Q&A With Patrick Ness + GIVEAWAY
Hi friends!
Today I have a very exciting blog feature for you guys and it's an interview with the one and only Patrick Ness, author of A Monster Calls, which released last week in cinemas! (I have yet to go see it but I am super excited to!)
{ INTERVIEW }
An extract of an interview with Patrick Ness that
appears in the back of the A Monster Calls: Special Collector’s edition
available now at all good booksellers. A Monster Calls: Special Collector’s
Edition is a deluxe hardcover edition of Patrick Ness' masterpiece featuring
the entire illustrated novel as well as more than one hundred pages of
extraordinary film-inspired content.
A Monster Calls film kicks off in cinemas around
Australia from July 27. Watch the trailer for a sneak peek www.AMonsterCallsmovie.com.au/trailer
How
did you feel when you found out that the book was going to be turned into a
film?
Well, it was great, but I am always
skeptical. I’m skeptical about everything, even my books – I never believe
they’re going to exist until they do, with a film even more so. So much had to
be in place that was completely out of my hands. I was optimistic: there were really
great creative partners, who knew what they were doing and really wanted to
make this happen. But I thought, movies don’t happen to people like me! So I
didn’t ever count my chickens – I’m still not counting my chickens!
You
have written several screenplays. What did you find interesting about adapting
your own book into a screenplay? How different a writing experience was it?
I’d been very protective of the material
right the way through so I held off from selling it for a very long time. Then
I thought I’d actually like to write the screenplay because I thought I knew
how the story works and how it could be changed. You don’t always know that
something’s going to work; you just hope.
I’ll always consider myself a novelist
because in a novel, for good or ill, all the choices are yours. You’re in
charge of it and it’s one hundred per cent an expression of you. That’s a great
freedom and a great responsibility and a great challenge – the tyranny of all
that choice! It’s hard, but really
rewarding, and I love it.
Screenplays, on the other hand, are kind of
like puzzles: a movie at best if a long short story, so how do you take the
essence of your story and communicate everything in it in a shorter space? That
kind of creative challenge can spur you on. I’ve always found limitations can
be a great spurt to creativity.
What
needed to change in the story? How did you feel about altering things from the
book? Was there a strand from the book that you wanted to be emphasized in the
film?
The bullies get emphasized in the film
because they’re Conor’s connection to the outside world and, given Conor’s
world is so interior (he’s always in his home, or his grandmother’s house, or
in the tales), it’s important to have this visual link to the outside world in
his film. We need to know what the outside looks like, and how the world
regards him, and how small his world has shrunk.
There were some changed Director J.A.
Bayona wanted – the director always brings things. He was very interested in the idea of legacy
and what a parent leaves behind. So he had the idea that Conor loves drawing because
his mother is an artist, and this works perfectly visually because it links
right into the tales, which erupt from his drawings. It comes together just
gorgeously at the end.
Throughout the whole film there’s been a locked room in
Conor’s grandmother’s house. At the end we discover that the grandmother has
been making it into a room for Conor and it’s full of all his artworks and all
his mother’s old drawing pads. The final shot shows him opening one up and
finding a drawing of the monster on his mother’s shoulder, so she has clearly
seen the monster herself, probably when she lost her father. So the monster had
come for her as well and they share that. It’s a beautiful addition.
Were
you involved in the casting process for the film? What do the individual actors
bring to your characters?
Casting is half desperate desire and half
chance. You make lists of actors you want and they’re just ridiculous because,
if you were to get them all, the salaries alone would be $300 million. Liam
Neeson is so perfect for the role it’s almost slightly obvious, but we thought,
let’s try him anyway. And he turned out to love the book, and he’s a truly
lovely man so getting him involved felt like a bit of a blessing.
As for Sigourney Weaver, I don’t think we
thought she’d be available, but then Bayona called me one day and said, “We’ve
got Sigourney Weaver,” and I thought, whoa! And she’s perfect – she is
physically perfect and her manner is perfect.
Bayona and the producer Belén Atienza suggested Felicity Jones and got her before The Theory of Everything – before she
was too busy! So that was a great bit of timing. I once talked to a director
who said casting is important but, in some ways, if you get good people, the
film will sort of shape itself to fit them. But still, how amazing to get Liam
Neeson, Felicity Jones and Sigourney Weaver for a film that didn’t have a huge
budget! And among all the kids who were auditioned, Lewis MacDougall just stood
out. He’s auditioned for three things in his life and he’s got all three, so
that says it all really.
Did
you spend much time on set? What did you enjoy most about the film-making
process?
I was involved in the process all the way
through. The director, J.A. Bayona, and the producer, Belén Atienza, were very generous and very collaborative. There were
lots of script meetings in Barcelona where we’d talk and talk about scripts,
scenes and order. We hashed it out until we were all happy. I was on set about
ten or twelves times. It was a fairly lengthy shoot because they had a juvenile
lead, so could only shoot a certain amount of hours a day. Throughout the whole
process they would send me scenes. They would always ask me about additions to
the dialogue – every single line of dialogue they were thinking of adding in. Sometimes
actors suggest things on set, and some of it’s just fantastic and needs to be
woven in.
The first two weeks were spent with Liam Neeson
in a suit doing motion capture for the CGI monster. Because the monster is created
using CGI, they had a big model of the monster’s head on set to give Lewis
something to act to. And the final tale, which is set in a graveyard, was filmed
in an abandoned hospital-studio on the outskirts of Barcelona, with a huge
construction of a graveyard. It looked half impressive and half not there, but
then in the film it looks amazing.
A
Monster Calls is a very emotional novel. How difficult was it to translate into
motion onto the screen?
I think we’re a good match, me and Bayona
(Director J.A. Bayona). He’s very outwardly emotional and passionate, like a
lot of directors are, and I’m very reserved (which doesn’t mean unemotional,
just privately emotional). So I thought between us we could probably get to a
really good central point which neither of us could get to on our own. I would
always want to make sure the emotion is really true. I want ugly crying, not
pretty crying. I don’t want any easy outs (not that Bayona would have gone for
easy outs), and he probably instinctively distrusts lack of expression in
emotion. So, together, we find the right path that most people are going to
fall into.
In a movie it’s the performances that are
going to do it, and all the actors understood that it’s not a movie about grief,
but about sadness and anger.
Both
film and illustration are activities that transform a writer’s words into
images. What do you feel about that visual
process?
I’m not an artist, and I’m not a film
director, so I felt a huge curiosity about how Jim Kay, the book’s illustrator,
and Bayona would respond to my work. Jim is so talented! Some of the stuff he
drew I could never have thought of and some of the stuff Bayona shot I could ever
have thought of. That’s what you wish for – somebody who knows different things
than you know and brings those to the work. The important thing for me always
is to keep learning. I never want to be complacent – that’s why I wanted to do
the screenplay myself. Even if I failed I wanted at least to try.
{ GIVEAWAY }
to celebrate the release of A MONSTER CALLS movie in australia i'm giving away a copy of the book! RT + F to enter ☺️ AUS only! pic.twitter.com/EXVD6F56v6— Anisha ✌🏼 (@sprinkledpages) July 27, 2017
13 happy thoughts
I always love reading interviews! It's interesting to see the face behind the story :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing Anisha <3
No problem Faith!
DeleteI like reading interviews- even if they're of authors who I haven't read before (not that I haven't read Ness)- because it makes me relate to authors and reminds me that they're human too!
ReplyDeleteGreat post by the way!
Have a great week!
YES I TOTALLY KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN!
DeleteAhh, I need to read a Ness novel and this would be the perfect one. I love reading author interviews to just get an idea of the writer behind a book! It makes me want to read their work even more. I particularly loved his comments about the casting and I can't believe both the schedule of actors in the movie and the luck that goes into getting them!
ReplyDeleteGreat interview!
Thank you so much for reading and commenting <3
DeleteI still haven't read a single Patrick Ness novel, Anisha. What am I doing with my life? It is so cool that you got to interview Ness, I am so happy for you!The questions are really great and thought provoking, and it is so cool to see how involved Ness got to be in the making of the movie. That's an author's dream come true, isn't it? Awesome interview!
ReplyDeleteOMG YOU HAVE TO ERIN! <3
DeleteI saw this movie in an advanced release in December, and didn't realise it hadn't come out nationally until I saw all the promo for it! It is such a gorgeous movie though, and I totally agree that Connor's artwork was a beautiful addition visually. Thanks for sharing, Anisha!
ReplyDeleteOMGOMGOMG LUCKY! I'm going to be going this weekend hopefully
DeleteI have yet to read a Patrick Ness book but I've heard nothing but great things about him. Thank you for sharing this awesome interview!
ReplyDeleteHappy Reading,
Brittany @ Brittany's Book Rambles
No problem Brittany!
DeleteGreat interview, Anisha! I still need to pick up Patrick Ness' books soon ahaha
ReplyDeleteLeave me a comment below! And feel free to leave your website URL so I can come visit!