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The Movies > Promotional Stories
NOTE: Photos by Nigel Parry, which originally accompanied this story, and are portraits of main characters, can be seen in this photo feature. The small boxed article at the bottom also appeared with the main story. The small images with each section of this article are from the original print version!
On the set of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a team of visual magicians has built a wondrous universe, where trolls tromp through hallways, and dragons hide in huts. So, grab your broomstick and repeat after us: There's no place like Hogwarts.
By Sean M. Smith
Magic, as any reasonable person knows, can happen in ordinary place. Gray, dull, Privet Drive places. Under-the-stairs places. Behind the Leaky Cauldron places. The trick is learning where -- and how -- to find it.
Here, for instance, in the bland, rural sprawl of Hertfordshire, England. See that building? It looks like the drabbest place on earth. Just a giant rambling slab of filmy glass and damp brick, surrounded by 286 acres of muddy field and gray asphalt. It could be a paper clip factory. Or perhaps a warehouse stacked with lye soap. A lot of people (grownups, mostly) would assume that nothing interesting could ever happen in there. They'd never guess that behind those doors lie a thousand secrets.
Deep inside -- through a labyrinth of stairways and corridors -- there are no windows, and even the bathrooms have security codes. The air begins to chill, and at the threshold of two huge metal doors, the temperature drops about 20 degrees. On the other side, inside a cavernous space, a creaky ladder propped against the back of a towering set leads five steps up and into a back room, where smoke creeps along floorboards and and curls between row after row of dusty, cobweb-caked boxes. Wand boxes, to be exact. And and old man's voice says, suddenly, "I wondered when I'd be seeing you."
So have millions of children around the world, for the person to whom this silver-eyed geezer is speaking is a thin, bespectacled boy named Harry Potter. Perhaps you've heard of him: orphan, nascent wizard, unwitting nemesis of the evil Lord Voldemort, brave but fallible hero of one of the most successful book series in history? He will materialize on movie screens on November 16, but at the moment he's shopping for school supplies on Diagon Alley -- textbooks form Flourish and Blotts, robes from Madam Malkin's, potion ingredients from Slug & Jiggers Apothecary -- and has gingerly entered Ollivanders ("Makers of fine wands since 382 B.C.") to purchase his most essential piece of equipment.
It's an unnerving process, actually, made all the more so by the small crowd of men and women hiding at the back of the shop to capture this moment on film. Harry has been trying out wands for a while now, all of them wrong, and Mr. Ollivander is about to hand him the right one: holly and phoenix feather, 11 inches.
Daniel Radcliffe, the boy who has become Harry, is humming to himself and bouncing cheerily on the balls of his feet. "Remember, Dan," director Chris Columbus yells from somewhere amidst the smoke. "A lot of trepidation. You're terrified. You don't know what's going to happen." Radcliffe stops bouncing. As his fingers grasp the base of the wand, golden light envelops him, and a blast of wind blow back his bangs to reveal a lightning-bolt scar. The light fades, leaving him gulping for breath. Mr. Ollivander (John Hurt) leans forward, peers down at him, and says, "It is clear that we can expect great things from you, Mr. Potter." "Dan!" Columbus calls again from the back. "Be much ... more ... afraid!"
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 The movie's version of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans |
It would seem, at first, that the makers of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone have nothing at all to fear. Since the inaugural installment of author J.K. Rowling's planned seven-novel series was first published in Great Britain in 1997, it and the three books that followed have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, dominated countless best-seller lists, and created the literary legend that rests somewhere between King Arthur and Willy Wonka. It's the sort of success, in other words, that makes Hollywood executives sweaty with the promise of a "sure thing" in an industry that has exactly zero of them.
But it is precisely because a Harry Potter film adaptation seems to commercially invincible that it is also the most dangerous type of movie a studio or director can make. Because it is impossible to exceed a child's imagination. Because kids all over the world are expecting great things indeed. Because if you fail, you will forever be known as the guy who dropped the Golden Snitch in the championship Quidditch match of all time. And that is good reason to be much ... more ... afraid.
Hogwarts and AllThe facts and figures behind the Harry Potter phenomenon.
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It is also why Potter fans predicted those exact fears would be realized when they learned that Columbus had been awarded the job over other top candidates. The director of Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire had certainly delivered high-grossing family fare. But though he had written the scripts for Gremlins and Young Sherlock Holmes early in his career, nothing in his recent resume proved him capable of the visual and psychological shadows that distinguish the Harry Potter novels.
"Everybody thought I was just this cuddly, sentimental guy," Columbus says, sitting in his office above the production's soundstages. At 43, he is still boyish looking, with scruffy eyebrows that make him appear amused, even when he isn't. "My films have always been brightly lit and never as visually exciting as I wanted them to be. I don't know why. I didn't realize how liberating it would be. I wanted to take this film to the dark side in a big way." He pauses, glances at a nearby bulletin board covered with his children's crayon drawings and smiles. "Not that we're making Seven here."
For most of 1999, Steven Spielberg had dallied with the idea of directing Sorcerer's Stone, but then opted out to make A.I. Artificial Intelligence. With a script already completed by Wonder Boys scribe Steve Kloves, Warner Bros. president and COO [chief operating officer] Lorenzo di Bonaventura invited directors to audition for the role over a 10-day period at the end of February 2000.
"I hadn't been in a situation where I had to interview for a job," Columbus says, laughing. Neither had the competition: Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, City of Angels' Brad Silberling, and Rowling's initial favorite, 12 Monkeys director Terry Gilliam. Columbus cannily asked for the last meeting and arrived bearing a heavily annotated copy of Kloves' script -- a move designed to show Warner executives how passionate he was about the project. Still, he says, "it took them six weeks to make a decision."
A six-week wait may have seemed an eternity to Columbus, but it was a mere millisecond to a studio pondering the fate of a potential multi-billion-dollar franchise -- including video and DVD sales and toy, clothing, and video game revenues -- and its own financial future. "There's no question," di Bonaventura says, in a precise bit of understatement, "that there are large expectations attached to this project."
Under that kind of pressure, you don't choose a relative novice (Silberling), a broad comedy champion (Reitman), or an unpredictable auteur (Gilliam). You choose the dependable guy who delivers. You select the candidate with a proven box office record and a gift for drawing strong performances from children. You pick the director comfortable with collaboration and surround him with an Oscar-winning production designer (Stuart Craig), an Oscar-winning cinematographer (John Seale), and an Oscar-nominated costume designer (Judianna Makovsky). And then, by God, you make sure to keep J.K. Rowling (who happens to be standing right over there, actually) involved every step of the way.
TO PREMIERE NOV. 2001 SORCERER'S STONE STORY, PART 2 >>
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