Jenna's interview with Daniel Radcliffe

Jenna from danradcliffe.com talked with Daniel about December Boys in July but has released her interview online now. It's shared on her Aced magazine website. Below an excerpt.

You have a lot of scripts coming your way, what made you choose this one?
You know, you probably get… say you get 50 scripts, if you get one of them that’s good then that’s great. If you get one that’s brilliant, you’ve hit the jackpot… and that’s what we did. The script for December Boys was absolutely fantastic. I read the script and loved it. And then… meeting the director in London, a guy called Rod Hardy, who directs a lot of American TV.

This has been his project of passion for about twelve years now. He’s been trying to get it made. After meeting with him, that just confirmed it for me because we had very similar visions of the film as a whole and of my character Maps. From that point on I really wanted to do it. We had always planned to do something between Harry Potter four and five, and December Boys came along at exactly the right time. It was a beautiful piece of writing so… yea – that was the reason.

What is this adaptation about?
It’s about four boys in a Catholic orphanage in the Australian outback. It is set in the 1960s, but to many people it will look like it is possibly the 1950s because these boys have been so detached from the mainstream world being in the outback and the orphanage.

The clothes they wear are from the 50s and they are all hand-me-downs. So, it’s about these four boys in this orphanage and this donor has given the orphanage some money. At the present all these boys have been allowed to go to the seaside because they all share the same… when you are in an orphanage, if they don’t know when you are born they assign you a birth month and so all these boys were all born in December, hence the “December Boys”.

For their birthday they are all sent to the seaside. They’d never seen the sea before, having spent their whole life in the outback, so it’s quite an amazing moment for them when they first experience what sea water feels like and tastes like…that sort of sensation. So many things we would often take for granted, for them are just incredible.

While they’re at the beach they all have their own individual stories which leaves them altered at the end of the film. They each learn something about each other, and learn something about their situation, and learn something about the world…learn a lot of things about the world. That is what makes the film very special (for me).

It’s a real coming-of-age story. Comparisons could be drawn to “Stand By Me”. Whether “December Boys” will be a classic film (like “Stand By Me”) remains to be seen. I think “Stand By Me” is a similar vein of story about four boys who are on the threshold of adulthood.