Screenwriter »

• Trailerspotting has chickens over Tinker Tailor

  July 1, 2011 @ 10:01 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  It’s here everybody. It’s here! The very first teaser trailer for Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has made it into cyberspace. This writer has not tired of boring you about his enthusiasm for John Le Carré’s great spy novel and for the BBC TV series that it generated. So, it hardly needs to be said that Screenwriter is — despite all his objections to overly faithful adaptations — somewhat protective of the source materials. Well, this is only a taster promo, but you must admit that it doesn’t look half bad. The atmosphere seems sufficiently muggy. The cast all look suitably miserable. It is often the case that the music used on trailers is culled from other sources. I don’t recognise the screeching chords used here, but they certainly do the business very nicely. If you know it from elsewhere then please do not hesitate to spill the beans.

  Look, there’s no way around it. I often give out about internet-bound maniacs objecting to supposed changes in beloved texts. But the Tinker Tailor fan is bound to ponder — not necessarily complain about — alterations from book and TV series. The first thing to observe is that very few of the lines seem directly lifted from Le Carré. Of course, they are plucking phrases that tell the story succinctly, but it would be nice if somebody said “There are three of them and Alleline”. It is also interesting that — though Gary Oldman’s Smiley does get to stand in a peeling kitchen — the film (as is often the case with films) seems more suavely designed than the series. Look, for example, at the Circus meeting round about 38″.  In the series they were (probably quite accurately) sitting in a sparse, starkly painted space that looked rather like the waiting room for a provincial dentist. The current suspects get to bicker in a stylish basement with insulated walls.

  Real nuts will note some slight changes in plot. The fact that Jim Prideaux — in the ubiquitous form of Mark Strong — is clutching a rifle signifies a tiny tweaking of the film’s last act. (No spoilers there I hope.)  More significantly, Ricky Tarr’s meeting with the Russian operative Irina — who alerts the agency to the threat — takes place neither in Lisbon (the series) nor in Hong Kong (the book), but in the busy streets of Istanbul. The BBC couldn’t afford to send Hywel Bennett to the far east for the classic serial. It looks as if the movie’s producers have been able to stretch a little further and get Tom Hardy to the western edges of Asia.

  I could go on, but I’d run the risk of disappearing completely into the darkest jungles of Sadville.

  One quick revelation. I can announce that, just last week, I got to talk to Gary Oldman about the movie. Annoyingly (and most unusually) the distributors were not able to show me the film beforehand. Also, the substance of the interview is strictly embargoed until shortly before release date. But I’m sure I won’t be told off for revealing that Gary was quietly raving about the piece. I suppose he wouldn’t do anything else. But he seemed fairly sincere.

  Before going, I will allow myself one more personal indulgence. I mentioned in one of my several hundred posts on this subject, that the opening shot of the series appeared to have been filmed from a building in which I used to work. Ben Campbell, an ex-colleague and occasional commentator in this place, confirmed that this was almost certainly the case. If you’re out there, old man, answer me a question. Are Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones standing next to the The Palace Theatre’s roof at 13″? It could be. Couldn’t it?

• A glimpse of Gary Oldman as George Smiley.

  November 11, 2010 @ 11:06 am | by Donald Clarke

  

  You may not care, but a sad cadre of maniacs — let’s call ourselves The Lamplighters — are faintly obsessed with Tomas Alfredson’s upcoming adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I’m not altogether sure the film version is a good idea, mind. Packing all that information into two hours is going to require a near supernatural degree of creative compression. The legendary 1979 TV series moved every comma, dash and colon from novel to screenplay. There were some subtle changes, but the BBC’s team worked hard at leaving almost nothing out. That’s fine on TV. But the dynamics of film are very different. If you want a demonstration then set the classic series of Brideshead Revisited against the recent, supernaturally ghastly film take on Evelyn Waugh’s book.

  Of course, the writers on Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor may have come up with a mighty wheeze — some way of radically reinventing the tale. If so, good luck to them. For the second time in two posts I will repeat the mantra: fidelity to the source material is not a virtue in itself.

  Anyway, everyone loves discussing casting possibilities for adaptations of their favourite novels and, to date, the actors drafted in for Tinker Tailor seem well chosen. As everybody will note, Gary Oldman could not look less like Le Carré’s Smiley — short and fat in the manner of Arthur Lowe — but he can manage just the right class of weary wisdom. Interestingly, in this first image from the set, he appears to be wearing the same spectacles that Alec Guinness sported in the series.

  Oldman is also a bit young. Indeed, the characters all seem to have had a decade docked off their ages. Is this a sign of the times? Back in the 1970s, when the book and series emerged, the British expected their leaders to be in the later stages of middle-age. Since then the likes of Edward Heath and Harold Wilson have given way to  babyish Tony Blair and the near-embryonic David Cameron. (Come to think of it, this is the first time a British Prime Minister has been younger than your current correspondent.)

  Anyway, here’s the current situation. Bill Haydon, suave womaniser (and meniser for that matter), is Colin Firth. Jim Prideaux, injured hardman and patriot, is Mark Strong. Peter Guillam, efficient,short-tempered scalphunter, is Benedict Cummerbatch. Roy Bland, “shop-soiled white hope”, is Ciarán Hinds. Percy Alleline, bufoonish, deluded Circus chief, is Toby Jones. Connie Sachs, muddied, cardiganed research boffin, is Kathy Burke. Ricki Tarr, dissolute younger agent, is Tom Hardy. There is exciting word — unconfirmed on IMDb — that John Hurt is to play Control, the monkish service head defeated by Alleline’s cabal. Roger Lloyd-Pack, Simon McBurney and Christian McKay are also all in various frames.

  If you remain unaware of Le Carré’s masterwork, you will, after glancing at that staggering cast list, get some sense of how highly regarded the material is. The casting does all seem top notch, but there is still that worry about age. So many of the characters — Jim Prideaux in particular — are defined by a sense of being left behind by history. Can it work? Well, having directed Let the Right One In, Mr Alfredson does appear to be on a roll. Alas, we won’t know until well into next year.

  Hey, I used to work in the building from which (I think) the first shot in this clip was taken…

  

• Gary Oldman is George Smiley

  June 8, 2010 @ 5:48 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  There are three of them and Alleline.

  Allow me to become a keyboard-thumping dweeb for a few minutes. (“What’s new?” you mutter.) Nothing more stirs up the Nerdisphere than casting decisions on films of much-loved cult entertainments. Remember the fuss when Tim Burton cast Michael Keaton — “A COMIC!” — as the sacred Batman? If the internet were up and running in 1989 it would have blown every valve and fuse in its Bakelite-encased control module.

  These sorts of outbursts are not just the preserve of comic-book fans. I have written reams about the way readers of novels demand too much fidelity from film versions. Let me reiterate a mantra I coined a year or two ago: Fidelity to the Text is Not a Virtue in Itself.

  Where is this going? Gary Oldman as George Smiley? You have to be kidding. Okay, the actor is approaching the correct age — only a wee bit too young — to play the spymaster in Tomas Alfredson’s version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but he could not look less like the man described in John le Carré’s imperishable novel. The author originally felt that Arthur Lowe would be perfect casting for the short, fat, owlish, uncharismatic ascetic. When, however, Alec Guinness took the role in the flawless BBC TV adaptation, Le Carré very quickly came around and, he subsequently admitted, eventually came to visualise the character with Guinness’s face.

  If you are familiar with neither book nor series (and most of you probably aren’t), it finds a former deputy chief of British Intelligence being dragged back to locate a Soviet mole in the upper ranks of the service. More a study of office politics than a thriller, the story takes in fabulous dialogue as it skewers post-war British decline. Every character is beautifully defined and — a seemingly minor point this, but interesting — each has a name that in some insidious manner sums up his or her sad personality: Roy Bland, Connie Sachs, Toby Esterhase, Bill Haydon and so forth.

  Actually, I think Alfredson, director of Let the Right One In, probably knows what he’s doing. Today’s story brings us back to the early 1990s when Oldman was named as a possible John Self in an adaptation — never made — of Martin Amis’s Money. Initially, every Amis fan tutted the same annoyed refrain: “He’s not bloody fat enough!” But, on reflection, it became clear that it was more important to get an actor with sufficient gravitas than one who looked like the man described in the text. After all, Nick Frost looks very like Self, but, with the best will in the world, he wasn’t very good in the version of Money that finally turned up on the BBC last month.

  Anyway, as the casting process continues, we Le Carré fans continue to enjoy the speculation. Today’s report also mentions Colin Firth, Michael Fassbender and David Thewlis as potential cast members. For what it’s worth, I’m betting Firth is Bill Haydon, Fassbender is Peter Guillam and Thewlis is Jim Prideaux. Mind you, Thewlis is at least a decade too young for Jim. He might make more sense as Ricky Tarr…

  Hello? Hello? is anybody still reading this?