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Go shoppingAs a producer, I prefer to make films that are originally conceived for cinema, not adaptations of material originated in another medium; however, financiers and film distributors prefer adaptations. So despite my own preferences, of the sixteen films I have produced, nine are adaptations. My first film, and what might be my last, are adaptations of novels set during the First World War.
Filmmaking, even more than politics, is the art of the possible. The producer’s job is to understand and fight for the best that is possible for his or her film. The marketplace and the collaborators the producer is able to attract define the limits of what is possible. In the special case of adaptations, the producer must also consider whether the film rights are available and, if so, on what terms.
A well-known source material can open the way to substantial money to make the film. A work in which audiences have already demonstrated interest has obvious strengths. A successful book does not guarantee a successful film, but in a business where, as William Goldman famously observed, “nobody knows anything”, it can offer a sense of confidence that comes with buying a known quantity, not just to financiers but audiences as well. Two of the films with which I am associated as producer, Damage and the yet to be made Birdsong, are based on bestselling novels with high audience awareness.
At the same time, the rights to a bestseller can be a curse as well as a blessing. Competing with other producers for the rights drives up the price and stiffens the terms of the deal. With a less well-known work, at least, it costs less and it is possible to achieve options and extensions for quite modest sums. Mostly, producers seek to option rights, but agents for the authors of high-profile works may demand full payment for rights up front.
For a producer who works independently, as I do, borrowing to pay a high price for rights means ceding significant control at an early stage. The creative approach to the adaptation, the choice of a director, casting, and in fact, the whole vision of the project, can drift away from the producer—the person who first wanted to make the film. Even if the film is not a personal project, diffusion of control can make for a less effective film.
And though a published source also helps attract talent, there can be pitfalls. The first film I produced, alongside Ann Skinner who found the project and invited me to be her partner on it, was The Return of the Soldier. It was based on Rebecca West’s 1918 novel. The book has three strong, complex characters, immediately attractive to actors. Ann gave the book to Glenda Jackson, an avid reader, with the idea that she would play the central role. Happily, she liked it and said she would do it. It was a great help to have a double Oscar-winning actress associated with the project before the screenplay was even written.
Then Ann approached Dame Rebecca’s agent, who was somewhat disdainful of her proposal, since Ann had never produced a film before. However, as no one had been clamouring to acquire rights in the book, he granted an option, and at a price that she could afford. Somewhat impertinently, or so it seemed by the reaction she got, Ann asked if the agent was sure that Dame Rebecca still retained the rights in her novel. She was roundly ticked off and told that the agency had represented Dame Rebecca since 1935 and they were sure that she did indeed still own the rights in her book.
So Ann went about the first steps in the adaptation process. She decided to engage a writer first, finding it impossible to get a commitment from a director based on the book alone, despite Glenda Jackson’s attachment. Money was needed for both the screenwriter and the option. Having no track record on which to raise money from outsiders, Ann paid for the option and the first draft of the screenplay herself, out of her earnings as a script supervisor. The writer agreed to modest fees in return for a better deal if the film got made.
It must have been about this time that our lawyer advised a copyright search. There is a law firm in Washington that specialises in these searches. Their search revealed that soon after the book was published, Rebecca West had sold the rights in The Return of the Soldier to MGM, who in turn had sold them on to Warner Brothers in the 1930s, apparently as a vehicle for Bette Davis. Ann had spent a great deal of time and money on a project she didn’t even have the rights to.
The previously disdainful agent was now apologetic, and Ann and he set about retrieving the rights from Warner Brothers. Dame Rebecca was not too put out at being asked for the money back and, with the help of a couple of friends at the studio, the rights that Ann thought she already owned were properly obtained. Although this story ends happily, it is what they call learning the hard way. Producers cannot be too careful about ensuring that the person with whom they are negotiating actually controls the rights. A copyright check on anything published more than a year or two ago is an essential first step.
All this assumes you can persuade the author that the work should be filmed in the first place. That is not usually difficult because films pay writers a good deal more than book publications. Often the author will want to discuss their vision for the film and may seek to be directly involved in the process even if they are not writing the screenplay themselves. All this has to be handled delicately. Giving too much influence to an author at the outset can inhibit the financing of the film.
In any case, honesty is always the best policy. Producers always hope that their creative approach will be sympathetic to the author, but the author must understand that there will be many other influences on the film as it progresses: from the director, the actors, the distributor and the financiers. It is impossible to run back to the original author for approvals at every turn. It is unwise to grant any such approvals unless the book is, like the Harry Potter series, so hot that the rights would not be available otherwise. The sensible compromise, in giving authors their deserved respect, is regular consultation that keeps the author in touch with the film and gives him or her a voice in the process.
Sometimes an idea for a film comes from a work that does not merit such respect. Many good films have been made from bad books. In those cases, it is not sensible to agree to either approval or consultation, when you know from the outset that the film will be different from the book. Fortunately, authors of less successful books are less likely to be fussy, and more likely to be pleased to sell the film rights at all.
Often, the original author will want to write the screenplay. Many producers resist this, since authors can be over-protective of their work and are usually inexperienced in the craft of screenwriting, a very different discipline from other kinds of writing. The self-evident dominance of the visual in movies means that, for me, the story must be told in pictures. A respected author who has already written screenplays may be able to force the producer’s hand; however, the screenwriter’s contract customarily allows the producer to replace the writer, usually after two drafts, regardless of his or her eminence.
Top novels demand top writers. They are part of the package that sells the film. Sadly, there are few accomplished screenwriters in the UK. They are constantly in demand, hard to pin down, and unaffordable for a producer starting out or without the backing of a substantial financier. The quality of the work to be adapted can help. Many screenwriters’ bread, butter and jam are commercially driven, popular movies, which may pay well, but fail to feed the hunger that made them screenwriters in the first place. On the other hand, if a producer offers a novel that appeals creatively, a screenwriter will work hard to be available and affordable. This was the case with The Return of the Soldier; Hugh Whitemore came on board enthusiastically and fitted in with the timetable.
The assessment of a writer’s work and subsequent guidance of it are critical. I was never trained in that although through the years I have learnt a lot. I have been fortunate in my career in having two partners, Ann Scott and Ann Skinner, both of whom are specialists. Ann Scott became a producer through the BBC’s story department, and Ann Skinner was a top script supervisor in movies, relied upon by many great talents such as Joe Losey, John Schlesinger and John Boorman.
In the early stages of adaptation, the screenwriter only has to contend with the producer and perhaps a financier’s script development executive. As work progresses, the writer is subjected to more and more “input” from directors, financiers, distributors and, ultimately, actors. The producer must guide the process so that the screenwriter is not pulled in different directions. There will be a moment when the screenplay becomes a film in its own right and the source material is put aside. It is the producer’s responsibility to judge when that moment has been reached.
At some point, the director becomes involved. In the fastest book to screen development I have experienced, the director was there before me. Louis Malle’s Damage was adapted from a novel by Josephine Hart set in London. Louis had worked on the script with Jean-Claude Carrière but they had concluded that an English screenwriter was needed. I was becoming attached to the film as English co-producer, my preference for original material more than trumped by my desire to work with a master filmmaker. I encouraged Louis’s thought of working with David Hare, with whom I had worked at the National Theatre as well as on the film Wetherby.
Their process was interesting. They spent several weeks talking through the narrative structure, working out which scenes would be in the film, in what order, and how their content would differ from the book or not, until they had a script in which each scene was described in a couple of lines but not dramatised. Then David went away on his own to write the screenplay, sticking absolutely to the outline. Because the director was involved from the outset, the first screenplay that David produced was very close to what we finally shot.
On some occasions, directors have little input. I was Executive Producer of Enchanted April, which my partner Ann Scott produced and Mike Newell directed. Peter Barnes wrote the screenplay under Ann’s guidance and with input from Mark Shivas at the BBC. It became a BBC production. Mike came in when Peter’s script was very close to its final form. That screenplay was eventually nominated for an Oscar.
Another of my adaptations, Land Girls, based on the novel by Angela Huth, had a more eventful writing process. Ann Scott and I had been commissioned to produce the film. We developed a screenplay with a very distinguished writer, whom I prefer not to name. We were all pleased with the resulting script. David Leland, our first choice director, liked it and agreed to make the film. It was our intention that David, himself an excellent screenwriter, should work with our writer to produce the final shooting script. They met to discuss it and here we hit the rocks. The two knew and respected each other, but couldn’t agree about the film. The writer withdrew, unhappy with us, feeling we should have stuck with him and found another director. We didn’t because the whole point of commissioning a script in the first place was to attract a director. We felt David was right for the film.
This kind of ethical dilemma arises quite often in the adaptation process, often because a director, joining the process halfway through, wants to take the film in a different direction. Nothing is harder for a producer than to have to tell a senior creative contributor that they are no longer needed, especially when, as often happens, their work is good. Frequently, film adaptations go through a number of writers, although much less so with original work where the writer’s ownership is much more significant. In the end there is often an arbitration process overseen by the Writers Guild before credit is finally agreed. That process involves the analysis of many different versions of the script to determine which writer is first responsible for each line.
David Leland didn’t want to work on the script alone. As director, he needed input from a trusted colleague and thus Keith Dewhurst was brought in to fill the role of David’s co-writer. Curiously, some might say perversely, David never read the original novel, although Keith did. He argued that he had been attracted to the project by the screenplay we had sent him, and that was a film not, any longer, a book. Angela Huth was rather put out, but in the end I think she was happy. The film was popular and retained the spirit of the book.
I have worked for some fourteen years alongside Ann Skinner and, for a lot of that time, under the direction of Working Title Films on the adaptation of Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. The reasons why the film is not yet made are another story. Sebastian, as you might expect after so long, has lost patience with the whole process; however, I remember how wise his attitude to the adaptation was from the outset. Essentially he said, “A film is a film and a book is a book—all I hope is that it will be about the same things that inspired me to write the book in the first place.” Throughout the process, we and our now numerous collaborators have tried to be true to the powerful themes that run through his book, however much the narrative varies from it or individual characters’ stories change. It is an enormous challenge. Birdsong is a huge, complex novel that cannot be encompassed in two hours of screen time, but we believe a powerful, cinematic story can be distilled from it.
Filmmaking is consecutively as well as concurrently collaborative. As the shooting script is finalised, designers, actors, a cinematographer, and an editor become part of a huge collaboration. Sequences from a book that have survived rewrites and been filmed can disappear or be radically altered in an edit suite years after the producer first approached the author. The producer’s task is to take the best of what his collaborators have to offer.
In this process, the original work is a collaborator too, reworked, reimagined, and yet respected when it matters. It is a great joy for a producer when an original author is happy with the final film. Ann Skinner and I are proud to have a note from Rebecca West thanking us for improving her book.
Simon Relph is an independent film producer and the author of the Relph Report on low budget film production. He is a past chairman of BAFTA, a governor of the NFTS, and Chairman of the Screenwriters Festival. His adaptation of Birdsong will go into production later this year.
