Stephen Fry, who makes his debut as a director with an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, has rewritten literary history. Waugh called his 1930 novel about the social gadflies of Mayfair and Park Lane Bright Young Things, but it was deemed too cliched for his American readership and the title was changed to Vile Bodies.

Fry has changed the name back for his film starring Dame Judi Dench and Richard E. Grant. Not that the tweedy pipe-toting writer intended to be the director. Fry wrote the screenplay and was in Los Angeles. "I was all set to have lunch with this well-known director," he said. "I rang my office and said, I've found so-and-so, shall I offer them the job? They said, no, we have someone else in mind. I said, who? They said, you."

This article appeared in the London Times on October 2, 2002.

Return