{"id":7410,"date":"2010-09-23T13:14:50","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T21:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=7410"},"modified":"2010-09-23T13:14:50","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T21:14:50","slug":"never-let-me-go-what-happens-when-novelist-and-screenwriter-are-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=7410","title":{"rendered":"Never Let Me Go: What happens when novelist and screenwriter are friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From <\/em>The Afterword Reading Society<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Nine months before it was published, Alex Garland read the manuscript of Kazuo Ishiguro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new novel, Never Let Me Go<\/a>. It took him less than a day to finish, and later that evening called up his friend with a request: he wanted to write the screenplay.\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I basically made a pitch: I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI know how we can make this,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Garland, sitting in a room at the Park Hyatt during the recent Toronto International Film Festival. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably get some other offers, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll make a different kind of film, [but] this is the kind of film that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll make. Trust us.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 And he did.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

It took more than five years of effort, but Never Let Me Go opens in theatres Friday. Directed by Mark Romanek, Never Let Me Go is a thoughtful adaptation of a novel Time called the best book of the decade. Starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield, the film concerns a group of students at Hailsham, a secluded boarding school in the English countryside. The students have a special purpose in life: They are clones, and their organs will be harvested by the time they are middle-aged. This is not a twist, but rather a device used to push the novel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s themes to the forefront. If you leave the theatre focusing on the (understated) sci-fi elements, says Ishiguro, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve missed the point.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want [viewers] to go away thinking about things like clones, and genetic engineering, and organ donation. I want them to go away thinking about mortality \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not just mortality and the fact that we have only a short time \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I want them to go away thinking about what do you do with things like love and friendship, given that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not here forever?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says the novelist. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are the really important things when you know you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only got a limited amount of time left, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s essentially what the film is about.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Ishiguro, whose Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day was made into a film in 1993, has written four screenplays \u00e2\u20ac\u201d including The Saddest Music in the World for Winnipeg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Guy Maddin, with whom he will soon collaborate with again \u00e2\u20ac\u201d yet he says he had no desire to write the script novel himself. He made a rule, years ago, never to adapt his own work. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like having to go back to school and taking your exams again,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Once you feel the material is behind you, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really hard to go back into that place again.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0Instead, he left the job to Garland, whose screenplays include 28 Days Later and Sunshine, whom he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s known since shortly after Garland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first novel, The Beach, was published in 1996: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I watched him go from being this star young novelist to this screenwriter who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting hotter and hotter in Hollywood,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ishiguro says \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It felt like he was absolutely the natural person to do it \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I was very confident about Alex\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s abilities as a screenwriter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

While Garland was keen to adapt Ishiguro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel, he knew there were risks \u00e2\u20ac\u201d including their friendship.\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel responsible to [Kazuo] as a friend, not just as a colleague,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. But \u00e2\u20ac\u0153overall, I think it made it easier. It was not a difficult writing project, from my point of view. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a big difference between starting with a blank page with nothing on it and starting with a blank page but an open book beside you that essentially has the answers to the questions you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re about to pose. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more than a map.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

All involved say there was never any talk about playing up the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153twist,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or any pressure to temper the bleakness of the novel with a happy ending.\u00c2\u00a0Says Mark Romanek, the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s director: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wept at the end of the book, and I felt [we] would have failed if people weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t weeping at the end of the film.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Afterword Reading Society Nine months before it was published, Alex Garland read the manuscript of Kazuo Ishiguro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new novel, Never Let Me Go. It took him less than a day to finish, and later that evening called up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,437,506,580,581,592],"class_list":["post-7410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alex-garland","tag-kazuo-ishiguro","tag-mark-romanek","tag-never-let-me-go","tag-never-let-me-go-movie","tag-novelist-screenwriter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}