CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 06/29/07

Some Enchanted Evening:
Evening's Michael Cunningham

By jenelle riley

Based on Susan Minot's bestselling novel, Michael Cunningham's script for Evening brings together some of the screen's best actresses in a story about love—between men and women and mothers and daughters.

Michael Cunningham's words have been spoken by some of the best actresses in Hollywood—and why not? The writer creates humane, compelling characters in all his works. His 1998 novel, The Hours, received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2003 movie starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman as three generations of women affected by Victoria Wolfe's Mrs. Dalloway. Playwright David Hare ably brought the story to the big screen, earning an Oscar nod in the process. In 2004, Cunningham adapted his 1990 novel A Home at the End of the World into a film starring Colin Farrell and Robin Wright Penn.

Cunningham's latest project is another adaptation, but this time the source material didn't originate with him. The ensemble drama Evening, from director Lajos Koltai, based on the novel by Susan Minot, is another story that spans generations, centered on a dying woman named Ann Grant (Vanessa Redgrave) who reflects on a long-lost romance with small-town doctor Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson). The elder Ann reveals to her grown children (Natasha Richardson and Toni Collette) that Harris was the true love of her life and that their passion contributed to the demise of their good friend, Buddy (Hugh Dancy). The film also stars another powerhouse lineup of women that includes Glenn Close, Streep, and her real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer. Cunningham also receives an executive producer credit on the film, which he jokes "helped justify keeping me around on set." The writer took time to speak with CS Weekly about his new film, being open to change, and learning to recognize his own bad lines.

How did you go about adapting Susan Minot's novel to the screen?
I knew Susan's work and I had read the novel when it came out. I suspect it's probably easier to adapt a kind of pulpy, not-very-good novel. The classic example is The Godfather. Forgive me, ghost of Mario Puzo, but it was a pulpy book that, being sort of insufficient in itself, left room for Francis Coppola to make this great movie. Susan's book is a very different kind of animal: It's a beautiful, fully realized work of art. That said, you can't just film the novel. There's a hundred characters and it needs to be changed. What I did was, of course, re-read the book. I knew the book really well. For someone who has abused their brain cells as much as I have, I have a surprisingly good memory. I knew what I wrote needed to follow the lines of the story and honor it's themes and emotions, but it wasn't going to work as an imitation of the novel. It needed to have some other life. So I put the book away and got to work.

Did you and Susan collaborate on the script?
Yes. Susan did a draft that was beautiful but not quite workable. She and [producer] Jeff Sharp agreed that they should bring somebody else in. When he called me, the first thing I did was call Susan and say, "Look, I don't know what they'll be, but I know I'll have to make some big changes. My first loyalty is always to the novelist. If you have a problem with that, let me know now and I won't do it." And to her huge credit, she said, "Well, no, that's why we called you. To fuck around with it." I showed her things as we went along; we had various discussions about things. It was a real collaboration and I loved working with Susan.

What were some of the changes you disagreed on?
Like any two strong-willed people, we went back and forth about some things. She was unsure initially about me giving this huge promotion to the character of Buddy, who in the novel is a very minor character. I just had a feeling about Buddy. I knew there was something dramatically interesting going on between Buddy and Ann and Harris. She was unsure but said to give it a try. Also, in the novel, Ann has four grown children attending her in her final hours. It wasn't that they weren't four great characters; it was just too many people to get in and out of that room. I wrote Constance, the Natasha Richardson character, as a sort of frumpy, defeated, bag-matches-her-shoes kind of figure. And Susan said, "I don't feel for Constance that way. I don't think Ann would produce a daughter like that. I would be happier if she were more worldly." So I tried it that way, and Susan was right. She helped steer me out of a stereotype that I wasn't even aware of.

Your novel The Hours was adapted into a screenplay by David Hare. What was it like to be on the other side of things?
They were fairly similar experiences. When David Hare adapted The Hours, I found that he felt much more loyalty to the novel than I did. I would see a draft and I say, "What's this scene doing in there?" He would say, "I know, I know, but it's such a beautiful scene in the novel. I didn't want to leave it out." I'd say, "Leave it out, leave it out. I wrote that on a Tuesday, with a hangover!" Susan performed a similar role. Early on, I would get all nervous about cutting a character or cutting a scene and she'd say, "Go ahead. Do what you have to do."

As a novelist, how did you approach craft of screenwriting?
I loved it. In part because it was so great to feel like a beginner at something. As a beginning screenwriter, I was like, "I don't know. Let's try it this way, let's try it that way." It brought the pure joy of writing back into the process for me. I love the way a screenplay is some combination of creativity and puzzle solving. How are you going to tell this story in 112 pages? How are you going to make every scene work on multiple levels? How are you going to externalize all of the emotions? As somebody who has complete control over their fiction, I love being part of a team, I love being part of a group of people who are going to make this other than and more than what I wrote down.

Had you tried to write a screenplay before adapting A Home at the End of the World? And how did you go about it; were there any books or sources that helped you?
No, it was my first one. I didn't read a book, I decided against it. I got the basic concept: about 112 pages, first, second, and third act. I figured, "Let's see if my not knowing how to write a screenplay can work as a strength." So I remain sort of unschooled in the art of screenwriting and I'm learning it as I go along. One of the things I still learn that is very revealing on the set of a movie was bringing the dialogue way down so that an actor can actually say these lines without sounding melodramatic and ridiculous. A line of dialogue in a novel needs to have a kind of heightened quality so that it feels alive that, given to an actor, will just sound ridiculous. As we'd get into a scene, I'd say, "Oh, that one's terrible, let's bring that one down." Even in the editing process, as I saw various cuts with Lajos, there would be a line here and there that felt like too much. Or it would involve the actor saying something we already knew. I'd say, "Oh, lose that line." And Lajos, God bless him, would say, "But it's a beautiful line!" And I'd say, "No, it's a melodramatic, stinky line." I may be one of the only screenwriters who's actually fought with the director to cut some of his lines.

How disciplined is your writing process?
I'm pretty disciplined, always have been. It's in my DNA. If anything, I might be too disciplined. I get up every morning and go right to work and work for four or five hours. Some days I'll produce 20 pages and some days I'll produce one lame sentence that I'll discard the next day, but I'm quite regular, Monday through Saturday. Sundays, I take off. There's a huge element of inspiration and intuition, but there's also something about plowing in and doing it over and over again. I've never been the kind of writer who plans much in advance. I try it this way, I try it that way. I go through innumerable drafts. I write and rewrite and rewrite. There is no substitute for taking the time I need.

Do you spend a lot of time on that first draft?
I do. I know writers who just kind of throw it down the first time and almost go back and rewrite it in writing. I can't do that. If it feels sort of thin and indifferently written the first time, it doesn't take on enough life. So I write as well as I can as I go along with the understanding that I will go back and do it all over again. I'll make major changes after the first draft. Certainly with a novel. In an adaptation it's a little different because the story is already there. But a finished novel bears almost no resemblance to the novel I sat down to write.

Do you write longhand or on a computer?
I write on a computer; it's a Mac. I love my computer. The idea of words on a computer screen as some kind of middle ground between your consciousness and the page is fantastic to me. These little liquid letters made of light that are almost like a dream you're having before your own eyes. I so prefer it. When I started out I used a typewriter. It was okay, but there's something different about hammering those letters into a piece of paper. They feel too permanent too soon.

Jenelle Riley lives in Los Angeles and is abnormally obsessed with The Simpsons and playing Scrabble.

Evening courtesy Focus Features

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