Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Screenwriter

I have a soft spot for Le Carré and I went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with certain trepidation. The reviews were good, but not universally so, and adaptations can be dire – especially of good books and even more especially of good books that have already been adapted into a much-loved TV series.

Famously, Le Carré has compared adapting his novels with turning a rhinoceros into an oxo cube.

Gary Oldman looks moody in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

So what’s it like?

Well, TTSS turns out to be just what I expected, moody and evocative in a neo-romantic way. At least as I use the term. Neo-romantics are less concerned with classically constructed plots, and interwoven subplots, than with mood. The plot and subplots are there, but not the most important thing in the movie.

The movie is watchable, even gripping despite (or perhaps because of) its resolutely deliberate long-held shots (at last a filmmaker who doesn’t need to cut like it’s MTV!)

The film is set in the 1970s – as was the novel. However the novel (and TV series) were contemporary fiction. By keeping the same period, the movie is set in the past.

This has allowed some reviewers to criticise it for being irrelevant today. I’m not so sure. The contemporary relevance was clear for me but not hammered home – essentially it’s about betrayal of trust, corruption and courage.

There was no attempt to say “look how this compares to 2011″ but an intelligent audience would get the point.

However, the movie fell short of greatness. At their best Le Carré’s books pack a surprising emotional punch at the end – which is largely down to a deep involvement with the characters. Here, the mood was all – and somehow the screen characters never got the extra oomph that they did on the page, so the final whammy never quite hit home.

And you don’t get involved in the detective story as participant so much as detached observer – there is little chance for the audience to evaluate the suspects for themselves. Same reason, not enough character development.

It’s not easy fitting a novel into 127 mins.

Having said that, the time flew by, the style and mood were the point and while I usually hate films where that’s the case, in this instance I thought it was justified.

Monet rather than Velasquez, if you see what I mean.

Yet still one of the best movies around. Recommended.

How to land a top star and the BBC with one treatment

Most people hate writing treatments. Not me, I love them.  This is how I used a treatment to hook a top star comedian and the BBC in just five pages – and how you can too.

The idea I’d had was a good one – I knew it, and the production company I’d approached knew it too. It was a sharp, dark satire, one hour for TV, one-off, and unlike anything else we’d seen. We didn’t have a script yet but we took the idea to the BBC and everyone liked it all the way up to the channel controller.

The controller asked who we had lined up to star. We knew who we wanted. It needed a top comic star, and we had a shortlist of one. But we hadn’t approached him yet.

The controller said he had a transmission slot available for May. (It was now January). All we had to do was produce a 4-5 page treatment he liked – and the agreement of the star.

Now mostly stars want to read scripts, but there was no time to write one. The treatment would have to do it.

I think people shy away from writing treatments for two main reasons: they are afraid they will restrict their creativity for the script; and they try writing one and it turns out to be flat and lacks all fire and energy.

The truth is, if you know how to write exciting treatments that reflect the energy and emotion of your scripts then you can put your career into fast forward. But to do this you need to know a few techniques that are rarely taught. I learned them the hard way – by falling flat on my face for five or six years.

In fact, I now find the treatment totally invaluable at all stages of the writing process – for creating the best structure, for avoiding plot problems in advance, for inspiring others, for selling, for rewriting drafts and (perhaps most importantly) for inspiring myself.

If my treatment excites me, then I know there’s a good chance it will sell.

It took two weeks to write the 5 page BBC treatment. Most people try to cram in the whole story. I did the opposite. There are much more important things than story – and that is what a treatment really needs to show. Just a brief hint of the structure, that’s all it needs. And then you slip in all the stuff that really sells the project.

The things that get your juices flowing. And here too there are techniques you need to learn.

When I felt inspired by it – and couldn’t wait to write the script – we sent it to the star. He loved it and agreed. The BBC loved it, loved the star, and signed the contract.

Now all we had to do was write the script and shoot the film in under four months…

If you want to hear more about how to land top stars, producers, broadcasters and film financiers with your own treatments, I’ll be talking about all this and more this Saturday in London.

We’ll see what goes into a successful treatment, and what doesn’t, what language you need to use, what structure, how to inspire yourself and others.

Alternatively you can do like I did and spend 5-6 years learning how to get it right.

To find out more and book online go to Exciting Treatments.

Oh, by the way, we did finish the film by May – with one day to spare – and won a national award for it. All from 5 pages of treatment.