Opinion: Nick Hornby
British scribe Nick Hornby wrote the male-centric books About a Boy and High Fidelity but he is also the screenwriter of An Education, about a bright 16-year-old girl in 1961 London stifled by her boring, boxed-in life.
“It’s a miracle, really, that movies – independent movies, especially – get made at all.”
– Nick Hornby
– Nick Hornby
Those who know that British scribe Nick Hornby, wrote the male-centric books About a Boy, High Fidelity, and Fever Pitch, a book about his obsession with soccer, may be surprised to know that he is also the screenwriter of An Education, the beguiling and knowing story of Jenny, a bright 16-year-old girl in 1961 London stifled by her boring, boxed-in life and what she regards as her staid country. Hornby’s range extends beyond what he’s most known for, however. He got his start in journalism, has been the pop music critic for The New Yorker, and executive produced Fever Pitch and About a Boy. But his ability to adeptly shuttle between writing books and being involved in film is also admirable, even if he attributes it to nothing more than knowing how to let the right project “take over” the other one.
Insider: You once told an interviewer, “I'm looking for people in very ordinary situations in cities, whose lives get bent out of shape by something kind of big happening to them.” Isn’t that the story of An Education?
Hornby: It’s pretty much bang-on for that; it’s a girl standing at a bus stop who’s taken into a different life. It’s a mundane situation and in her own terms, at least, something fairly extraordinary happens to her, so that was one of the things that grabbed me about the material. I’m kind of interested in that period of British life anyway.
Insider: Why?
Hornby: Even though maybe Britain and America ended up roughly in a similar place by the end of the Sixties, certainly our experience of the Fifties was incredibly different to yours. When you think of the 1950s in American popular culture, it’s big cars and rock & roll and Elvis Presley but of course this was still a very depressed and war-torn country. The idea that teenagers could drive big cars in the Fifties was a fantasy; teenagers here waited for the bus. And there was food rationing pretty much throughout the decade. There really wasn’t very much money going on; the place had been bombed to bits. And I think our relationship with our parents was actually very different. Your 1950s was about a schism, really, between teenagers and the adult world, whereas our kids had kind of been through this enormous experience with their parents. They’d been sitting in the same rooms with their parents for a long time, so it really wasn’t until the mid-Sixties when we started to become a little bit more affluent, that any of that kind of rebellion was possible. So it was an altogether grayer country.
The Beatles, which was several years later than your rock & roll, really did introduce something else, so this is a country right on the cusp in An Education; it’s pre-rock & roll, as far as we’re concerned. Also, I think all the smart kids looked at the time to Europe and not to America, and again, that was something that changed later. They were listening to Juliette Greco, reading Camus, and I think that the American stuff was probably regarded as pretty teeny-bop and déclassé compared to the French stuff. There was jazz, of course, but I think Europe had much more of an influence than it would probably ever have again.
Insider: The original memoir behind An Education, by Lynn Barber in Granta, is only about 12 pages long. What was it like adapting a 12-page story to a feature length film?
Hornby: Well, it was fun. I think it’s the way forward for all of us, really. It seems to make much more sense to me that you’re adapting something that’s too short for a movie that maybe has a solid story structure that you can be imaginative with and introduce characters to and situations to. And of course the dialogue’s mostly my own. It’s kind of a more liberating way to go, I suspect, than having to reduce 350 pages into a screenplay. It was not so much making things up but really making the most of everything that was in there.
Insider: You’ve adapted your own work for the screen and adapted other people’s work as well – which do you prefer?
Hornby: I think I prefer adapting other people’s. I think by the time I get to the end of a book, I’m pretty much done with it. You spend a lot of time putting all these things in and then taking on a job where you have to take them all out again. It probably seems more of a grind than adapting other people’s work.
Insider: Your most recent book, Slam, is also about a contemporary adolescent confronting an unplanned pregnancy. Did writing that book give you insight into writing this script?
Hornby: The two things went side by side, actually. I started the script before I started Slam but I guess there was a certain zone that I was in for both of them and it’s dealing with young people and the decisions they made and sexuality to a certain extent, or the love lives of young people. They’re quite tangentially connected because the period of An Education obviously provides a whole different set of disciplines compared to something like Slam. But I’m sure that the one helped the other in some subterranean way.
Insider: How do you organize your writing life – do you set aside specific time for writing novels vs. writing screenplays?
Hornby: Things just tend to take over, really. The deadlines for books are fairly moveable most of the time. There comes a point where you decide, “Yes, that book’s going to be published at this time” and you work towards that, but if you’re a year late with a book or six months late with a book or six months early with a book, no one’s really amazed or bothered. Whereas movies, they have a pragmatic timetable. It’s a miracle, really, that movies – independent movies, especially – get made at all and I suppose my decisions are governed by what the chances are of anything happening at any given time. If a director became available to work with, then whatever prose I was writing at the time got shelved for a couple of weeks because it was somebody else’s timetable. My timetable’s pretty flexible. And then the movie starts heading towards production and I did a few polishes then. You can’t just say at that point, “I need to get on with my novel” if you want the movie to be made.
