Interview (Written): Nick Hornby (“Brooklyn”)

A Creative Screenwriting interview with Nick Hornby, nominated for a 2016 Academy Award for Best Adapted screenplay for Brooklyn:

The first letter Eilis receives from her sister is very mundane in terms of the content, but because she’s so homesick it makes her break down anyway. Her homesickness takes up much of the film’s early narrative. Could you talk about writing that?

That is one of the things that the book and the movie are about, really. Homesickness is a very profound emotion because usually when it happens the worst, it’s when you realize that even if you do get to go back home, the life that you had there would not be the same. A lot of us feel it when we’re going to college. Even if you move in with a girlfriend, the act of doing that wiped out the life you were living before.

It’s a very powerful and scary thing. From the times I felt it in my life — just the impression of it, thinking “I’m not going to be able to find a way out of this fog” — I think John [Crowley, director] and Saoirse convey that beautifully with that first letter and her inability to deal with a customer at work, with her boss asking her if it’s her time of the month.

I think lots of people know what it’s like to be in the middle of that black cloud, and if the movie was going to work we had to convey that as strongly as possible. The juxtaposition of the banality of the content of the letter and the sheer misery of wanting to have that life, knowing what that life is, and not having access to it was written that way.

Brooklyn

You mentioned her boss at work. Female relationships in this movie are fascinating because in most instances they start harshly and grow to warmth, as with her bunkmate on the boat and Miss Fortini, her boss. While the main plot is driven by the relationship between Eilis and her suitors, why are these relationships between Eilis and other women so key to this story?

It’s something very striking when you read the book and think about the lives of those girls. They quite often had to room together, often worked in retail or some kind of domestic service, and marriage was the only route to take you out of the situation you were in.

In terms of the harshness, I had trained as a teacher and there’s a terrible expression that old teachers use, which is “Never smile before Easter.” When you’re a young teacher you’re nice to the kids and you get torn to pieces, so the next year you never smile before Easter [Laughs]. It’s a way of marking out what the rules of this relationship are, and that’s certainly true with the woman on the boat. It’s “She’s not going to fuck with me, and she has to know that’s my bed and this is how we do things. If she understands that, then we can have a relationship.” The same thing applies in the shop — “You have to do what I say, and if you can do that then we can operate.” It’s a hard world, and to a certain extent you have to draw your grid, stand in it, and say, “This is mine!” and after that we can start to get on.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

You may download the script for Brooklyn here.