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Adapting Girl With A Pearl Earring
Girl with a Pearl Earring, adapted by Olivia Hetreed from Tracy Chevalier's best-seller
Mon, 2 Feb 2004
During our SCENE festival as part of The Times bfi London Film Festival, novelist Tracy Chevalier and screenwriter Olivia Hetreed joined us for a Masterclass on adaptation, and to talk about Girl With A Pearl Earring’s journey from best-selling novel to a film starring this year’s ‘It’ girl Scarlett Johansson.
On the eve of the film’s release, we’re delighted to present this extract from the Masterclass, chaired by journalist Demetrios Matheou.
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING: A MASTERCLASS IN ADAPTATION, FROM BRUSH TO PEN TO CAMERA.
WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER 2003, SOHO THEATRE
Demetrios Matheou (chair)
I think it’s probably worth going back to the beginning. We’re inundated with adaptations at the moment and I think there’s a kind of mystery about it, you know, we often read nowadays of how directors or publishers got the manuscript before the book was published and you kind of wonder how. How on earth did they get the manuscript before? And what happens after that? So I’d like to ask you, Olivia, because I think you did get your hands on the manuscript!
Olivia Hetreed (screenwriter)
I often tease her [Tracy] about me using a proof copy... She’s really upset because this is the book I used [holds up dog-eared proof copy of Girl With A Pearl Earring]. Lots of mistakes!
Tracy Chevalier (novelist)
Yeah, lots of spelling mistakes!
Demetrios Matheou
All of which we can see on screen..! But if you could talk us through how you got it and, if you like, what you and the producers you were with had to do to get the rights. And at the same time Tracy, I’d like to know if an author has any control over these things or whether it’s entirely in the hands of the publisher, and what kind of fears you may have had about who may have got their hand on it.
Tracy Chevalier
It might make sense actually if I talk first ‘cause it came out first, and then Olivia can take it on, ‘cause I don’t really know what went on at Archer Street [the film’s production company] and she can tell us all. But, the publisher has nothing to do with the selling of the film rights, it's all to do with the film agent that you have. My film agent, Nick Marston at Curtis Brown - my book agent - when it came out in proof form, he gave it to Nick who read it, and started thinking about who he felt might be interested. And I know that he plays Wednesday night football with Andy [Paterson – producer] every week, five a side, I believe. They knew each other anyway, and there were other production companies interested, and Nick and I had a discussion about what kind of film I would like to see of this, and whether we wanted to go the Hollywood route or not. At that point, to be honest, the book had not come out, it was a couple of months before it had been published. It had been bought by a US publisher but would be coming out a couple of months after that, so we had no idea what we had, had no idea the book would become a success. I had frankly thought I would sell a few… you know, a thousand people would read it and that would be it, it would die a death. Then I would go on to the next one…
Demetrios Matheou
How many people have read it?
Tracy Chevalier
There have been two million copies sold so far. And so, I think it would have been a very different story if we had waited six months to a year and then sold the film rights, or thought about selling the film rights. But, to be honest, I’m grateful that I didn’t do that because I would like to think that I would have had the integrity to wait, to sell it to a small British production company, to make a European film. But when Hollywood comes knocking, when all that money, then I expect we all have a price, and I expect they would have found mine. But they didn’t; that wasn’t the case at that point, and so he gave it to a few producers he knew, and a few had got in touch and said they were interested, and I had a few readings with various producers. And one morning I walked into Archer Street and met with Andy Paterson and Anand Tucker, the producers there. And at the end of that meeting I went home and had a think about it and then I called Nick and said, “Yes, I want to go with them.”
Demetrios Matheou
You were talking about the kind of film you wanted it to be and the production companies you wanted to do it, but what about the scriptwriter? Were you keen to meet the person who was being proposed for that?
Tracy Chevalier
Yes, when we were negotiating, Archer Street put it on the table and rather hesitantly asked how much, if any, I wanted to be involved - Nick Marston might have brought this up - did I want any involvement in writing the screenplay, having a bash at the first draft or whatever? And I sort of blithely said, “Oh, that would be interesting.” And my book agent took me out of the room and said, “What are you saying? Tracy, do you want to become a screenwriter”? And I went, “I dunno, but it pays well”.
He said, “Actually it doesn’t pay that well. It can to some, but it’s a very different thing”. And he said, “If you want to train to be a screenwriter this is one way of going about it. Is that the change you want to make? Do you want to be a novelist, or do you want to be a screenwriter”? I said a novelist”. And he said, “Then don’t do it because you will write a draft and they’ll tear it apart, they’ll replace you, they’ll do all this stuff”. And he said, “It’s a really rough ride and you should only do it if this is a life change you want to make. Otherwise stick to novels, that’s what you’re good at”. It’s the best advice he ever gave me. And I walked back in there and said, “No, I don’t want anything to do with writing the screenplay”. And it was a choice that to this day, I am so glad I never had anything to do with it because I think it allowed me to have a much clearer and cleaner relationship with Olivia, with Andy, and I think if I had tried to muck in and help out I would have been banging my head against a wall. I have a film of that book in my head - we all do if you’ve read it I think, I do that with books that I read anyway - but I think that this book in particular is very visual, so it’s very easy to image that as a film. And I would just keep getting them to do the film that’s in my head. And there’s no way they’re going to do that, it’s different, I don’t know how to structure a screenplay, I don’t know which scenes in this book work better or should be taken out or re-arranged, how they should condense it. It needed compression and I had no idea how to do it, and the best thing I could do was leave it to the professionals, and just take a back seat and not have any involvement in casting, locations, any of that, that had to be left to them.
Demetrios Matheou
What was it in Olivia’s response to the novel that made you confident, or comfortable that she could do it?
Tracy Chevalier
Well, Olivia had already signed on to do it, they had already agreed that she would when I met her, so it wasn’t like I had any say in it or I could say, “Oh, I don’t feel comfortable with this.” The first time we met, you [Olivia] hadn’t started writing it yet, but you had a couple of questions, and we just met for a drink. And I thought, “Wow, she plays her cards very close to her chest.” And I liked that. She’s not like me, verbal diarrhoea, American thing… And she’s just so kind of there, so concentrated, and I thought, “Go with it.” And then I didn’t hear anything for, I don’t know, a year, or months, for months and months, and then part way through it Olivia rang me up to ask some questions. So we met up and she asked some questions about certain scenes. It was very curious because I thought it was going to be really big issues like character issues, and it wasn’t, it was really things like, did they celebrate birthdays in those days, and it was such small things, and a lot of historical accuracy stuff. But it wasn’t actually anything about the structure of the story or why I did this, that, or the other, or any advice about that sort of thing at all. I don’t know if that was because the structure of the book was already sound enough it didn’t need that or if it was Olivia already knew what she was doing and she didn’t need another person wading in to say what they thought.
Demetrios Matheou
Olivia, I think the relationship between adapters and the people who’ve written the book really changes from project to project: sometimes the screenwriter really doesn’t want anything to do with the other person and does their own thing. The impression I’ve been given is that, continuing from that, you did feel quite able to go to Tracy, and there was a relationship that developed between the two of you during the project.
Olivia Hetreed
Yeah. We had an intense email relationship. Tracy was the first live author I had ever worked with, so I was very excited at having someone…
Demetrios Matheou
And of course recently you did the Chaucer adaptation on television.
Olivia Hetreed
I did The Canterbury Tales. The first time we met I actually found myself taking Tracy’s elbow and helping her across the road, just to make sure she was still alive at the other side of the crossing. I think she’s probably ruined me now, because I now think that the way novelists should behave is like Tracy, that they come along and meet you, they answer your irritating questions about maternity caps, and which painting do you mean in the background of that scene, and they leave you alone completely. And then I showed her all the key drafts as a matter of courtesy, and she responded extraordinarily positively and encouragingly all the time, and very occasionally made a very polite suggestion or actually asked a question about why I had done something. And I would go, “I don’t know why I did that, it’s terrible.” Or sometimes I robustly defended it and said, “I think that worked wonderfully in the book but I think for our purposes we have to change things in the film for these reasons.” I think one of the key issues for us was the end of the story, which in the book is a fifteen-year time jump. And to me, from the beginning I didn’t want to do that, I felt with these two characters, particularly with Griet, who is at this extraordinarily intense moment in her life, to finish with the woman would be an anti-climax. That you needed to come to the end of the story within that time frame. And I think that was something quite difficult for you [Tracy] in a way.
Tracy Chevalier
Well, I was surprised, but when you explained it I began to understand. I never really thought before about what screen audiences expect versus what readers expect. And it is a very different thing. The things you can do with a book are very different with a screenplay, just a very simple things is, in reading something you can always flip back, you know, and you can’t stop a film, well you can with a video but that’s not how it’s made. You’re meant to sit through it in one two hour session, and it’s all meant to take you along. It necessarily has to be compressed, and that’s what I think has happened to this book - there’s been this extraordinary kind of compression, almost like it’s been looked at through a camera obscura, and all the lights, the colours are focused and brighter. And the relationships between people are much stronger, more overt, and I think the ending was just part and parcel of that, that you had to leave the cinema feeling like you had been taken on a journey. That’s the kind of journey that’s very enclosed, and to have the very dramatic things happen, and then suddenly you leap forward ten years, the way Olivia put it is that you cannot carry the audience ahead like that. They just can’t do it, it needs to be compressed.
Audience question
How long did it take you to actually write the screenplay?
Olivia Hetreed
I think the first draft took six weeks, but that was three years ago. And most of the time, I suppose I’ve written four drafts in between, but most of that time was either financing it or going into production, or there was something going on rather than writing it.
Demetrios Matheou
And again, did you say that you met after each draft, or you spoke after each draft?
Tracy Chevalier
I got sent each draft. And it was weird because one time Olivia sent me one and I didn’t read it because I couldn’t. The time I read the first draft I just, I didn’t pounce on it and read it. I think I read the first ten pages, I just kind of felt dizzy and sick. No, I likened it to having Olivia inside my head and looking out, and it’s a very weird feeling. And so I put it aside and it took me a while to read it, and then I did read the whole thing and I thought, “My God”. Amazing! Amazing, what she did. And then, another draft I got, and I just couldn’t read it. It’s just going through that experience each time is so… there is something very weird about it, and disorientating. I think partly, I haven’t read this book. I read passages out to people, but I didn’t write it for myself to read, I wrote it for other people to read. I don’t like to re-read my stuff, and it’s almost like being forced to relive all this again. Strangely enough though, I could watch the film a million times now, because it’s a different experience from reading, it’s not reading. Also, screenplays are not really made to be read. They’re awkward; they’re weird. You have to do a strange imagining of a film in your head, except you don’t have much choice, you get told what to imagine, whereas a book is much more open. And I think it’s what Olivia was talking about before about a screenplay, having to fulfil several needs. To tell a story, to attract actors who want to do it, to attract financing and production. And really there ought to be different screenplays, I don’t know if they ever did that, have different working screenplays, but they don’t, they mushroom them all together. Which I think is another reason why I’m so glad I didn’t ever work on it, because I don’t think I could work with those strands together.
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