Notes On A Scandal - Patrick Marber interview
Interview by Rob Carnevale
PATRICK Marber talks about the challenges of adapting Notes On A Scandal for the big screen and the pleasure of writing for actresses such as Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.
Q. You’ve referred to adapting this screenplay as being like an act of ‘benevolent piracy’? Can you elaborate?
Patrick Marber: It was very hard to adapt. I read the book many times and underlined all the things I wanted to use and all the scenes I wanted to keep and I ended up using much less than I thought I was going to use.
You find after a few drafts that the thing takes on a life of its own, and you start to stray from the book. You end up inventing a lot more than you thought you would.
Q. How easy was it to maintain the tone of the book?
Patrick Marber: I think I stayed true to the darkly comic tone of the novel, at least I hope I did. The thing that seduced me about the book was the truth of it and the comedy of it and the nastiness of it. I think that’s all very much in the film.
But it’s interesting because the first thing that Zoe Heller said to me, when we first met to talk about me adapting her novel, was: “I’m terribly sorry about Sheba [Cate Blanchett’s character].” I asked what she meant. And she replied: “Well, I feel that I spent so much time working on Barbara [Dame Judi Dench] that I didn’t give Sheba enough time and character. So please will you, in the screenplay, do some work on Sheba?”
I didn’t feel that. I felt Sheba was very alive in the novel. But I sort of know what she means because the novel is from Barbara’s point of view. I think I made Sheba more Bohemian, and a slightly lonelier figure than she is in the novel. I think in the novel she’s scatty, posh and sort of a bit of a flibbertigibbet. Whereas I don’t think she’s scatty and a flibbertigibbet in the film.
Q. How did yourself and Richard Eyre [director] go about creating a safe environment for the fight scene between Cate and Dame Judi?
Patrick Marber: I was very conscious throughout the shoot that Cate and Judi were dreading the day they had to do this scene. It’s a monstrously difficult scene and it’s a scene where we the audience are also watching two mad women – two characters who have been driven almost mad by the events of the story; not two nutty actresses, shouting at each other [laughs].
So therefore we watched the scene sort of appalled by where they’ve got to with each other, but that’s the whole point, that’s where the story has gone. It’s gone to this quite mad place, it’s the purging scene. And after that, when Barbara is clearing up all the rubbish that Sheba has created, it’s a very, very quiet scene. And their goodbye scene is sort of a stalemate, they’ve come to the end of something.
So it was necessary and we always knew this, Richard and I. That we had to have this big scene that we’d all been waiting for.
Q. Was this screenplay always written with Cate and Judi in mind? *Patrick Marber:*“I think what happened was when Scott Rudin sent me the book, I think that was the first thing that happened. He said he thought this would be great for Richard [Eyre] to direct and I said that was great, fabulous. I knew Richard and I’d read the book. Then there was another conversation where everyone felt that Judi and Cate would be perfect for the parts.
I think they were then sent the book and given the information that I was working on a screenplay. Word came back that they loved the book and would both be interested to read the screenplay. So, to answer your question, I was conscious when I was writing the screenplay that I had these two brilliant actresses waiting to read it.
Q. Did that add to any pressure?
A. [Laughs] It was a pressure, but a very pleasurable one because I thought that I could write at full stretch and hopefully they’d like all these strange contradictions and twists and turns that I was going to give their characters. And not provide easy answers as to why the characters are. I thought both the characters would embrace that, rather than flee.
Q. Have you ever known a character such as Barbara in real-life? Dame Judi claims to have done so…
Patrick Marber: I think if you look around, if you go out onto the streets, you will see a thousand Barbaras out there. Almost a million. Not in Bond Street maybe. But head a bit further north, across the Euston Road, and they’re ten a penny.
I think that’s why people like the film because I think it’s identified a particular streak of modern loneliness in the comfortable middle classes and the uncomfortable lower middle class of Barbara. I think Zoe’s book recognises a peculiar strand of loneliness that’s out there.
I thought “Notes on a Scandal” one of the most impressive and moving films I’ve seen in a long time. I had read a review that alluded to “a great and perfectly executed film that nonetheless promoted damaging stereotypes in relation to ‘spinster lesbian vampire types.’”
This was not my understanding or impression of the film at all.
However, I think that the last paragraph of this interview with Patrick Marber, where he alludes to “a peculiar strand of loneliness that’s out there” that the film touches, is “right on the mark.”
Man or woman, gay, lesbian or heterosexual, I think what the film touches on so intensely, particularly as it is so well done — is a fear in many aging men or women, particularly those who live alone, have no intimate companion and no family: and that is, the fear of appearing, or of becoming, pathetic, grasping, needy, and mean, as one feels one’s life inescapably moving toward its conclusion, with no more possibilities in clear view. It’s scary! (I felt the fear of it: and I’m heterosexual, have had fulfilling sexual relationships, have been married, and have children, family and friends. But I’m not young — time moves, children grow, marriages dissipate, possibilities find their limitations and yes, modern loneliness is at the heart of this film. To what lengths might some of us go in our search for companionship and intimacy, given the vast vacuum that we have arrived at and are unprepared for?
— Trish Graham Feb 5 #