Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby's books include the novels High Fidelity, About A Boy, How To Be Good, A Long Way Down, Juliet, Naked, and Funny Girl. His non-fiction books include the football memoir Fever Pitch and The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of his essays on books and culture. He is also the author of Slam, which is vintage Hornby for teenagers.
Hornby is also the author of four screenplays: Fever Pitch, An Education, Wild and Brooklyn.
From his Q & A with Kate Kellaway for the Guardian:
Is the technique of writing for the screen about less-is-more, showing rather than telling?--Marshal Zeringue
Screenwriting is about condensing. But I like writing dialogue and minor characters are fun. There is an intertwining of commercial need with art: producers always want to “cast up”. If you can find room for a Jim Broadbent or a Julie Walters [playing minor roles in Brooklyn], it will boost the film’s commercial prospects. It is joyous to look at a minor character and wonder how he or she can become more major.
Is adapting from a novel you did not write like picking up a foreign language – do you try to catch the tone of the book?
Brooklyn and Wild spoke to a readership. There is no point alienating that readership just because you have seen something in the book that could make a movie. It is too disappointing for people. Brooklyn is a beautiful, literary novel but we had to amplify it because its feelings and gestures are so understated. Colm Tóibín sees to it that the reader has to...[read on]
