Leslie Dixon is the screenwriter / producer who made the novelThe Dark Fieldshappen as the filmLimitless .
In this article from the Mulholland Books blog , Leslie and Dark Fields author Alan Glynn talk about the task ’s long route from Good Book to screen . And everything in between .
Leslie Dixon : Alan , my attempts to get this movie up and running took soooo long – was there ever a full stop during which you suspect I might just be another Hollywood bullshitter ?
Alan Glynn : Not really , no , and there are two reasons for this . One , you wrote a peachy script , and It ’s been there from the start – standing , as far as I ’ve always been concerned , as a mole against the bull . It was your script , you wanted it produce as well , so we were more or less in the same gravy holder . If you had just been a manufacturer , then peradventure I might have been wear out down and wrack with uncertainty and tempt to look elsewhere . But no other producer – and I meet with quite a few over the years – would have had that killer script under their arm . The producers I meet with – always at their postulation , and commonly approaching choice renewal clock time – were enthusiastic and persuasive and in general convert that they could make things happen . They had good ideas , too , but I ’d always walk away mean , there ’s already a with child script there , what are the chances of any of these bozo coming up with something better ?
And the second intellect is that you were also upfront with me . From the very beginning . I do n’t know if you realize it but we have exchange close to a thousand emails ( so far ) . You have kept me up to zip on everything , the effective stuff and the spoiled , and it ’s been quite an perceptiveness into the whole physical process – and also , I ’ve been told many times , very unusual . But I think writers run to understand each other . We understood each other pretty quickly and trust built up as a result . Plus I got it that you were trying and trying and that it was never easy . So no .
AG : Leslie , how did you approach adjust the book ?
LD : I did n’t have an approach . severely . ( Kids – do n’t attempt this at house – this is because I am a set screenplay combat veteran – but I never so much as made an outline . ) I just opened your book , jotted down some notes , sat at the computer , and live on nuts .
Now . I knew I was going to have to make up more plot of land . moving-picture show audiences are more attention deficit disorder - ish than Koran reader , and there were go to have to be some extra gadget and turns . And you will forgive me if I say I did n’t want to use your ending – Faustian as Eddie ’s deal is , I had a tone the hearing would still want to see him gain . ( Kinda , sorta . )
I had a worldwide estimation of where it was rifle to end up . But mostly , I surprise myself . And most unco – I had never done this before – I write myself into a corner more than once . When Lindy ( Eddie ’s girlfriend ) is pin down with a Orcinus orca closing in on her , I had absolutely no idea how she was going to get out of it . When Eddie himself was trapped in his apartment with thugs beat down the door , found one last pill , and was about to take it , I thought , “ No ! That ’s too easy ! ” – and made it pluck down the warming grate . irrecoverable .
I line up that if I had to suppose like a Smart Person to get Smart Eddie out of a situation , more interesting ideas presented themselves .
I really do n’t have sex how I did it . I used to make for from slavish schema . But I will say this : on not a individual preview circuit card did we get the word , “ predictable . ”
So maybe I needed to loosen up .
AG : Very interesting . This is a content that always spellbind me . To outline or not to outline . I ’m presently in the molasses gunk of indecisiveness about what my next rule book is going to be about , and I be intimate from experience that I ’ll eventually have to just jump in unreasoning – or end up in a straitjacket and on knight tranquilizers .
megabyte : As Alan has discuss in late interview , Limitless tells a news report of intense , eery paranoia that would seem to have its antecedent in books/ films like The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds , or perhaps David Fincher ’s The Game . severally , what were your influences in approaching this form of material ?
LD : That ’s principally an Alan interrogation . I honestly was n’t too focussed on that literary genre of films , though I know them all , and am a special fan of Seconds . I have always found the Manchurian Candidate , possibly just in its carrying into action , just a bit outlandish . I wanted Limitless to have a tasting of that 70′s paranoia , but seem more naturalistic and – paradoxically – be a fleck more of a quiver drive .
But overall I think Eddie ’s behaviour , and the deportment of those around him , is quite relatable . He does n’t have a power - mad female parent uncoerced to throw him to the wolf in the name of geo - political mastery ! ( Most of us do n’t . )
AG : Influences is a foxy topic . You live what has proceed into the overall mix – what you ’ve ever read or seen – but it ’s operose to be specific without retrofitting or rationalizing . When you start you often have no clue what ’s going to emerge and it ’s only when you ’re up and range , and on secure ground , that you might start to see influence . With The Dark Fields I quickly realized that Eddie was telling us the story of his own destruction , and that there were great precedents for this , favored books of mine – Flann O’Brien ’s The Third Policeman and John Banville ’s The Book of Evidence – very different in many ways , but with an underlying form that I found very attractive . Much afterward on , I come across a brilliant examination of this fundamental write up - telling pattern in The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker . It ’s a five - stage calamity arc that you find in the Icarus and Faust myths , in Macbeth , in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , in The Picture of Dorian Gray , in Lolita . The five stages are Anticipation , Dream , Frustration , Nightmare and Destruction . That seems to me to be a pure description of Eddie ’s trajectory in the script . It was also the first person familiarity of the narrator in The Third Policeman that I found irresistible , that clinical dissection of psychological torture . Other influences would have to include The Great Gatsby , with its heavy American theme of the re - invention of the self and the delusional feeling of the perfectibility of gentleman’s gentleman , which I ideate as being reduced at the tail last of the twentieth 100 to a good , a small lily-white tab . And then , as always , for tonus and mood , an over- ( or under-)lay of movies from the 70s , Taxi Driver , The Conversation , Marathon Man .
LD : Alan , I know you lived in New York and were n’t just rolling in bucks . How much of you is in Original Eddie ?
AG : A lot , really . There is always a danger with a first person narrative that readers will assume the articulation is the author ’s own , that there ’s no dividing line , but writers are bear liars , it ’s what we ’re give to do , make stuff up and make it convincing , and a first person voice is the most efficient rescue system for this . Where thing get fuzzy is when the author draws on his or her own experience to take in contingent or provide a setting . Does that mean you ’re writing about yourself ? Or are you just cannibalizing your life for commodious cloth ? When I was get up Eddie – Original Eddie , as you so diplomatically put it – I did n’t have to look far for the detail . I lived in New York in the recent 80 , in dingy apartments , I had very little money , I worked as a cogent evidence - lecturer for a cable video listings powder magazine , I want to be a writer but had serious difficulty motivate myself , I crave literary success , but seemed to be short - circuit on how to go about achieving it , or achieving anything for that matter . And if I ’d meet someone who gave me a collision of MDT-48 , I ’d have bolt down it without vacillation . So holy shit , I AM Eddie . ( Nice piece of molding , btw ) .
AG : Leslie , you ’ve done a batch of comedy , and I conceive you ’ve brought a really sharp wit to this script , but it ’s something of a departure for you . What would you like to do in the future ? Any dream task you have in head ?
LD : What I would most like to do in the future is consume truffle pasta and drink Brunello . Next project ? I am so wiped out I ca n’t imagine ever write a word again .
You may imagine that this film claim quite a mo out of me , and you ’d be veracious . But there is something a trivial persistent about this mini - funk . The horrific flavour is cringe over me if I want to finish fighting to protect my work , perhaps I should write something that is n’t a screenplay .
This concept , to Hollywood types , is the abyss . If the thing flat - out tanked there ’d be no studio apartment to blame . I really have to call back about this .
MB : Leslie , you ’ve write unnumerable scripts . Do you cogitate your experience do work with Alan ’s fabric will affect your piece of writing moving onward ?
LD : Well , the whole reason I was drawn to Alan ’s novel – beside its rocking premise – was Alan ’s voice . His prose style remind me , a lot , of the way I spell prose ( on the rare and hole-and-corner occasions I do ) . I feel I could break up up the ball and continue where he leave off with no interruption in table service . We would meld .
This experience has made me wonder if I could stop drop a line playscript all in all . perhaps I could have Alan ’s caper from now on . And he could have mine – God bang he ’s learn every moving-picture show ever made and writes fantabulous dialog . He ’d savor the check clearing and I ’d enjoy being left the hell alone , to please myself , without suffer to think thinking like , “ Oh , shit , she say the f - Logos twice – that ’s an reflexive R. ”
Probably the bylaw of the MPAA should not intrude on the synapses of a discharge - up writer .
AG : Leslie , this reminds me of Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors overstretch out his sac recorder . . . theme for a reality boob tube show , two author trade jobs , a Brunello - quaffing Hollywood screenwriter goes to endure in rainy Dublin to write a novel about non-Christian priest and spinster gear up in the 1950s , while an eager Irish novelist goes to live in Beverly Hills to eat truffle alimentary paste and have the psyche wrenched out of him by studio apartment executive always telling him how “ activated ” they are . . .
Okay , not priests and spinsters . But with your attitude and long experience writing whippet - thin book you could save a really cracking crime novel with as many f - words in it as you like . That ’d be something I ’d really reckon forward to .
MB : Alan , has seeing your work translated to silver screen had any variety of effect on your writing process ?
AG : Not that I ’m aware of . What I cogitate of as my writing process feels like something pretty changeless at this pointedness , and ineluctable , like hair color or a tendency to saw logs . Each time out , I attempt to do it other than ( essentially to speed thing up a bit ) , but it always finish up add up together the same manner , and at the same pace . So seeing The Dark Fields become Limitless did n’t really have any effect on how I publish Winterland or Bloodland . But there might be a broader interrogative sentence here . People often say that my stuff is very “ cinematic ” , that they can well imagine it translate to the screen , and just sometimes I notice a note of condescension in this , as though it ’s something I do deliberately , even cynically , in society to increase the chances of getting a book made into a movie . Only someone who has never written a novel could possibly imagine this was a chic plan . Because it just does n’t turn that style . The truth , of course of study , is that prose fiction has develop over the decades and the influence of cinema on it has been tremendous . It ’s an wholly natural , constitutive process . So any storytelling style I might have , any sense of pacing or social organisation , has inevitably – and happily – been informed by the endless hours I ’ve spent in the non-white follow movies .
This articleoriginally come out at the Mulholland Books web log .
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