<SOT from The Theory of Everything: What if reversed the process to see what happened at the beginning of time itself. Wind back the clock, wind back the clock until you get a universe born from a black hole explosion.> James Marsh: Briefly, I was sent the screenplay that Anthony McCarten had written, and I was on the impression was a biography of Stephen Hawking, which I wasn’t particularly interested in doing so, I thought I was probably the wrong person to do this, but I dutifully read or began to read it.. <SOT from The Theory of Everything: It will have to do. You don’t know what’s coming, it will affect everything.> James Marsh: and found out it was something completely different which is a portrait of a relationship, and there was an equality of point of view of both man and woman so, even though Stephen is a public figure and Jane Hawking, obviously much less so in the story and the script there was equality between the two characters in terms of time and space with them that felt intriguing <SOT from The Theory of Everything: But I love him and he loves me, and we’re going to fight this illness together. James Marsh: I met with Stephen before we made the film and he gave us his sort of tacit approval. It’s about his personal life, so he wasn’t sort of wild about the idea but he didn’t object to it. <SOT from The Theory of Everything: It’s called motor neuron disease, life expectancy is two years.> James Marsh: He came to set when we’re filming the sort of extravagant May Ball sequence. He came to that and he arrived it was like a spaceship landing. His face was lit by this bright screen which he uses to communicate with and there’s four or five people around him. He came at just the right moment when the fireworks were going off <SOT from The Theory of Everything: fireworks> James Marsh: And then he saw the film, and as a result of that screening he offered the use of his voice. The voice you hear in the film is in fact his voice and that changed the film in a very mysterious way. <SOT from The Theory of Everything: Voice of Hawking: There should be no boundary for the human endeavor, however bad life may seem, while there is life there is hope. The other aspect of the film that’s worth mentioning is it feels like it may be a gloomy film about a man in a wheelchair, the wheelchair’s really a given really, and Stephen’s had a life. END-