The Impact of Literature on Film
It's not a sell-out.
Audience largely young and studenty and all seem weary....
Me -I'm sitting here wondering who the warm -up act will be....
So far just two information boards on stage and they're very wooden.
I feel like starting a chant 'We want Amis'...'We want Amis'.....
Where's Robin Ince when you need a bit of ranting?
Here they come....Yayyy! No one's clapping! When you've paid money you at least expect to clap.... or maybe laugh....or even cry
A prof drones on with a long, boring, haltering intro.....
Oh God now he's listing everything they've ever written.
At last over to the two pros ..... and they are .... and interesting, anecdotal and funny.
Amis cites 3 main differences between, as he puts it, writing and writing for movies.
He has obviously been traumatised by the latter....
Illustrating the disasters of 'collaboration' he talks of Saturn 3 and the pressure put on him by Kirk Douglas to rewrite ....
Apparently even in his 60's Douglas was eager to get his kit off, and wanted Farrah Fawcett who was less than keen, to do likewise.
The same film was written to climax with a fight between the sexagenarian and Harvey Keitel with the latter clearly winning. This was unacceptable to Douglas who failed to see why being older or feebler should have any bearing on outcome. Though he failed to win the fight, Douglas insisted that a new ending smearing Keitel's character be appended.
Difficult tho Saturn 3 was, the script Amis wrote for Mars Attacks failed to even reach production, never mind a screen, and was instead abandoned in favour of another's
Next comes a quick critique of 1960's auteur filmmaking and the need to write to 'commercial considerations'. This is obviously a bete noire and Amis becomes quite passionate when stressing that no such considerations impact fiction writing. For him the 'great freedom' in writing is 'abandonment'......
He concludes by saying he can only envy the bliss of Andrew Davies's life ..... and throws out to him his 3rd and last difference...that Literature is about internal things while film concentrates on the external world ....... (?)
Over to Davies who contrasts a deep seriousness in Amis with joviality and irreverence and could have filled the night with stories. He agrees with Amis's third premis, and alleges it to be a major problem when adapting good novels.
He quickly moves on to correct our perceptions of his charmed life. Quite a few scripts have never seen the light of day, or have appeared with others names.
According to Davies, In Hollywood writers are 'treated like shit tho' paid a lot of money.' The second or third draft into a script everything goes quiet and at that point another writer can be slipped in without you ever being told....
Only one movie has survived with his script in tact, Circle of Friends ......all the rest hijacked.
Apparently ''Working Title' ask anyone who walks through the office to write a draft of a script'.
Writing for TV seems much more civilised... Although the writer doesn't have total autonomy, he is 'the lead person' while the script is being written.
Davies then gives 3 examples of different treatments of books ....
'the straight telling' of a lesser known work. ... 'Wives and Daughters'
'the better/best adaptation' of previously adapted works ...'Pride and Prejudice' -
For Davies the engine of the plot was Darcy's sexual longing for Elizabeth....
(Apparently Davies wrote 'an erection' in the script... (when Lizzie arrives with muddy petticoats.....) That must have been why Colin Firth looked startled....
'the asset strip' House of Cards ..... a brilliant plot but not a good novel. So he kept the plot but changed the ending etc.
The most enjoyable film Davies has ever worked on was with Robert Altman (who had an attention span of about 45mins). For this long he and Davies would discuss the movie after which Altman would retire to bed with his 23 year old girlfriend while Davies wrote. 'It was a very tender experience' Davies remembers fondly. The film which was to be about Rossini was never made as something went wrong with the 'mafia money' ....
Few final quotes
Amis ' it's very rare you see anything interesting on a film set'
........a series of repetitions interrupted by delays'
Davies of Hollywood 'These days I resign before I'm sacked'
Old joke
Irish/Polish actress goes to Hollywood and sleeps with the writer.....
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