David Yates is spending four days in purgatory. It's in his contract. Warner Brothers has booked a whole floor of Claridge's Hotel in London to promote its US$151 million, fifth JK Rowling adaptation, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The company has filled room after room with increasingly wild-eyed talent from the movie, including hormonally charged teens Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) and Emma Watson (Hermione). Every few minutes, they send in another journalist to ask the same questions. How many takes did you need for Harry's first kiss? Tongues? Can you show me how you did that thing with the wand? How can you justify not having a quidditch scene, when there was one in the book, damn you?
Warner won't let anyone out until every last Texas blogger and Czech cinephile leaves happy in the knowledge of precisely what motivates Professor Dumbledore in his beardy dotage, and exactly which manifold architectural influences were key to the construction of Hogwarts school. "What's the weather like out there, mate?" asks Yates. "We don't get to see it in here."
The world's press has one question for Yates: Who the hell are you? Here's my version: Remind me how a nobody from St Helens with a track record of making fine, if low-budget, TV dramas such as Paul Abbott's State of Play - your several awards notwithstanding - gets to direct the fifth installment of a global franchise that has grossed US$3.5 billion No offence. "None taken, mate," says the gentle-voiced 43-year-old. "Many nights I've been lying awake thinking, 'Of all the films in all the world, why am I doing this? How did that happen?'"
But surely you were a fan of the books, or at least the previous films? "No. Hadn't read a word. It wasn't part of my world," says Yates. So how did it happen? "I was walking in Cornwall when I got a call. They sent me a script and I read 20 pages and thought, 'This isn't going to work. This isn't me.'"
Did you dither? "I did. I thought, 'This would open doors for me later on, but it isn't quite me.'"
Yates' dithering reminds me of Daniel Craig contemplating becoming 007. It's not just all the bother of having to endlessly answer stupid media questions, but the risk of never being taken seriously as an artist again.
"It wasn't really the same," says Yates. "The risk of getting stereotyped was minimal."
He became captivated by Rowling's world of wizardry: "The problem was I was dropping in on series five. So I went back and read all the novels and then I was hooked. I spent the next year working on the script." What, apart from unprecedentedly large pay checks, was the attraction? "The characters. Harry struggling with who he is and the powers he has. Also, I was captivated by Dolores Umbridge, who is a mean, but apparently sweet, magic teacher (played by Imelda Staunton with gale-force gusto), who is sent to spy on Dumbledore. She's a sadist and a bully. There are kids in the audience who have had horrible experiences with teachers or other adults. So they'll feel connected to the story. If any bugger turns up." Oh, they'll turn up all right.
"Another thing that got me was how our Muggle world sits right next to the world of wizards. It's there but we don't know it. That had wonderful possibilities." Two of his film's visual flourishes grew from that thought: a London terrace splits open to reveal the house where Harry Potter meets the Order of the Phoenix; and a red phone box slips under a road near the Westminster parliament to the Ministry of Magic, whose subterranean atrium is thrillingly decorated in 30,000 black, shiny tiles.
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