The Lady in the Van is a 2015 British comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner, and starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings. It is based on the memoir of the same name created by Alan Bennett, and it tells the true story of his interactions with Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on his driveway in London. The principal cast of Bennett’s 2006 film The History Boys appear in cameo roles.
About The Lady in the Van in brief
The Lady in the Van is a 2015 British comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner, and starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings. It is based on the memoir of the same name created by Alan Bennett, and it tells the true story of his interactions with Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on his driveway in London for 15 years. The film was shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival and received largely positive reviews from critics. It was greenlit on 3 June 2014, with TriStar Productions and BBC Films working together to make the film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s West End hit. TriStar won the film rights to handle worldwide distribution, while the BBC was the first to show the film on television in the UK. The principal cast of Bennett’s 2006 film The History Boys appear in cameo roles, with the exception of that film’s \”teachers\”, de la Tour and Richard Griffiths, who died in 2013. In 2014, the real Bennett is shown observing this film’s final scene being filmed: his younger self unveiling a blue plaque on his home dedicated to \”The Lady In the Van.
The film is shot in and around Bennett’s old house in Camden Town, where the real Miss Shepherd spent 15 years on his drive. Much of the dialogue is between two versions of Bennett – his \”real self\” and his \”writer self. Bennett balances his writing career with watching over Shepherd and providing for his increasingly invalid mother. Smith had previously portrayed Shepherd twice: in the 1999 stage play, which earned her a Best Actress nomination at the 2000 Olivier Awards and in the 2009 radio adaptation. The production was filmed for two days in November 2014 in Broadstairs, Kent, featuring 50-strong crew, notably the Viking Bay Cinema, Morelli’s Gelato and the Palace Cinema, notably Viking Bay, Viking Bay and Morelli’s Gelato. The original stage play was at the Queen’s Theatre in London, and HyTner directed the 1999 play at the King’s Theatre, London, in which Smith played the role of Miss Shepherd. In the original play, Shepherd was a gifted former pupil of the pianist Alfred Cortot. She escaped, had an accident when her van was hit by a motorcyclist and thereafter lived in fear of arrest.
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This page is based on the article The Lady in the Van published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 20, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
