In line with the continuing trend of movies being adapted into TV series, screenwriter David Farr chatted to Creative Screenwriting Magazine about his screenwriting career and his adaptation of Hanna from a film to a TV series on Amazon Prime.
“I was convinced I was to become an English teacher until I was about 18 and then I got suddenly very deeply into theatre when I was at university. I always loved movies. My romance has always been with film. That’s the stuff that really is deep, deep in me,” said screenwriter David Farr.
Since 2005, Farr has been pursuing his passion as a screenwriter. As a staff writer on shows like MI-5 and Outcasts, the English writer’s work entered a solo career with the 2011 film version of Hanna, which starred Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, and Joe Wright in the director’s chair.
Since the film, Farr penned the series The Night Manager, The Man With the Iron Heart, and has additional credits for McMafia and Troy: Fall of a City. Now, he’s working on the reboot, televised version of Hanna for Amazon. This time, the 8-episode first season stars Esme Creed-Miles, Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos.
Essentially, the plot for the film and televised version “follows the journey of an extraordinary young girl raised in the forest as she evades the relentless pursuit of an off-book CIA agent and tries to unearth the truth behind who she is…”
David Farr
Espionage Inspirations
Inspired by Graham Greene, John Le Carré, and Joseph Conrad, Farr soon discovered a love for espionage. “I think I’ve always been into spies. They take on a persona. They take on identities that aren’t entirely truthful and then they kind of forget that that’s just a mask and they lose who they are. In some ways, this idea relates to Hanna. People who shift who they are for a particular purpose, which becomes an emotionally complicated thing.”
Some of Hanna’s complications come from her spy-like need to work and live alone. “Hanna is a young, female counterpart to Jason Bourne,” said Farr. “They are both journeys of identity. They are both people who are trying to figure out who they are in a very literal sense, but also in a thriller sense. I think there are forces –governmental forces, dark forces – who don’t want them to discover who they are…”
“That very simple question of finding who you are is of course in a sense we all do in our lives. We go on journeys of identity. We’re all trying to figure out if it is me and if I’m doing what I want to? Is the person I am is the true reflection of myself? All these questions are very internal, but when you do a thriller, the characters are given a much more high jeopardy stake and that lends to pieces of double action. It is an action based thriller but also becomes an emotionallyprofound search for identity and understanding.”
The Innocent Killer
In some ways, for Hanna, her naivety makes her compelling and somewhat innocent. “She has been armed by her father with these extraordinary, almost super human, skills to survive and she has the capacity for extreme violence. In the other kind of skills that way we associate with life, she is completely naïve. I hope it marks Hanna beyond a generic kind of female action character.”
Since 2011, similar movies have been made, such as Atomic Blonde or Red Sparrow, with strong, female leads in intense action roles. Farr believes Hanna has a more melancholic quality in her search for identity. Through this search, Farr and company believed there was room for a deeper analysis, which led to the televised version.
“I knew the destination point. We could enjoy different colors and different tones and whole different worlds. Hanna is a young woman who is trying to understand the world. She has never seen it. Every world she enters, it is new information, a new experience. Potentially damaging stuff can happen or potentially enriching stuff can happen.”
Contrasting Characters
To better showcase Hanna, Farr created the character of Sophie. “Sophie is a girl whose issue is the way in which she is trapped by the modern world. She is trapped by how her identity and her online identity and what people think that a young woman should be and Hanna is completely free of all of those things because she has never lived in that world. There is no question that Sophie finds that attractive. It’s the allure of an existential hero. As a character, Hanna can explore the theme of friendship because she’s never had one before.”
In addition to friendship, Sophia also shows Hanna the realities of violence. “One of the major themes of the piece is the morality of action, the morality of violence. We are all responsible for our actions and Hanna has to learn that you are responsible for your actions. There is a moment to the end of Episode 2, where Hanna, for the first time, understands the true moral consequences of violence by looking at Sophie’s face. So Sophie becomes the normalizer – the person who gives Hanna a conscience and morality.”
Esme Creed-Miles
When given the choice between staff writer and lead storyteller, Farr feels his experiences on Hanna and The Night Manager are richer experiences. “You can shape a narrative. Television, at the moment, is becoming a little bit like with the modern version of the novel, through the episodic nature, where you can take your time. But, episodic work remains really good training. The true thrill of television is the ability to shape a story over time.”
The Night Manager, an adapted mini-series from John Le Carré, could be described as a character piece with a less than urgent narrative, where Hanna does have an urgent narrative. “[TNM] is emotionally urgent, but it just isn’t very quick plotwise. Hanna is completely different.”
“From the minute she makes that decision that the forest is no longer enough for her as a young teenage woman, the story goes. The consequences of that decision force a narrative into terrific tension and pace and energy. Then, it’s a character piece, like The Night Manager. Plus, whenyou get tension right in the story, you can then hold surprisingly long scenes between characters.”
Characters of Longevity
Farr is a voracious reader. He loves to read and tell stories. In his process, he’s discovered somewhat of an instinct as to how storytelling works. As he father, he tells stories to his children and if they’re simply engaged, it’s clear the story is working. “If you don’t tell a good story, their eyes wander off to somewhere else. It’s really not that different with adults. The act of reducing a story to its very basics is a very good challenge.”
Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, First Reformed) would certainly agree with this storyteller mindset (see interview here). “Taxi Driver is one of the best screenplays,” said Farr. “If you can tell a story and your audience, young or old, want to get to the end and you can get there, in a ten minute telling, then you know that you got it. Things will change as you write because you are writing organically and the characters will definitely surprise you. But you have that feel or sense that you know where you are going, and that is such a comfort.”
“I think each story has its own natural longevity. Breaking Bad is the most famous example that was clearly designed over a long period of time and works absolutely. The Sopranos, in a very different way, is something that is unbelievably rewarding over a long period of time. It is a family drama that just extends, and becomes richer and deeper. Sometimes, in American dramas, people begin to ‘spin the plate,’ which is essentially where you just get into more and more twists and more and more self-consciousness to just to keep it going.”
“If you are exploring a character and getting deeper into character and growing character and taking the character to a destination that you know from the beginning, I think the lengths are not entirely relevant. You just have to be true to that. Am I still obeying and observing the characters’ arc of learning and development and change? Am I taking that character where I want to take him or her to? If that is still alive and surprising and truthful, then it will work. If you’re just looking for new plot, that’s a problem.”
This article has been condensed. Listen to the full audio interview HERE.
