2.Main Content
Notes on a screenplay
Notes on A Scandal
Tue, 15 May 2007
Short-changed at the Oscars this year, Notes on Scandal has a note-perfect screenplay from Patrick Marber. Earlier this year, The Script Factory together with our partners at the NFTS, held a masterclass with Marber and director Richard Eyre, where they explained the challenge of adapting a classic novel.
The pair were in conversation with the journalist David Gritten – we’ve reproduced selected extracts of the discussion here.
Would you like to read the screenplay of Notes on A Scandal? It, and other Award-contender screenplays like The Queen are now on sale at discounted prices in .
David Gritten
I’ve discussed this film before with Patrick in other forums, and at one point he said to me that he doesn’t particularly feel that, as a screenwriter, he’s necessarily in control of the ‘tone‘ of the film. He said that if you read the script of Notes on a Scandal, it could be directed in any number of ways. Could you elaborate on that? Do you feel that it could be a totally different film, and that you didn’t dictate the tone?
Patrick Marber
The script is the starting point in the film, and as I’m sure Richard can tell you, the director doesn’t necessarily control the full tone either because on a film, the producers have an input, and the composer does, and the actors do, and you have to feel that it’s a collaboration between any number of creative entities. That’s all I meant. The script could have been directed as a low key, middle English film, but I think that the film, though clearly English, has a kind of pumped up feel to it, at times. It’s possibly more dramatic than the script would have you believe.
DG
Richard, given all that, you look at Patrick’s script, and you decide to make certain choices about the kind of film you’re going to make. Could you talk us through that process a little bit?
Richard Eyre
I’m not sure that deciding on the tone is one of those choices. The script did have a strong tone to it. It’s derived from the novel, so Patrick has obviously taken a necessarily different narrative strategy to the novel, but retained what is a wonderfully, deliciously acerbic tone than the one in the novel. The tone is the tone of Barbara Covett. That’s the thread that goes through the middle of this piece of rock. It’s very hard with any film to know exactly what you’re making, as you make it. It’s particularly hard with this film, which did go in a number of different directions at the post-production stage. In the shooting stage, I had a strong idea of both characters, and a strong idea of the narrative, and I guess the tone was something that was implicit. But what Patrick said about the premise, was really supplied by one of the two producers – Scott Rudin and Robert Fox. Scott said to me, repeatedly, and I guess it was his mantra, that he didn’t what it to be a ‘small British movie’. The last film that I did for Scot, which was Iris, was a small British movie. He wanted it very, very much, and he explicitly said, that he wanted this to be able to play big in the US. That did mean taking certain decisions in post-production.
Dench & Blanchett - Notes on A ScandalDG
One of the things that I found intriguing about the film, having read Zoe’s novel, one of the delights of Zoe’s novel, I suppose, is that what we have in Barbara, and it occurs to you gradually, that what she is telling you (as the narrator of the story) is not quite true. It’s difficult, isn’t it, to convey that in film? It’s easy to convey that on the printed page in a novel. Can you tell us, Patrick, how you began to address that problem?
PM
It’s one of the brilliant things about the novel: the reader’s creeping realisation that what you took to be a kindly maiden aunt, is actually a vicious killer on some level. You can’t replicate that on film. I though about how you would do that, but you can’t because you would see her. The gap between what she says, and what she is, is all too apparent the second you see her, in contrast to the voiceover narrated version of herself. Whereas, in the book, she can allow you to think of her as something, because you’re not literally seeing her. This is a very boring answer to a very interesting question, I’m very sorry! So, I decided to make her a constant diarist, and to make her a liar to her own diary, and therefore the gap of what she says of herself and what she is, is clear and apparent from quite early on. I hope that what happens is something akin to the novel, where you enjoy her sarcasm and her sour comments about other members of staff and the school, and she takes you into her landscape, and you think of her as a reliable person in her sarcasm. But gradually, you start to realise, oh, I see, she has other activities at work here. So it’s akin to the novel, but not as good, quite frankly. But it’s my stab at it.
DG
It’s also the case, isn’t it, that in the film, the Cate Blanchett character is only revealed as having this affair, only twenty minutes into the film? Whereas in the novel, it’s on page one or two. It hits you straight away. That’s an unusual narrative device.
PM
Well, it thought that it’s a story without much plot in it, and this is a plot point, that she was having an affair with a kid. So I withhold that, so that I’ve got something to build up to, which is that revelation. Also, in the film, we find out at the same time that Barbara does, and that makes us collude with Barbara on some level. So what I’m trying to do in the screenplay is to make you feel that Barbara is your ally before she turns against Sheba, and us, the audience.
DG
Patrick, I take it you knew that you were writing Barbara for Judi Dench from the word go?
PM
I knew that Judi had read the novel, and had expressed interest in potentially playing the part, if she liked the screenplay. So I was writing with the pressure of that knowledge that maybe we’d get Judi and maybe we wouldn’t. Depends whether she fancied it or not. But it was an exciting pressure because, yes I was writing it for a nominal Judi, as it were, with the excitement that I could write anything I wanted, because she could play anything that I could possibly write, and that she wouldn’t be concerned by the nastiness of the role, and the complexity of the role, and the contradictoriness of the woman. I knew that she could do all that, and very frightening simultaneously.
RE
… She did have a ball. I’ve known Judi for more than thirty years, and I’ve never known her not to enjoy her acting. I think if she wasn’t enjoying it, then it wouldn’t be good. She has a relish. It’s the thing that she does, and she’s like a great musician, and in some way she’s more herself when she’s acting than in any other circumstances.
PM
She said one thing to me while we were filming which I found very interesting. There’s a scene where the maths teacher says that he’s in love with Sheba, and Judi says on the day that we were shooting it, ‘why couldn’t you have written it all like this? This is my favourite scene, and this is the scene that I feel most like Barbara’. That was the scene I know she most enjoyed playing; at least that’s what she told me. She particularly responded to the particular type of sarcasm that Barbara has in that scene. But it’s also fair to say that she had a bad knee while we were shooting. So anything that didn’t involve walking down the street, climbing stairs, or fighting hand to hand with Cate Blanchett was well-written…
Audience Member
You mentioned that in post-production, you took some decisions to make it big in America. What were those decisions?
Zoe Heller's award-winning novelRE
It sounds crude but the obvious thing was how to make Barbara more sympathetic. That was from the word go, and one of the reasons why I liked the whole proposition of the film so much, was that it completely cocked a snoop at the idea of ‘root-ability’, which is what the studios always talk about: that characters always need to be root-able. Clearly, Barbara Covett is a hard woman to root for. So it was never a question of softening up Barbara Covett, it was always to do with how can we clarify and tell the story. The decisions are always to do with when we should release information, so that it had a strong narrative, and wasn’t just a succession of reflective moments. That it was always on the front foot so that the narrative momentum was a sort of vortex. That was the thing that was incredibly difficult in post-production. We did a few days re-shoot, but they weren’t of the nature of how can we make this look like a puppy dog at all. They were all to do with clarification and intensification of narrative.
AM
I haven’t read the novel but read that the ending of the film was softened. If that’s true can you tell us how it was softened, and why?
PM
It hasn’t been softened in my opinion. But I would say that! The novel ends with Sheba living with Barbara in Sheba’s brother’s house, which is a big stucco mansion in Primrose Hill. The novel ends in the middle of the court case, so you never find out whether Sheba gets sentenced to jail, you don’t find out what happened to Sheba’s marriage, she’s just a sort of abject, lonely, weeping prisoner of evil Barbara. I felt that I wanted to go forward from that ending. I’ve in effect honoured that by making Sheba Barbara’s prisoner. Then I have her escape, and I have Barbara find someone else to fixate on. I go on to show what happened six months later. So I think I’ve done both, I don’t think I find the ending of Barbara finding her next potential victim is a softening of what Zoe did. Zoe likes the ending of the film. Obviously, she likes the ending of the book more because she wrote it. But she also accepts that this is a more complete ending. Her ending was perfect in prose, but I think it would have left you feeling like, ‘yeah, and…’. I think in films, you want to feel that you’ve seen a beginning, a middle and an end, and it wouldn’t have felt like an end. I might be completely wrong, but that’s what we went with. I don’t think it’s a softening, and that’s certainly not the intention.
DG
It’s fair to say, isn’t it, that Zoe gave you carte blanche to write the screenplay and she’s pronounced herself delighted with it.
PM
I junketed with Zoe. In fact Richard, Zoe and I have all toured LA together. And she’s happy with it. She knows that every decision we made, we all loved the book and we all wanted to work on it. And that’s why you make these decisions, and we explain them and she gets it. …
When I first met with Zoe, back in 2003, my first question was ‘do you secretly want to write this adaptation yourself? Do you want to write the screenplay?’ And she said, ‘absolutely not, I really genuinely don’t’. My second thing I said to her was that you are aware that I’m going to change stuff, because I have to. I don’t know what I’m going to change, but I cannot be faithful to everything that is in your book. I’m going to honour the book because I love the book, but I can’t do everything that’s in the book, it’s just not possible. She said, ‘listen, my dad was a screenwriter, my husband’s a screenwriter, I know what you people do to novels, and I wouldn’t have sold the book to a film producer if I wasn’t prepared for the consequences’. She read a number of drafts, and she had some notes. Her main issue with the whole thing has always been my and Richard and Judi’s treatment of Barbara. She feels that Barbara, in the book, is a very covert lesbian, and in the film, is a more overt lesbian. A key scene that illustrates the difference to me between the film and the book is the arm-stroking scene, which is a powerful and excruciating moment in the film, but which is just one paragraph in the book. It’s not one of the most memorable passages in the novel. But nevertheless it’s in there: there is a scene where Barbara tries to stroke Sheba’s arm, and Sheba lets her and it’s uncomfortable. But it’s a key moment in the film because you’re seeing it, and you’re seeing the Dame’s hands on Cate Blanchett’s arms, and it’s weird and sensuous and strange, and it feels more Sapphic than it is in the novel. But that wasn’t necessarily the intention in the screenplay, it’s just the difference between the mediums.
AM
Patrick, what was the difference between what you ended up with and how you started? How did the script shape up?
PM
My first draft started with Sheba imprisoned in Barbara’s flat and finding the diary. It began with the end in a way, and that was my first instinct. I had this idea that the voiceover would begin when Sheba began at the beginning, and that’s how we would get into the voiceover. There was a big difference in shape. The major thing was deciding at what point to reveal that Barbara is dangerous, and there were a number of scenes that got chopped and changed around and got cut. If I read the first draft now, I’d find about 60% of what’s in the finished film there in some form. It’s not that it changed so radically, it just I hope got better and shorter.
DG
Patrick, it’s quite a long time since you embarked on this script, and the film is here quite a few years later. Do you feel that it got away from you, or that it honours your intentions as a screenwriter?
PM
When I write a screenplay, it’s a very different feeling to writing a play. When I write a play I want to find a director that will absolutely do the play as I imagined it. With a film, that is so not the intention of a screenplay; it’s a blueprint to a possible film. I have a completely different attitude to it. I don’t actually have a vision as a screenwriter. I’m someone who’s writing a series of possible instructions for a director, actors and a cinematographer. There are so many people who have a creative input. Yes, I’m the first person on the material, with the producer. But it’s a very different mindset. I think that film, in the end, is a director’s medium, and you’d be insane as a screenwriter to demand that your vision goes on the screen. The truth is I don’t have a vision; I really mean this, but I’m not really smart enough to have a vision. I’m not a filmmaker, I’m just a writer. It’s Richard who had the vision, so ask him. But I loved the film, that I would say!
The above transcript was extracted from an event which was part of The Stanley Kubrick Masterclass series, presented by the National Film & Television School and The Script Factory, and supported by Skillset through the Film Skills Fund & Warner Bros Studios.