Litro's Film Adaptation Issue, Guest Edited by Anthony Fabian.

Film and literature make strange bedfellows. As you will read from the varied contributions of Jeremy Page, Simon Relph, Olivia Hetreed and myself, the two media are often at odds with each other. But conflict, as we know, is at the heart of good drama. I therefore hope that you find the ensuing battle of words and images as interesting to read as it has been for me to assemble.

I was flattered to be asked to guest-edit this cinema-focused edition, and it seemed to me that given the nature of the publication, adaptation was the natural subject to draw all the elements together. I hoped to find contributors from different disciplines, and have just about managed it: Jeremy Page is a novelist as well as a script editor; Olivia Hetreed is a screenwriter who was once a film editor; Simon Relph is one of the UK’s most eminent producers (I’m not sure what he used to be—an assistant director?); and I’m an actor-turned-screenwriter-turned-producer/director. The discourse on adaptation could fill several libraries, but I do believe the pieces here touch on all the key components. In essence, when adapting any work for the screen, it’s about choice: what to leave in and what to leave out. Why we make those choices is the nub of the matter, which is now down to you to discover.

By Anthony Fabian,
Director of Skin, starring Sophie Okonedo, Sam Neill, and Alice Krige, released in the UK through ICA Films on 24 July 2009.