On the eve of the 30th anniversary of its Oscars wins, trilbyberesford interviews her 79-year-old father, director Bruce Beresford, about his time on 'Driving Miss Daisy' and more
By the time I was 3 years old, I knew my way around a movie set better than my preschool. I knew the craft services table was where I could find my favorite snacks. I knew the makeup trailers were where I could hear the liveliest conversations. And I knew that my father, Bruce Beresford, was something called a director, a guy who made movies.
Commercial success was thought unlikely because it was an adaptation of a small-scale play where the most dramatic incident is, in Dad's words, "One character accuses another of stealing a tin of salmon out of the cupboard." Repeatedly, he was told that no director — not even the one who had previously directed such notable films as— could possibly make this compelling enough to sustain an audience's interest.
Dad's memories of the film's 31 shooting days include "terribly funny, often very dirty" on-set jokes from Tandy, who was 80 at the time and frail. "She was supposed to work only a few hours a day, but this proved to be impossible because of the schedule as determined by the budget," he recalls. Throughout those long days, she often stayed in character, keeping her distance from Freeman, just as Daisy would have.
I asked my dad about the controversy, which he in a typical, downplaying Australian way calls "sort of absurd," adding: "It didn't seem to me to be that evil. Hoke had a job. It wasn't as if he was a slave; he could have gone at any time. He was a proud man who was anything but subservient." Dad goes on to explain that Uhry included "charming little touches" in the script, such as Hoke and Daisy eating in different rooms.
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