Introduction

Following the success of their collaboration on "Tom & Viv", producers Marc and Peter Samuelson and director Brian Gilbert were looking for a suitable project with which to continue their association. Some years earlier, Gilbert had unsuccessfully pursued the rights to Richard Ellmann's acclaimed biography of Oscar Wilde. The Samuelsons managed to secure these book rights and the services of screenwriter Julian Mitchell and, after almost two years in development, "Wilde" was ready for the screen.

"When I was asked to do it, my initial reaction was, Fantastic!" says Mitchell. "He's such a major figure and I hadn't really thought about him for about 20 or 30 years, so it was a wonderful chance to read everything again. The really good thing about Wilde - why he is internationally so widely-known - is that his remarks aren't just funny, they are deeply thought-provoking. They are very subversive of conventional ideas and conventional behaviour."

Stephen Fry endorses Mitchell's enthusiasm: "One of the things I love Oscar for is his denial of convention, his sense of paradox, his hedonistic refusal to believe anything which wasn't tested by experience - taking nothing on trust. There's something about him, the more one learns about him, that appeals to everybody."

"Oscar Wilde is a world phenomenon," agrees Mitchell, "and for many good reasons. "The Importance Of Being Earnest" is one of the best comedies ever written in English and his lines have never been forgotten - everybody knows them.

"I saw the recent London production of "An Ideal Husband" and there was a 100-year-old play about hypocrisy and sexuality which mirrors the history of Britain in the last 15 years - a series of sexual and financial scandals involving politicians. British political life never changes and Wilde is very acute about it -he's a wonderfully intelligent, accessible man which explains his huge popularity. He isn't a joker - he's not capering around in a funny hat, though he wears wonderful clothes.

"But he has terrific style. For him, style was a moral attitude and I think people really respond to that. I'm sure he worked at his epigrams and aphorisms in his study, but he also had a great natural wit and was able to throw off very funny remarks all the time. But when he was being serious he was very serious. "The Soul Of Man Under Socialism" and "The Critic As Artist" are both profound examinations of late-Victorian society, which have a lot to say to us still."

Stephen Fry has been an admirer of Wilde since his schooldays. "He had a phenomenal mind. One of the things he could do was read a novel very, very fast - unbelievably fast. He used to be able to read a book in 20 minutes and tell you the plot and then he could recite huge passages from a novel the size of Middlemarch. "He read in German, Italian, French and Russian. He really had a quite extraordinary mind, he had read more than anybody else. He was an extraordinary critic because nothing passed him by, he knew popular culture as well as anybody. At the time he was taken for a poseur but he was a great literary mind, a philosopher and a wonderful political essayist.

"It's interesting to realise that Wilde lived in Victorian London at exactly the same time as Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have done. When he met Conan Doyle, Doyle remarked what a great conversationalist Oscar was. It was then pointed out that Wilde had only got in a couple of sentences and Doyle had done all the talking! But that was the point about Wilde, he was a great listener, not somebody who dominated. He made everybody around the room feel more intelligent for being there and he didn't weigh them down with the speed of his mind. He opened his mind to things around him. He had the very rare blend of a faultless verbal ear and a beautiful colour sense - they don't usually go together. When he toured America he gave lectures on interior decoration."