Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Once he read the book and script for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it was “very simple” for Academy-Award nominated director Stephen Daldry to immediately say yes to directing the film for producer Scott Rudin, who he had worked with on The Hours. The first decision scriptwise was to see the story primarily through the boy Oskar’s point of view, a character with a form of high functioning autism that makes those with the condition experience the world in unusual ways. “We did a lot of work with different folk involved in Asperger’s and how those kids do see the world,” explains Daldry. “It’s about the nature of touch and smell. What they would be wearing; what they would not be wearing – different fabrics. And things they would hear, the audio world of it. The depth of field, the whole idea of what is in focus and what’s not in focus. All those notions that are in the film came from our work – and not just my research, but the research of Chris Menges, Ann Roth and Claire Simpson? – rooted in the world of an autistic child.”

Read more of Mary Ann Skweres' Below the Line article HERE.