NOTES ON THE SCREENPLAY
In the winter of 2003 my wife was in bed reading a novel. She was gurgling with delight: "You've got to read this!" And then she re-focused on the page, continuing to purr with pleasure.
A few days later a package arrived from the producer, Scott Rudin. By coincidence it was a copy of the same novel and a request to read it with a view to adapting it for the screen.
Whenever I'm sent a book to adapt one of my first thoughts is, "If I take this on I'm going to have to read it at least ten times. So how do I feel about that?" When I reached the end of Notes on a Scandal, I turned immediately to the first page to read it all again. I was staggered by its brilliance. How had Zoë Heller done it? How had the narrator crept up on me so slyly? Why hadn't I detected how loopy she was? How had the author achieved such a rich brew of comedy, creepiness, satire and suspense? And why had it moved me so much?
I knew I wanted to write the screenplay but the prospect was intimidating: I loved the novel but knew that to be faithful to its spirit I might have to betray some of its 'moves'. (I suspect all screenwriters who adapt from other sources know this feeling). And the setting was a sort of drizzly London I know only too well - a few miles up the road from our flat. And the story was all about lonely, desperate people in shabby rooms. My wife pointed out that this was my natural subject - if not my natural habitat.
A second pressure was that Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett had both read and loved the novel and expressed keen interest in doing the screen version of it. To pull off a film of Notes on a Scandal was always going to require two incredible actors. And here were two supreme ones waiting to read what I wrote. I've written scripts with actors in mind and I've written scripts with no sense of who might play the roles. This one began to feel like a mission; the more I wrote the more enticing the prospect became, it had to be them.
And fortunately they both agreed to do it and quite rightly their performances are being acclaimed. I'm very proud to have helped them on their way.
I saw this movie over the weekend with my sister, and i found that the screenplay was truly brilliant- it was the foundation on which the actors created their characters- and it was a solid foundation, it become, to me, a tangible thing, almost like another character. judi dench reading her diary entries was painfully naked and exposed- you saw her in all of her flawed humanity. i found the prose to be so vivid and alive, the narrative was so filled with emotion and the raw desperation of loneliness and the need to be loved... to connect to someone, to be seen.
not to take away from the actors' performances- which i felt were deep and honest and utterly engrossing- but with a screenplay that is so solid, the core of the movie was already there. i felt like the actors' were free to play with the roles with confidence that the screenplay would support them and allow them to explore their characters with intensity and abandon- which they did perfectly and with believable subtlety.
the novel must have been wonderfully rich and starkly confessional- the insight into a woman's mind, the thoughts that she hides from everyone, her obsessions and deepest insecurities and fears are laid bare for the audience- it creates a heady yearning to know more, to possess the character and understand all of her. but it also makes you want to turn away, as though looking into an open wound so achingly hollow. judi dench's character was desparate to be recognized and validated. but it seems that she was met with society's indifference, a cruel responce to her wretched plea for companionship. It seems to me that she had to resort to her single- minded, calculating schemes. she had to be vindictive and unfeeling in her tactics, she was in an attack mode- simply a self-protecive subterfuge. she saw herself discarded, unappreciated, left to sour and grow limp with loneliness and old age. society had relegated her to the realm of the unseen, the used up and worthless, utterly inconsequential and not worth a moment's thought.
the screenplay was perfect in pitch and in subtlety. convincingly candid and an uncompromising reflection of the innate unrelenting desire to commune with one another.