William Nicholson's Blog, page 7

‘Mandela’ opens

The film I’ve been working on for so long – on and off for 16 years – is in UK cinemas today. A strange feeling: in a very short time something that has been part of my future will slip into the past. I’m so proud of this film, and grateful for having had the chance to be part of its making, and the team who’ve made it have been in my life for so long, I don’t want to let it go. It’s very rare to have such intense and happy collaboration. Here’s to my friends on the production – Anant Singh and David Thompson, producers; Justin Chadwick, director; Rick Russell, editor – my film family. I’ll miss you.

New Year’s Eve

I’ve just learned my father has been taken into hospital in Bangor with a stroke, which at the age of 93 has to give cause for real concern. This follows my mother’s death four months ago. My parents separated nearly forty years ago, but my mother asked my father not to divorce her, and he did not, despite going on to live with a new partner. A month after my mother’s death he married his partner, both of them aged 93. His second wife, my step-mother as she now is, phoned to tell me of my father’s stroke, and I asked her how she was coping herself. ‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she said. ‘We’ve talked it over, and we’ve accepted it. We both feel we’ve been very lucky.’ Both had lived through unhappy first marriages, and have been grateful for the tranquillity of their long life together. I have immense respect for their undemanding approach to what may soon be the end of that companionship. My mother died angry and disappointed. My father faces the end feeling lucky.

I plan to drive up to Bangor on Saturday, unless his condition takes a critical turn for the worse.

Over the holiday period I’ve used my early mornings, before the family gets up, to do revision work on a new novel. ‘Reckless’ is complete, and will be published in a month or so. The one I’m working on, the seventh is my sequence, is currently called ‘Triangle Street’. It tells the story of two interwoven love affairs, one contemporary, following a character from the earlier books, and one in the family of Emily Dickinson in the 1880s. Emily Dickinson is buried in a cemetery on Triangle Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. My publishers have asked me to consider some other title, something that conveys more emotion, so I’m puzzling over that. Apart from the title the novel is now done, which means I can start the new year planning the next book. For those who read this who think of me as a screenwriter, you should know that it’s the book-writing that is my first love. It allows me my own voice, and  keeps me sane.

Guardian film article

My article on the writing of the Mandela film is in the Guardian today – you can find it here.

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

At the Royal Premiere last night with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Towards the end of the screening in the Odeon Leicester Square there seemed to be a lot of scuffling, people coming and going in the royal circle. Then the film ended, the audience applauded – standing ovation – and Anant Singh, the producer, came on stage with Idris Elba, to say that Mandela had died. The strangest sensation. Silence filled the cinema. One of the South African actors sitting near me started weeping. Mandela’s two daughters had been with us earlier – now they were gone. So my long close relationship with this man I never met, but who I feel I know so well, is over. He’s been so ill for so long that I’m happy he’s set free at last. I’m also amazed that our version of his life story, which has been so hard to wrestle into shape, and has taken so long to bring to the screen, has arrived just as his life ends. This isn’t the kind of thing anyone can plan. His life and his legacy are a million times more important than any film, but at least those who know nothing about him will get a glimpse, through our work, of why he is – was – such a great man. He brought peace to his country, at great personal cost. Now he deserves his own peace.

The Bad Sex party

A fine party at the Naval & Military Club in St James Square, grand location, packed crowd, and generous amounts of champagne and wine. Both Nancy Sladek, editor of the Literary Review, and Alexander Waugh, hosting the evening, were friendly and welcoming, and thanked me for coming. I assured both that for the duration of the evening I was here to celebrate, not to make waves. For a while as circulated I was being told by well-wishers that I’d be bound to win the much-dreaded prize, because I’d made a nuisance of myself complaining in public about it, or because I’d promised (on the Today programme) to give a speech if I won, or simply because I’d turned up, and a cringing author is needed for the emotional climax of the evening. So I tried to prepare a speech in my head as the drink and the merriment flowed. Then came the opening speech, by Alexander Waugh, which explained how  those who’ve complained have got the wrong idea entirely, that the awards are benign and designed only to raise literary standards, that the award-givers all love sex in books and in life, and so on. Then came the time for the reading out of the nominated extracts, in a manner designed to entertain. Much laughter at the comical attempts of the writers to describe sex. I braced for the moment when my own offering would be delivered, puzzling a little over how it would generate laughs (it’s all dialogue, and contains no adjectives or metaphors, the main source of merriment). But it never came. It seemed my extract had been left out; as had two others. I knew then I had not won, and would not be making a speech. The fixed smile, ready for the being-a-good-sport moment when my writing was mocked, could unfreeze from my face. But why had I been dropped? The winner was announced – Manil Suri, an American, not present – and the party resumed. I asked Nancy Sladek why I’d been dropped, and she replied, generously, ‘Because your extract wasn’t bad enough.’ I think they had a time issue, and didn’t want the evening to run on too long.

Interestingly, in the light of my call for a Good Sex award in literature, an article in the Independent by Jonathan Beckman of the Literary Review, clearly in answer to my criticisms, ended by citing an example of good sex writing – an extract from James Salter’s ‘A Sport and a Pastime’: a positive critical approach I welcome. So maybe my decision not to hide from the shame of being nominated has been of some small value.

Bad Sex and Today

Up early to Broadcasting House to talk about the Bad Sex award with Rowan Pelling on the Today programme. We were preceded by Tristram Hunt being grilled by Sarah Montague on education policy. I was awestruck by the command of detail on both sides, and by Hunt’s ability to stay focussed under pressure. We all take for granted the ability of politicians to handle grillings like this, we say it’s their job, they’ve chosen it, and so on, but I know I could never do it. You need a very fast brain and a deep command of every aspect of your brief. So too Sarah Montague, who’s presumably obliged to master brief after brief at short notice. I think it struck me all the more forcibly because I was sitting right next to them both.

My time came, and I said what I could, but the fact is I remember almost nothing. Rowan Pelling was excellent, and made the point that we hide our fear of talking about sex behind a front of irony. Afterwards she warned me that I would probably win the award tonight as a reward (or punishment) for sticking my head above the parapet. Or just for the continuing publicity. So I shall now prepare a speech, just in case.

Busy week

My appearance on the Today programme on Saturday morning was cancelled when news broke of the tragic helicopter crash in Glasgow. My petty concerns look very small in the light of such events. However, the booking has been remade, and subject to another disaster I’m due to be on the Today Programme tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. Then in the evening I go to the actual Bad Sex Awards to find out if I’m this year’s winner. I think not, because my own nominated extract isn’t quite funny enough, and I think the ‘merriment’ promised on the party invitation (‘champagne and merriment’) revolves around the reading out of the extracts in a funny voice. Anyway, I’ll be there, supported by all three of my children, Teddy, Julia and Maria. I’m sure we’ll have fun, one way or another. My children are all grown up, by the way, Teddy’s 24, Julia’s 22 and Maria’s 20, and it’s their idea that they come to the party. To her fury Virginia’s away on a long-booked trip to Marseille, and misses both this and the premiere.

That follows on Thursday – the Royal Premiere of ‘Mandela’ – when I have to line up with the other film makers to shake the hands of Will and Kate. It’s all very brief, but it’ll be a powerful symbolic moment for the team who’ve made the film, a sense of: Here we are at last. It’s been a long journey.

Friday and Sunday bring more screenings and more appearances on platforms to answer questions. To be fair what’s asked of me is nothing compared to the ceaseless demands on Idris Elba, Naomie Harris and director Justin Chadwick. This is because very few journalists, let along members of the public, realise that films have to be written. I’m not sure where they think they come from. Perhaps they think the actors make them up as they go along.

‘Mandela’ US opening

NY Times review of ‘Mandela’: “Mr Chadwick, and the screenwriter William Nicholson, who adapted the script from Mr Mandela’s autobiography, have created a movie with the flow and grandeur of a traditional Hollywood biopic… Mr Elba’s towering performance lends ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ a Shakespearian breadth… The carefully chosen words in his eloquent declarations of principle, spoken with gravity and deliberation, are deeply stirring.” A fine review that acknowledges director Justin Chadwick’s terrific work. Now we wait to see how the film plays in the US. It’s opening on a platform release, and will go wide on Christmas Day.

Just in (to me) the LA Times review: “Katniss Everdeen, it turns out, is not the only person catching fire this fall. She’s matched flame for flame by Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie, who burn with formidable fury in the sturdy biopic “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.” It is the incendiary work of British actors Idris Elba and Naomie Harris as the couple in question that elevates our involvement in this authorized film version of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. That, and the astonishing course of Mandela’s life. For though it’s a story we’ve heard so often that we perhaps take it for granted, seeing all the events of this remarkable journey laid out for us in a two-hour and 21-minute feature underlines its not-to-be-believed qualities…As detailed in William Nicholson’s solid screenplay…One of the most poignant lines in Nicholson’s script has Mandela saying, referring to the actions of the country’s apartheid government against him, “What they did to her was their only victory.”…This may be a familiar story, but it is one worth experiencing again and again.”

I’m amused by the comparison with The Hunger Game second movie. I was asked if I wanted to do the screenplay for that project, but passed on it, because I found the story too much a repetition of the first instalment. I’ve not seen the new movie, but it seems the makers solved that problem.

Last night I answered questions at the end of a screening...

Last night I answered questions at the end of a screening of Mandela at the Frontline Club, a club mainly for foreign journalists, and we had a highly intelligent, at times combative exchange about the film. One question put to me was that the film may become, for the next generation, all they ever know of Mandela, and how did I feel about that responsibility. Pretty burdened, is the answer. I realise how much I want people to take from the film what to me is its core message, that at the root of oppression lies fear – the fear by the oppressors of the oppressed – which seems the wrong way round until you think about it – and that Mandela’s achievement was to remove that fear. It’s all there in the film, but will the audiences get that? Will and Kate are the royals coming to the premiere on Thursday week. Will they get it? I’ll never know – I don’t think they hang around to chat after it’s over.

Meanwhile in my other life – or one of my other lives – the Today programme wants me to talk about the Bad Sex award, and my Guardian article on it, this Saturday morning. Unless something of greater global significance breaks, of course.

Screenplays

Just sent off the final tweaks to the screenplay for BREATHE before it goes out to actors. It’s the true story of a man who lives for thirty years with a machine doing his breathing for him. Andy Serkis is to direct – very different territory for him from hobbits, which is what makes it exciting for all of us. A small film, but it should be extremely powerful. If we get the right cast.

Saw ROOTS at the Donmar the other night. Really impressive play, with all the strengths of the best Chekhov. Almost thirty years ago, when SHADOWLANDS first appeared on television, Arnold Wesker sent me a card of congratulations that got snarled up in the BBC’s correspondence section, where someone was too ignorant to recognise his name. It got to me eventually, and I’ve always treasured it. He’s a superb writer. Jessica Rayne is astonishing in the lead part.

Now on with work on my screenplay for TUTANKHAMUN.