Writer-director Christopher Monger was delighted when Hugh Grant agreed to head up the ensemble cast for his film "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain." And later, it was good news that Grant's movie star stock had risen with the success of "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
But no one could predict how successful "Four Weddings" would be, and it gradually rose to the top of the heap - the biggest moneymaking British film of all time.Naturally Monger was ecstatic that his lead player had become a bona fide worldwide movie star. But then he remembered that although Grant had agreed to do "Englishman," he had not yet signed a contract. And now, Grant's agent was fielding all kinds of big-money Hollywood deals.
"When `Four Weddings' hit it big, I was terrified he'd go off," Monger said in a telephone interview with the Deseret News. "But that's not Hugh. He stuck with the project."
Monger, who is traveling the United States to pump up interest in "Englishman," was in a Denver hotel room, where he had been fielding personal and telephone interviews for hours. And though it was the end of a long day, he was congenial and personable and surprisingly fresh and talkative. And he seemed genuinely excited when the interviewer compared "Englishman" with the old British comedies of the '50s that poured out of the Ealing Studios.
"That's it," he said. "All day long people have been comparing it to Bill Forsyth's (Scottish comedy) `Local Hero,' which is fine. But we both have the same father and mother - Ealing."
"The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain" is the story of a pair of cartographers in 1917 who travel to a small Welsh village to measure the local mountain, a prized geographical landmark. But it doesn't quite measure up - it's less than 1,000 feet tall, which means it actually qualifies as a "hill."
The film is a character-driven ensemble comedy and features a bevy of eccentrics. And Grant is perfectly cast as one of the cartographers, a stammering, ill-at-ease Englishman who gradually becomes enchanted by the Welsh villagers.
"I wanted him after seeing `Impromptu,' " Monger said. "I tend to write (screenplays) with actors in mind, and he was in my mind. We actually met while he was shooting `Four Weddings.'
"Hugh liked (`Englishman') a lot, and one of his great strengths is that he's a wonderful ensemble actor. And in this kind of comedy you can't upstage - all the characters have to work.
"Of course now my only fear is that people might go in and feel cheated, thinking it's `a Hugh Grant film.' But I hope that once they get in there they'll enjoy it. And if he helps get them into the theater, that's great."
One of Grant's co-stars is Colm Meaney, who all but steals the show as Morgan the Goat, a rowdy innkeeper who connives to keep the cartographers in the village long enough for the townfolk to add 20 feet to the "hill," so it will become a "mountain." Irish-born Meaney is best-known as engineer Miles O'Brien on the television series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," though he also appears regularly in movies ("The Snapper," "The Commitments," "Under Siege," "Die Hard 2," etc.)
"I call Colm the Celtic Gerard Depardieu, because he's always working," said Monger. "Alan Parker (`The Commitments,' `The Road to Wellville') puts him in everything he does. I just think he's a great actor.
"And he's a real man, you know? A lot of leading males these days are really just grown-up boys, but Colm is a man. He's got this virility, and yet he's sensitive. He's magic."
Monger, who grew up in a small Welsh village, said the film's story is a "legend" passed down from his grandfather. "The facts as I know them are pretty scant. But my father would say of the place where we shot the final scenes - that mountain with the 20-foot addition - he'd say, `We used to play on that mountain when I was a kid, and that's where your grandfather and the villagers added 20 feet to make this the first mountain in Wales.'
"But the rest is invention."
When Monger and crew arrived in the Welsh village where they shot the film, he became so taken with the residents that he wrote some of them into the script. Several characters - including a hilarious pair of twins - are not actors, they're just local villagers who were hanging around.
"I don't think of them as eccentrics," says Monger. "They're just a sort of a breed of rich characters."
Monger also kept a promise he had made in a town meeting, that he would come back and show the villagers the finished movie. "They were kind of stunned. They thought we were making a little telly (television) film, and when they saw it in, you know, Cinemascope and color and heard the music, they were a bit floored by it. They were kind of in shock at the end."