I’ve just handed the final draft of the adaptation screenplay to Harris and he’s happy with it. It’s a good feeling. I can move on and start to work on a film of my own.
It wasn’t an easy film to write because it went through several different phases, however I am happier now with it than at any other stage, which is a nice sign. I enjoyed writing the film as a noir, but when that element was removed, I really struggled. I knew the film needed to change because it was basically becoming a soap-opera. However, the group was still passionate about my noir idea and had decided to turn it into a neo-noir. This was even more difficult for me. They were able to use a segment from the original taster film, without me having to make too many changes. I was faced with the challenge of trying to explore a character dynamic and somehow work out why it might be appropriate to make the film in a neo-noir style.
However, thankfully I think I overcame this issue and wrote something which I think is faithful to the play, yet still interesting enough to us: something we feel fits into our own storytelling voices. I actually ended up cutting a lot of the dialogue back because, while I do think it added more background information for the characters, I felt that it would be more interesting to focus on Jo and the man’s relationship rather than them as individuals. I felt that silence could tell more about them than dialogue could.
I chose to call the film The Man Who Ran Away. I thought it was an interesting title in relation to the characters, but I still wanted to pay tribute to the noir roots of the film.
In the end, I’m happy with what I’ve done and I really look forward to seeing what Harris does with it, because it is the first time I’ve written a film for someone else to direct.
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