June 25th was quite an inspirational day, spent listening to Andrew Bovell speak about his life as a writer and his involvement in film script adaptation. It was a particular kick for me to hear his thought process as I’m a huge Baz Luhrmann fan and Mr Bovell did the film adaption from the stageplay for ‘Strictly Ballroom’.
Hosted in the Lighthouse cinema We first looked at ‘Lantana‘ (2001), directed by Ray Lawerence, Mr Bovell wrote both the original plays (it was the amalgamation of a couple of stories) and the screenplay. It’s a cop thriller in the style that we would be familiar watching CSI or those type of cop shows and stars Anthony LaPaglia of ‘Without a Trace’ fame.
Following the screening Mr Bovell, read from the screenplay and looked at how he developed the characters, making some more important than others, to make the story move and flow. As the final story came from a couple of different stageplays and settings it was really interesting to hear how he brought them all together, weaving a history and backstory about each character.
Mr Bovell was also involved in the adaption of ‘Edge of Darkness’ for the big screen and told a heart warming story about his time working, and not working on the final project. He was especially candid about how he felt when Tom Monahan started working on the screenplay to give it a Hollywood finish.
All participants got a copy of the ‘Lantana’ screenplay to take with us.
Thanks to Screen Training Ireland for making the event happen.