The Ideas Factory, How The Brit-Lit Bunch Got Into The Movies

You might not know much about the films, but you probably recognize the titles - and storylines - of a slate of forthcoming releases: Charlotte Gray, About a Boy, and Killing Me Softly. Why the sudden rash of British bestsellers hitting our screens? Xan Brooks examines hoe the Brit-lit bunch got into the movies

In Charlotte Gray, Cate Blanchett parachutes behind enemy lines in occupied France. Hunting a missing English airman, she instead becomes a linchpin of the resistance, hooks up with a smoldering young communist and shields a pair of Jewish nippers from the Nazis. The film is a ripe wartime melodrama, full of looming close-ups, sweeping strings and frantic bicycling through the woods. If you're one of the 700,000-odd British readers who have already bought Sebastian Faulks's source novel, Charlotte Gray will already be familiar territory. But the film-makers are banking on the chance that you'll want to revisit that territory - now with added pictures, music and stars. If not to see how they've augmented it, then at least to see how they've screwed it up.

Faulks's tale is the latest in a growing number of contemporary British bestsellers to receive the big screen treatment. Last year saw the release of Bridget Jones's Diary, Enigma and Captain Corelli's Mandolin. This year the list is longer still, with Last Orders already out and adaptations of Nick Hornby's About a Boy, AS Byatt's Possession and Nicci French's Killing Me Softly all set and ready to go. These films may be thematically diverse, but they occupy a similar niche and cater to a similar demographic. They're plush adult entertainments; popular yarns that trail literary prestige. Taken as a whole, this wave of Brit-lit cinema spotlights a complex waltz between the author, the book publisher and the film producer. But why is this happening now? And who is calling the tune?

The history of the film adaptation is as old and as chequered as cinema itself. DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation took its lead from a spectacularly dubious source novel (The Clansman, by Thomas F Dixon Jr), while literature has long been regarded as the obvious means for a mass-market medium to gain a measure of artistic respectability. If anything, British cinema has been more culpable than most. "It's built into our psyche," argues Stephen Frears, the director of the last Nick Hornby adaptation, High Fidelity. "Literature is traditionally so tied in to British culture that it's always going to dominate. Film simply lags behind. I think you'll find it's nothing new."

What's new is the sheer rate of production, plus the particular breed of book that's being converted. After all, production companies have always snapped up film rights. Usually the matter would end right there. Of the thousands of options secured each year, as little as 1% would finally make it through to the final cut. Now that strike rate is improving.

Over at Working Title, co-chairman Eric Fellner puts this down to simple quality of writing. "There are more good contemporary authors around at the moment," he says. "They're writing great characters, and well-structured stories - fiction that translates easily into film." Last year Fellner scored a hit with Bridget Jones's Diary, and a miss with Corelli. He is now putting the finishing touches to About a Boy and preparing to embark on the Bridget Jones sequel, The Edge of Reason. Undeniably, this is a book-heavy slate, and yet Fellner is wary of labeling it as a trend. "It's just a bizarre coincidence," he says. "A strange amalgam of circumstances."

He admits, though, that there are obvious appeals to the screen adaptation. "Ultimately it's far easier working from an established brand than starting from scratch. A best-selling novel is a proven product with a built-in audience." Douglas Rae, the producer of Charlotte Gray, would go along with that. But he warns that the approach has inherent dangers too. "The pros are that you've got a great story that's attracted a wide fan-base. If a novel has sold 500,000 copies and you figure that maybe two people have read each book then you're looking at a very big cinema audience. The cons are that if you make a film that strays radically from the book you're going to really anger that audience and word soon gets around. The most obvious recent example of that is Captain Corelli's Mandolin."

Released to a fanfare last spring, Corelli has since become an object lesson in how the blueprint can go awry. In smoothing out the political controversies in Louis de Bernières's novel, the picture wound up feeling insipid. In attempting to crash the American market, it retailored itself as a big-budget star vehicle for Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz and left itself compromised. The result was a film that fell between two stools, annoying British fans while failing to connect with a new audience in the States.

It's a problem every Brit-lit production must contend with. Whisper it, but the vast bulk of them aren't pure-blood British at all, usually arriving awash with American stars, staff and money. Charlotte Gray boasts a particularly mongrel pedigree. Its director, Gillian Armstrong, is Australian. Another Australian, Blanchett, headlines as a Scot, while her co-star (Billy Crudup) is an American play-acting a Frenchman. "Yes, these films have an international make-up, but you can't avoid it," says Rae. "The cost of making a Corelli or a Charlotte Gray is something that can only be sustained by attracting Americans. But we consider Charlotte Gray a British film. It's a British company, with British producers and technicians that are been financed mainly by Film Four. Plus, of course, Sebastian is British himself." In the end it all comes back to the author. These stories were conceived in the head of British writers and delivered by British publishers. By the time the film world picked them up, they were already fully grown.

Yet perhaps even this is changing. Compare Captain Corelli's production history with that of Charlotte Gray. By the time producer Kevin Loader obtained the rights to Corelli, the book was already a long-standing member of the bestseller set. Loader read it as a fan first and a film-maker second. By the time of Charlotte Gray the process had accelerated. Rae received Faulks's novel in proof stage, months before publication, and made his offer there and then. Increasingly, this is the way the business is moving. "It's all got much more professional," says film agent Kate Leys. "Which also means it's getting very fast. We are now in this strange situation where the film people will tell us what they want before the fact. They'll say: 'We're looking for a really strong, plot-driven, critically acclaimed book that's also a best-seller. But we want to see it before it's actually published.' " Often, she says, producers will even request a manuscript that's still being written.

Leys works as the film and television executive at Gillon Aitken, a literary agency that represents both Faulks and Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding. She likens her role to a marriage broker, working to bring the industries closer together. "Film and publishing need each other in different ways," she explains. "For a start, film needs the grown-up stories that books can provide. Most of these producers have in-trays filled with nightmare scripts by 22-year-old kids who've watched Reservoir Dogs too many times. If you read too many of those, your head falls off. So they're desperately hunting for something with a bit more meat and maturity to it. As for the book world, they need the publicity, the exposure and the money that a big movie brings. Both worlds are similar, in that they both deal in fictional storytelling. But it can be fantastically difficult getting them to work together. It's like watching two stegosauruses trying to have sex. They need each other desperately, but they aren't quite sure how to make it work." She laughs. "But they do seem to be getting along better now."

The reason, Leys thinks, is due to a combination of increased film production and a more visible, user-friendly publishing climate. Her views are supported by Nicholas Clee, editor of the Bookseller magazine. "Big, best-selling books have a higher profile than they've ever had," he says. "There are several reasons for this. One, Britain is pretty well book shopped at the moment. You can find one on every high street, in prominent locations. And two, the publishers are showing an increased marketing muscle, throwing their weight behind certain titles. So books are staying in the bestseller lists for a long time, and there's an increased awareness of what's out there, or even what's about to be out there. All of that inevitably feeds through to the film industry. That's why you're seeing so many more UK bestsellers being turned into films."

So what about the books themselves? On the face of it, the leaders of the pack could hardly be more diverse. True, Charlotte Gray, Enigma and Captain Corelli all share the same Second World War backdrop, not to mention a certain high-flown blend of romance and adventure. But Bridget Jones is about a lovelorn singleton on the fringes of media London, the Booker-winning Last Orders follows a bunch of rum old coves on the road to Margate, and About a Boy is a quiet redemption song about a damaged slacker rattling around north London.

But there are parallels here too. All of these titles are linked by their combination of warm reviews and hefty sales, by a general ease of readability and by their status as the holiday book of choice for a certain mature, middle-class demographic. If you wanted to be snooty about it, you might even describe them as middlebrow. "I suppose that's a fair comment," says Clee. "I wouldn't call Last Orders a middlebrow book, but possibly Louis de Bernières and Sebastian Faulks are middlebrow authors. That's not to say they're not good writers. It's just that they appeal to a broad audience of readers who want heart-tugging sagas as much as they do good prose style."

Others balk at the suggestion. "Only a snob would say something like that," says writer Jeremy Brock, who adapted Charlotte Gray for the screen. "I think its bollocks. The bottom line is whether it's good or bad drama. The level of subtlety in Sebastian's book is the equal of anything I've ever read. It's the fact that he combines those subtleties with a strong plot that outrages these snobs. Also, if you look at someone like Ian McEwan - who is a writer generally regarded as being 'highbrow' - you'll see that he can do plot as well." Brock is well acquainted with the work of both men. After completing work on the Faulks adaptation, he sat down to tackle the screen version of McEwan's Enduring Love. But Brock tells me that he's since been pushed from the project. "I fell foul of Hollywood and got sacked. It was totally my own fault. I wrote a bad script." But hang on. Does this mean that he found Enduring Love a harder book to adapt than Charlotte Gray? A less naturally cinematic novel, perhaps? "Yes, it is," he admits. "But that has to do with the dramatic issues that McEwan's book raises. Enduring Love is full of ideas about sexuality and politics and science. The writing leads you into areas that film doesn't deal with so effectively. The trouble is that McEwan's prose is so seductive that you can't bear to let it go and so you try to replicate it with dialogue, which is a very tricky thing to pull off."

Charlotte Gray was different. "Sebastian's book has a strong narrative line," says Brock. "Film can be a very demanding medium. It needs that narrative traction. It requires movement and drive." Producer Douglas Rae agrees. "We look for a story first and foremost. It also helps if there's a big relationship drama within the book. British writers are great at handling that. They're brilliant at conveying big human emotions."

Could it be that a formula is emerging here? Think of it as a checklist. Ideas, introspection and laterality: no. Big emotions and narrative traction: good. Clearly there is a demand for contemporary British novelists who trade in strong storylines and romances that either play on the heartstrings (Corelli, Charlotte Gray) or dab at the funny-bone (Bridget Jones's Diary, High Fidelity). But is there anything else that links them? Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones began life as a column in the Independent. Hornby was a freelance music writer. Before penning his wartime sagas, Faulks was deputy editor at the Independent on Sunday (and an erstwhile Guardian columnist). Is it a coincidence, in other words, that all these authors cut their teeth as journalists?

If so, it brings the whole thing frighteningly close to home. Throw a baked potato in the Guardian canteen these days and you'll either hit a hack with a book on the go, or one who's already published the book and sold the option, or (the motherlode) the one who's joined the bestseller set and is poised to cross over from being the reporter to the reported. Take Observer journalist Nicci Gerrard, who wrote the psychological thriller Killing Me Softly in tandem with her journalist partner, Sean French. The book is currently being filmed by Farewell My Concubine director Chen Kaige, with Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes in the leading roles. Inevitably, Nicci serves as an inspiration to us all.

Sebastian Faulks doesn't see any parallels between himself and his fellow journalists turned filmed-authors. He dismisses the notion as "a bit of a Groucho club flyer", adding that: "I can't think my novels have anything in common with those by the other authors you mention." Happily, others are more receptive. "Yes, the connection makes sense," says Rae. "Journalists are great storytellers with fertile imaginations. Speaking as an ex-journalist myself, we're great at making stuff up." Agent Kate Leys would go along with it too. "Journalists have to render dialogue a lot in their work, which is an area that trips up many other writers. Also they have to be adept at ordering a story into a cogent form, and they're good at writing quickly. Plus they're used to being edited, which means they can cope with the process of development more easily than another writer who might get a bit precious about it."

The prospects are looking positively rosy. Certainly it makes a person think. Specifically, it's making me think about a book that, surely, is screaming out to be first written and then filmed. Here's the pitch. It's about a lonesome London lad (a bit of a screw-up but funny with it) who happens upon a magic mandolin. Upon strumming it, our hero is transported back in time to the Second World War and relocated to a lush tourist-brochure backdrop, either on the continent or some Mediterranean island (haven't decided yet). Once there he meets a beautiful, soulful temptress in a heap of trouble, and starts tangling with some hatchet-faced Nazis. It all ends happily with a romantic reconciliation as the sun dips behind a picturesque mountain. It could be called - I don't know - All About Captain Jones's Gray Mandolin. Now all that remains is to set a deadline, bash it out and smile beatifically through the editing process. And pocket the check, too, of course.

Inevitably, though, there are those who would rain on my parade. "Be careful," cautions Leys. "It doesn't really work to write a book that wants to be made into a film. There might be some formula to it, and some ingredients that work better than others. But there's also a hell of a lot of craft involved. It's like people who try to write a Mills and Boon romance. They usually find out that it's an awful lot harder than they first imagined."

But perhaps Faulks should have the final word. After all, he's been there, done it and emerged relatively unscathed. "I never think about films when writing books," he remarks in an email that arrives just as I'm pondering what my first sentence should be. "Writing a novel to the best of your ability takes all the concentration you have. To try and watch two moving balls at the same time would be insane." Damn. For a moment there it was all looking so absurdly easy.

Brit-lit flicks coming soon

Charlotte Gray

Hollywood stars with a wartime backdrop, swooning romance and intrepid acts of derring-do: Charlotte Gray, adapted from the novel by Sebastian Faulks, has its Brit-lit credentials down pat. But its makers are doubtless praying that the film doesn't go down as this year's Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

About a Boy

The third straight Nick Hornby adaptation stars Hugh Grant in the lead role, but his co-star, Toni Collette, is Australian. Meanwhile the directors - Chris and Paul Weitz - hail from the US, where they established their credentials with the cherry-popping American Pie.

The ones that worked...

Bridget Jones's Diary

Purists were incensed when Texan Renée Zellweger signed on to play lonely heart Jones, created by Helen Fielding. But the actress studied hard, going undercover at a London publisher's and affecting a 20-a-day smoking habit. The result was a hit that racked up decent reviews. US critic Roger Ebert wrote: "Glory be, they didn't muck it up."

High Fidelity

Where the film version of Hornby's Fever Pitch stayed in London and floundered, High Fidelity flew Stateside and prospered. In the end, British director Stephen Frears was one of the only British things about it. But somehow the essence of Hornby's tale was preserved.

...and the ones that didn't

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

In which the beloved best-seller by Louis de Bernières (left) was retooled as a $57m blockbuster with Nic Cage and Penelope Cruz. Many thought the approach so crude it verged on high camp. "It has some of the unhappiest casting... and dodgiest accents in the cinema," wrote Peter Bradshaw.

The Beach

First Leonardo DiCaprio's $20m price tag upped the stakes. Then the shoot was blighted by eco-protesters. Small wonder that the Trainspotting team's take on the backpacker thriller by Alex Garland wound up such a cynical and compromised affair. (Copyright Xan Brooks)

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