paddington.
The books, unlikePotterwhere you have to condense, with these its about expansion.
One of the dead ends was about the kids.
Do we make this their journey?
Is it about Mrs. Brown, or Mr. Brown?
Who ends up emerging as the primary opposition?
In some ways they do.
Thats precisely who I visualised, in fact.
We didnt begin with Hamish in that way.
Its clear to me that Paul King has built on the earlier screenplay.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I absolutely love what hes made here.
That was the book.
We couldnt make those changes.
Well, we could have, but… Actually, I love the book, Im obsessed with thePotterbooks.
Theres a lot of Deus Ex Machina in that, but what I love is that theyre emotional stories.
I love at the end the saying goodbye to Hagrid, and the epilogue.
For me, that really tied it up.
But that one little beat…
I couldnt help but think of it when Mrs. Bird appeared.
But is there another way in which this moment kind of means that Paddington is less culpable of something?
I dont know if we looked at it like that.
In a way, what I like about it is that its more comedic.
Also, its quite Paddingtonian, her action.
Sometimes hes oblivious to the chaos he causes.
So we use Mrs. Bird in a very Paddingtonian way, and saves the day.
We thought, and Paul thought, that this very true to the Paddington spirit.
And then, in another way, isnt Paddington saved?
Thats what the story is about.
About Paddington being saved, by the Brown family.
He finds a home, finds a place to belong.
But that iconography makes me think of Empire, and what the British have wrought around the globe.
So its innately a political film, then.
Well, I wouldnt say we were making a political film.
I think we were making a human film, about kindness.
As a big traveller, I know what its like.
And I love this city and I want people to love it too.
Home is not where you are, its where you make it.
And its especially nice when these things come into the world in the form of Paddington.
Thank you very much, David Heyman.
Paddington is out now.
