An Interview with David Franzoni

Abstract

THE ROUND TABLE115 making an entertainment rather than a documentary. The story also ends before the whole tale is told, so I hope for a sequel to round out the whole. However, one thing above all others I believe to be true: this version of the Arthurian story will make everyone who sees it think. It will, I hope, encourage people to reconsider the Sarmatian theory, as it certainly has in my case. Whatever we may think in the end, the film cannot fail to excite and impress us with the energy with which the actors and the director were driven to produce such a powerful statement. By no means everything of the original Arthurian stories has gone. No story of Arthur would be complete without Excalibur, and having long since decided that there would be a Round Table at which the knights would meet, we were delighted to find that the Sarmatians liked to eat—and dance upon—circular tables. The great love story ofLancelot, Arthur, and Guinevere is also present, though in more low-key form than in the later medieval versions. There is little time for love in the harsh and uncompromising times in which these people lived. Yet even here, in the midst ofbattle and warfare, respect gives way to tenderer feelings, and one can see clearly enough how the story might have begun. Everywhere in the movie there are echoes of the original Arthurian legends, and it is certainly not hard to see how Dark Age reality became medieval fantasy. It is this reality, dark and brutal, that makes this new account of the legend so powerful. I remain convinced that Arthur and his knights were real people, and that something not unlike the struggle portrayed in the film really took place. Working on it, seeing it brought to birth, was an extraordinary experience. It hass changed me, and every word I write about the Arthurian story from now on will be touched by memories of my involvement in the making ofthis remarkable movie. OXFORD An Interview with David Franzoni JOHN MATTHEWS David Franzoni, a successful screenwriter, is responsible for the films Ghdiatorand Amista among others. KingArthur is his latest project and while filming he and I spent time talking about myth and the Arthurian stories. He has much to say on the subject, and his approach to the myth ofArthur is refreshingly original. When the opportunity arose recently for us to sit down and have a conversation about the background to the writing of the screenplay, 1 jumped at the chance. Here was an opportunity for the writer ofthe film to put his own case directly to the Arthurian community and to explain the thinking behind some of the decisions that went into the finished work. The following is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation. JM: Where did your association with the Arthurian legends begin? DF: When I first came to Los Angeles as a struggling screenwriter, I was living in North Ridge and used to go to the California State Library there because I couldn't Il6ARTHURIANA buy many books at the time. I came across a student's dissertation, which proposed— not necessarily for the first time—that Lucius Artorius Castus might have been the seed for the Arthurian myth. At the time I just filed this away. Then when I was in Rome working on Ghdiator, I began to do some research. Not so much going back to the original sources or reading Lucius Artorius Castus's diary [laughter] but following up on that one little hint. Ofcourse I came across From Scythia to Camelot by C. Scott Littleton and Linda Malcor, and that was the first time that I realized it wasn't just about Lucius Artorius Castus but the whole Sarmatian thing as well. That's what was most compelling to me, that this might be the foundation for the whole Arthurian legend. Ofcourse I learned that other scholars, having gotten up before I did, realized this a long time ago, but until fairly recently they hadn't been able to figure out just how they were connected. Now of course we know about Marcus Aurelius defeating the...