Nick Hornby is the voice of the disaffected pop culture enthusiast, and he brings his particular blend of vigor and practicality to his screenwriting career.
He has published many novels — including "High Fidelity," which was made into the beloved cult hit starring John Cusack — and he's adapted other people's works for the screen. But he's never adapted his own work and it seems unlikely he ever will. When Hornby spoke with The Frame's John Horn, he explained that it takes him about two years to write a novel, while working on a screenplay can take more than twice as long; and Hornby simply doesn't want to spend that many years working with the same characters.
Moreover, he has little interest in visiting movie sets when his own screenplays are being filmed. It's like having a Facebook friend you've never met showing up when you're in the hospital. "People might be nice to you," he says, "but they would be very surprised to see you."
For Hornby, working in film and television is less about glamor and more about the creative opportunities. Adapting other writers' works, for example, refreshes him because "you have incredible access to this material that you could not have generated yourself." Hornby's adaptations include "An Education" and "Wild," and his most recent project was the screenplay for Colm Tóibín's "Brooklyn."
Read more below about Nick Hornby's thoughts on the process of screenplay adaptations, including the joy he gets from writing strong female leads like that of Saoirse Ronan's character, Eilis, in "Brooklyn."
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
The thing about writing for girls is they don’t get an awful lot written for them. So if you do write a screenplay with a strong female lead, you’re going to get the choice of the best talent out there. That’s quite an incentive.
Is there something more liberating or rewarding about writing an adaptation? That you’re not generating a story from a completely blank page?
Yes, it’s fantastic. And it’s not just that someone else has done some of the hard lifting for you. It’s also that, when you’re a novelist and everything comes from you, you become aware, especially over a long career, that you’re stuck with who you are. And every time I start a novel, I think, This is different. And then it’s like the end of "The Truman Show." You clunk up against the edge of your brain — oh no! It’s me again! It’s still a Nick Hornby book!
And with adapting, you use exactly the same — as it were — creative muscles, but you have incredible access to this material that you could not have generated yourself.
Why haven’t you adapted your own work?
It takes me maybe two years to write a book, and all of these movie journeys have been five years. Especially now, I know that the books will wind up being optioned by somebody else on the food chain. Do I want to start that book knowing I’ll be thinking about these characters in seven years’ time? No, I don’t. While I have an idea in my head, I would rather move on to the next thing.
When you look at the adaptations of your own works, what do you learn that you can add to the adaptation process yourself?
I don’t think you can learn anything. [Laughter.]
It’s unknowable, because it’s different people, different amounts of money, different talent, different writers, different actors. There is nothing — I don’t think — you can take from one project to the next, other than the knowledge that it is not governable.
But that’s a big thing.
That it’s not governable? Yeah, I mean I think that is something that you learn. And I always feel a little bit sorry for novelists who say, I’m selling it to this person because I’m going to control it.
You know that it's doomed.
It is doomed, and for a perfectly logical reason. Because what do they mean when they say they’re going to "control" it? They maybe mean that they’re going to be able to approve the director. Well, that may or may not be a good idea, because you may not know enough about directing and about up-and-coming talent. It may mean that you approve the lead actors — and again, maybe you know enough about it, maybe you don’t — but it also means that you have to approve the director of photography and the editor and the score composer.
My view is that you sell your book to people you like and trust, and anything that happens after that — [hope] they had your best intentions at heart.
Did you know that from the beginning, or was that part of your Hollywood education and having your other books adapted?
Ah, no. I didn’t know it at the beginning. I realized it with “High Fidelity,” which disappeared for a long period of time before it got made; and when it was made, it was made by the right people, but more or less accidentally. Because it took a long time to get to them.
Are you on set when your screenplays are being filmed?
No, not at all . . . I don’t think it’s interesting. If you go on set for four hours, or eight hours, you’ll see — if you’re lucky — a short scene with dialogue in it. And that short scene might not be one you care about particularly. It’s somebody saying, Would you mind getting the door? And then they do it again and again and again. And of course, your role is over by this [point]. So I’ve started to think of writers going on set — it’s a bit like if you have a Facebook friend you’ve never met, and they were having an operation and you turned up at the hospital. They would be very surprised to see you, and people might be nice to you, but they would say, Anyway, we’re quite busy — would you mind if we got on with that now?
If you were meeting a novelist and his or her first book got optioned for a movie, what would you tell them about the process of adaptation?
Well I’d say, first of all, that there’s about a 10 percent chance of the movie being made. Less, possibly, depending on how well the book’s done. Then I would say that you just have to forget about it and move on. Nothing happens for about three or four years. This is the good version. You can’t even find out who owns it anymore. And then suddenly they send you a draft to read. And you read the draft. And just as you’re thinking about what you can say about it, maybe another draft arrives. And you read the second draft but you can’t remember the difference between the second draft and the first draft. So you think, Oh, perhaps I better read the first draft again. And then the third draft comes! By this point, I’m thinking, You know what? I’m just going to go and see the movie when they invite me.
Nick Hornby's most recent adaptation, "Brooklyn," is currently in theaters.