Fashion designer turned movie director Tom Ford was joined by a gaggle of his closest friends, including his movie stars Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Nicholas Hoult, at The Museum of Modern Art in NYC for the NY premiere of his debut film A Single Man. Based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man tells the tale of a single day in the life of a middle-aged gay Englishman who works as a college professor in Los Angeles and the drama he experiences in that one day. Thus far, the film is getting a lot of great press and if the reviews are any indication, will be a great success. Here are a few photos from the red carpet arrivals at the premiere event and some deets about Ford’s vision of Isherwood’s novel:
Tom Ford has ruminated about death ever since he was a small boy growing up in Texas. It was the flip side to his early, genetic fascination with beauty. “Everything in life is bittersweet for me, because when I see something beautiful, I also see it aging, old, dead, gone,” he says. “I was very aware of mortality. I was very aware of my time on the planet.” Still today, almost every morning he awakes and wonders, “If I die tomorrow, what am I going to miss?” Ford speaks quickly and hypnotically, words rolling out with a seductive, almost aromatic intensity. Intimations of death swirl around his directorial debut, “A Single Man,” based on the Christopher Isherwood novel, which opens Friday. Set in 1962 Los Angeles, it is the lushly beautiful tale of a suicidal, gay college professor ( Colin Firth) contemplating his last day on earth in the wake of the sudden death of his longtime lover … “A Single Man” has a mesmerizing sensuousness. “Everyone keeps saying to me, ‘Everyone is so beautiful. Everything is so beautiful.’ I didn’t even notice that!” he says. “That’s just the way I see. That’s the way I think.” This said, Ford’s visual panache is put to the service of a story far from the ephemeral catwalk. “Midlife is when you get to the top of the ladder, only to realize you’ve had the ladder against the wrong wall,” he says, describing his loss of a certain identity after leaving Gucci. He sees the film as a personal reaction to the prevalent culture of more, of almost always thinking life will improve with a new job, or a new pair of shoes. Ford related to Isherwood’s theme of “the true self observing the false self going through the day,” and grafted details of his own life onto the story, including George’s obsession with ritualistic grooming. The details of his proposed suicide are based on the suicide of one of Ford’s relations, who killed himself in a sleeping bag so as not to make a mess. Then there’s the relationship between George and his former lover, played by Julianne Moore, who’s forever disappointed George is gay. “That’s my relationship with a lot of women in my life,” Ford says. “I’ve had very heterosexual periods in my life. I’m perfectly sexually attracted to women, but I fall in love with men. Unrequited love is always heartbreaking, especially on the side of the person who feels the love and it’s not returned” … “A Single Man” touches on the … seize-the-moment, life-affirming theme, though now it’s refracted in a softer, more reflective light. Three decades after he first read Isherwood’s book, “A Single Man” popped into his head again as he was driving to work one day. A film devotee since he was a kid (with passions for Kubrick, De Sica, Hitchcock and Bette Davis), he’d been thinking about making a film for some 15 years. Ford wrote the screenplay himself (although credit is shared with the writer of an earlier incarnation, David Scearce). Unlike the book, which is essentially a long interior monologue, the cinematic George is contemplating suicide, an addition made by Ford to give the film more plot. The film is frank about gay sexuality, although there are no sexual scenes, he says, because the story is about love.
I’m very excited to see this film for myself. I read the Isherwood novel in graduate school (among other Isherwood novels) and remember really loving the book. I’m not very familiar with Ford’s film work for Gucci but I have no doubt that his fashionable eye is capable of crafting beautiful visuals to accompany the beautiful but stark tale. As I said, I’ve only read great things about this film … I’m very curious to see if the all the love being heaped upon this film measures up to the reality.
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