INTERVIEWS

Tearing the Copy To Shreds: Jeffery Hatcher on Mr. Holmes

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By Matthew Wade Reynolds.

Jeffrey Hatcher

Jeffrey Hatcher

Nearly overlooked amid the noisy comic book blockbusters, last summer’s quiet, enchanting Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellen in the title role, is a perfect gem. The film is a model of procedural efficiency and emotional sincerity, as an ailing Sherlock Holmes, in the throes of retirement, if not dementia, struggles to piece together the greatest mystery of all – his own last case, slipping from his mind.

Based on the novel A Simple Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin and directed by Bill Condon (Twilight: Breaking Dawn, and the upcoming Beauty & the Beast), the film’s script was penned by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, who chatted with Creative Screenwriting about the tricky business of reverse engineering mysteries, how to use plot holes to your advantage, and what his version of Sherlock has in common with Star Wars.

Hattie Morahan as Ann Kelmot and Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes

Hattie Morahan as Ann Kelmot and Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes

Mr. Holmes tells the story of Sherlock Holmes in his later years; in fact it tells three stories from three time frames, alternating between very old age and flashing back to previous years and a final case which may have driven him to retirement. What drew you to the material?

It hadn’t been published when I first encountered it, in 2003 or 2004. Producer Anne Carey sent it to me and asked would I like to adapt it? I liked it a lot and said I would.

An interesting conceit in the story is that the public reads of Sherlock Holmes’ exploits not through the work of Arthur Conan Doyle but Watson, who had a flair for embellishment that Holmes did not, for hiding the truth to layer in suspense. 

Mr Holmes, by Mitch Cullin

Mr Holmes, by Mitch Cullin

I’m a huge fan of that sort of thing. I won’t say it’s second nature but I love doling out info in little drips: having half-heard conversations, and trying to misdirect the audience and make them look some-place else.

You do have to really plot that stuff out. I was reading the notebooks of Agatha Christie – her first noodlings about Ten Little Indians – at first it was six, then she thought it should be 12; they should all be married, there should be three couples. She hadn’t written a word, but it’s all scribbles and lists.  Where should they be?

I guess the idea of a house on an island came pretty quickly. You’re watching a mind play with variations and suddenly it all seems to gel – and that’s where the notebooks stopped, and the typing began.

The obvious approach seems to be to reverse engineer the mystery – is that the only way to come at it?

I don’t know which way you come at it – do you come at from the point of view of I have a great twist in mind, or have you been walking down the road testing things and you realize that in the writing you’ve left yourself a lot of clues and if you only reorganize them a certain way you have a theatrical coup out of it.

I do know that keeping things back, and being not as clear as people ask you to be, is key.

It seems you must write the story twice – first to map out the crime, and then to dramatize its discovery.

Some things you write straight through and the only things that matter are what’s written. Other things you have to say, “What was the scene where these two people planned the murder?” Or what was happening offstage while this guy was saying that?

I remember John Le Carré saying with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold that the initial idea was that the plot would move say from A to Z. And then he thought, “You know there are just too many holes in my plot,” and then he came up with the genius stoke of, “Well what if they planned the holes, because they wanted the opposite outcome?” It was one of the flashes of inspiration where the thing you felt was about to turn into a disaster could be turned on its heel and turned into a great success.

You have to imagine when you’re writing a mystery that there are whole scenes and scenarios that are unwritten but are taking place.

Milo Parker as Roger and Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes

Milo Parker as Roger and Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes

Film is obviously a visual medium but you came from the stage. What’s the appeal of one over the other?

Obviously a playwright has more authority than a screenwriter. The big cultural and legal difference between screenwriting and playwriting is that with playwriting you own the material, and you lease it out. If someone wants to change something they have to ask you and if you say no, they don’t get to change it. 

In the film world, you sell the property, and you’re an employee doing a job. So people may ask you very politely and you can resist but eventually they might get somebody else to.

How did you make the transition from theater to your first feature film, Stage Beauty?

Like a lot of playwrights , but not necessarily screenwriters, I came at writing from acting, because it’s your point of entry. Then I peeled off and became a writer.

As the years went by, occasionally would get some nibbles from Hollywood, usually with a play with absolutely no way of being made into a film. “How can we open this up?” My answer would be “I have no idea whatsoever…and thank you!”

Eventually I wrote this play called The Complete Female Stage Beauty and because of the circumstances under which it was written it actually leaning toward screenplay form more than some of the other plays, it was multiple settings, a lot of forward narrative, etc. etc.  So I was fortunate that I got into it by adapting one of my own plays.

Billy Crudup as Ned Kynaston in Stage Beauty

Billy Crudup as Ned Kynaston in Stage Beauty

You followed that with Cassanova and The Duchess. Are period pieces somehow more a natural fit for a playwright?

If whatever you do falls into an easily identifiable category, then that’s all that’s being talked about for the next several years. If it were to have been a western it would be westerns, if it were a crime drama, it would have been that. In my case it was the late 17th century, the 1650s, from Henry VIII until maybe 1805. It was like, “Well, he does this, so lets see if he wants to do more.”

How did you feel about that?

It’s perfectly all right, because the opposite might be, “We don’t want to call you at all.”  And I do think that with period, or costume drama, whatever you want to call it, some people have more of a knack for it than others, whatever it may be, in terms of dialogue, or what have you. It’s not bad to be able to do that sort of thing. I joke with people that I’m fighting my way into the 20th century. Mr. Holmes is the late 1940s, which is like Star Wars compared to most of my stuff.

Dominic Cooper as Charles Grey and Keira Knightley as Georgiana in The Duchess

Dominic Cooper as Charles Grey and Keira Knightley as Georgiana in The Duchess

What is your adaptation process? One school of thought seems to be to leave the book open, so to speak, the other favors closing it during the writing.

I had two copies of the book – one copy to read the first time, and then another copy that I tear to shreds. I take out paragraphs that have something good in them, full pages of dialogue that I think can be used, things I don’t want, then I “x” them out.

You literally physically cut into the book?

When I was a kid, and through my teens I never would have harmed a book!

But there are two reasons to mess up a copy of a book – one is simply practical, it’s nice to have something you can circle and put exclamation points on – “use this,” and so on. But it’s sometimes important to do physical damage to the book you’re adapting, in a larger sense it’s the first physical evidence of what you’re going to be doing as you adapt. Because any adaptation, especially a successful adaptation, is going to betray certain elements of the book.

And the point isn’t to copy, but to remain true to the essence.

It’s analogous to a playwriting exercise. A writer writes a two-person scene, the actors read it, and then without reading it a second time, they try to enact the scene from memory. The idea being, what in the scene stayed with them? And the assumption is, the good stuff – not necessarily the way a joke is told, or a line is written, but the key character and dramatic moments – will come back to them.

Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes

Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes

This brings us back to that original question – how to balance a tight, clockwork script with a more natural, lifelike drama.

George Kaufman once said that comedies and melodramas had to be about 97-98 percent tight. But for a drama he said you only need to get about 85 percent.

Once you’ve told the audience you’ve entered the world of the laugh machine, or the thriller, they now expect that machine. And if you don’t give it to them, people get mad at you.

In the film world, previews and screenings seeking feedback are often looked down upon, but in the theater audience reaction seems to be taken more seriously.

Sometimes you write a joke, and the joke is only getting 20-30 percent of the people to laugh, every time you show the preview, and you think, I should cut that.

So you can’t count on the smaller percentage to convince the rest?

The 70 percent of the people who aren’t laughing think the 30 percent are wrong.

Featured image by Giles Keyte

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Matthew Wade Reynolds has been a writer, journalist and Hollywood development executive for most of the waking hours of his adult life and all of the dreaming hours of his childhood. <br> <table> <tr> <td><a href="mailto:Matthewwadereynolds@yahoo.com"><img src="http://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/email.png" style="height:25px"></a></td> <td><a href="mailto:Matthewwadereynolds@yahoo.com">Matthewwadereynolds@yahoo.com</a></td> </tr> </table>

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