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Read a Transcription of our Podcast Interview with screenwriter Andrea Gibb

Your questions were answered by the screenwriter.

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***If you haven’t watched Elizabeth is Missing, please find it on 麻豆社 iPlayer now as there may be spoilers within the Podcast***

Hello, my name is Andrea Gibb, I’m a screenwriter, I am the screenwriter who adapted Elizabeth is Missing for STV and 麻豆社 One it starred the phenomenal Glenda Jackson and I’m here today to answer your questions about the adaptation about the process, about how we got it all together, so I’m going to dive in and I’m going to answer your first question.

Question 1 – Some of the Elizabeth is Missing screenplay was powerfully graphic, e.g. the muddy handprints along the stairway Maud left as she went to get into the bath after digging with her gloves – were such events imagined, reported or witnessed by the writers?

I think because I had a book as my source material, the way that Emma Healey who was the author of the book wrote Maud, portrayed Maud and the disease that Maud is suffering from, it was very very graphic in the book, there are incidences in the book that describe the frustration, the anxiety the pain the fear that Maud feels – she forgets all the time so she has to have prompts around the house she has to have post it notes, she writes everything down so that she can be prompted to remember because her short term memory is failing. So much of that is detailed in the book and I think it is because Emma herself has personal experience of the disease, she based it on her grannies. Coming to the book and as an adaptor I too have personal experience of dementia, my father had vascular dementia and my granddad had dementia in his 70’s and 80’s, so it runs in my family in that way, and I’ve witnessed it twice, in fact I’ve written about dementia before for 麻豆社 Scotland, a film called Golden Wedding so I personally have a great deal of experience of dealing with a person with dementia so I could call on experiences that I had witnessed, conversations that I had had with my father that were on loops going around and round and round because he was forgetful and I had the wonderful resource of Emma’s book. So a long and winding way of answering your question is that yes, I think the writers had personal experience of this disease and could therefor draw on truth and authenticity.

Question 2. A brilliant Adaptation, how did you find holding all the story threads together and handle the flashback at the same time – it all seemed so seamless?

Well that’s the magic of television actually, because it took a lot of work, it’s a very complicated book in some ways, even though it feels deceptively simple when you read it because it is so beautifully told and you are right inside the characters head. That was one of the joys of the book but also one of the biggest challenges of the adaptation. How do you take a story that is told as an internal narration, sohas an internal voice but is also unreliable in that way, because you never know when Maud is telling the truth, you only have her word for everything in the book. So, the challenge for any adaptor, any dramatist taking a book like that is, how do you keep that sense of being inside Mauds head? So that was the first challenge. We developed this script over 4-5 years which is not a long time in the world of television, I’m afraid to tell you, it’s quite an average amount of time and I was very lucky to work with a script executive called Claire Armspach at STV and the creative head of development at STV Sarah Brown, and basically they were my script team so I had a sounding board, I had people to feed in, I had Claire and Sarah giving me support and help, particularly with things like structure and flashbacks and how do you tell the story of an unreliable narrator and I think gradually through that support and through that help and that feedback I found a path through it and the first key to it was to make sure that everything we did in the script was told from Mauds point of view. So, nothing can happen unless Maud witnesses it or remembers it, that became a rule actually. In terms of flashbacks, it’s really difficult with flashback because flashback interrupts the story flow and it can be very irritating for an audience. They are staying in the present tense and following the story through and then suddenly they are catapulted back in time and they are like Whoa what’s happening I don’t get that, why have you done this to me? So how was I going to do the flashbacks so it didn’t interrupt the flow, it didn’t jolt the audience out of being inside Mauds head which was incredibly crucial and it didn’t actually make them stand back from the drama and I knew that the answer to that was going to be stylistic and tonal. So, in order to facilitate that I had a really deep think about what the disease does to people. What’s the nature of the memory, the nature of Alzheimer’s and dementia in itself and I went back to my dad in this instance because when I used to go visit him in his care home towards the end of his life, he was absolutely convinced that he was living in Africa, even though he was in this tiny care room overlooking the Clyde in Greenock. So you’d have these conversations with him and we were back in Africa when I was a child with him, so he was operating on two different realities if you like, he was in the past with me and he was in the present with me. So that gave me a sort of idea that if I put Maud in her own memories, if she was present in the flashbacks, then you were also making a statement about memory as well as flashing back to a past event. So that’s why the first time it happens is when she arrives at the bandstand her memory of Sukey has been instigated and has been , Emma describes it in the book as the memory squirms to the surface when she finds the compact in the garden and so these memories had started to squirm up for Maud and she gets to the bandstand and Sukey her sister is there and she can see her and she is in the bandstand and Maud is watching her and Mauds younger self, young Mauddie comes into the frame with Maud, so Maud is her younger self in the past and her older self in the present but she is experiencing the memory in real time. So, I hope that makes sense but that is what we decided to do with the flashbacks. Often she could be present in her own memory and sometimes we told the flashbacks as a kind of as a story in themselves. We used a variety of techniques, so if it felt seamless, job done!

Question 3. Elizabeth is missing – the main character has so many layers, do you have a particular preference for building a character when you were writing?

Thank you, that is a real compliment to any writer, so I will take that and I am thrilled by it, she had those layers in the book so I was lucky I had that source material to work from. Emma Healeys character of Maud is a character that was rich, rounded, three dimensional, full of quirks and complications and complexity and truth and fears and frustration and desperation. She was also cantankerous, funny, fierce and she was an absolute joy to write. So in that instance I had a great deal of help building those layers because she was on a plate really for me. When it comes to other work where I don’t have a source material to work from, for example, my mother is in everything I write, she doesn’t always exist as my mother in my scripts but she will be there in some form or other, things she has said to me, things she’s done, her behaviour her quirks, her attitude her love, her pride, her irascibility, all those things. My mother will make it into my scripts somehow. The same for other members of my family, I think my poor family are like oh god you are not writing about us again are you? And they think oh please please please, so I’m a terrible thief if you like, of my own life and my experiences and I change them - I use them to my own ends which is terrible but I don’t put them wholesale into my stuff. And also I’m a great observer of human behaviour, I talk to every taxi driver possible, I like to know what is going on in people’s minds, find out about people who are not in my “inner circle” or even in my world view. I listen to conversations on traings and buses so that I can pick up speech patterns, actually what they don’t say is often more important than what they do say. I’m a great believer in silence and in emotional repression. It gives the dramatist a lot to go on, you know when people don’t tell you exactly how they feel. Most really good films and drama have got characters that don’t reveal themselves in words but by action or by not acting. So yeah, that is how I build my layers, I watch I listen and I try to be as authentic and truthful as possible.

Question 4. Who is the person you trust most to read your first drafts?

That’s a brilliant question. My partner Simon was a guardian journalist and we’d been together for 9 years. He read every draft of Elizabeth, he read everything I wrote and he was a fantastic sounding board first person to read. He didn’t give me what he called jam, he would say, that’s jam, you don’t need jam, what you need is the honest broker and I never felt for a minute that he wasn’t proud. I always knew he believed in my work, I’d never been made to feel quite so confident by anyone before but I also knew that he would be rigidly honest and totally upfront with me and he would not give me any jam. So he always got the first drafts. Unfortunately he died in December and I now, I have got other people that I do trust and that I will send my work too mainly the producers that I am working with on whichever project it is, my script editors. In fact I work with really good people I’m really lucky so now I will look outside my immediate experience and I will go to the people that I work with and the people that I trust. But, I will always keep his voice in my head because I know… he has read so much of it now that I know what he would say to me and I’m enough to have that, so yeah that’s a big up to him.

Question 5. Did you have any say in Glenda Jacksons casting, was she what you envisaged when writing for Maud’s character?

That’s a really brilliant question, I did have a say in so far as I was an executive producer and therefore across everything. The other executive producer Sarah Brown and I, we brought Aisling the director on and Chrissy Skinns who produced it so we were across everything as such. In terms or Glenda I didn’t have any specific in my head, yes actresses that you knew in that age group you would consider them absolutely definitely and of course you know, you think about as you are writing it, you think about all of them and you imagine different actors doing it and we all have our favourite actors there’s no question. But, I can’t take credit for Glenda, because, Aisling when she came in to talk to us about directing it, she was the only director we saw and from the minute I met her and the way she talked about the script I just knew she got it and we said to her, so, who do you think – have you got anybody in your mind, when you see it, you know, who do you think you would suggest as a potential Maud? And she just without hesitation said Glenda Jackson. Now, it hadn’t occurred to us, and not because we don’t think Glenda is magnificent, because she is magnificent, it didn’t occur to us because the perception was she wasn’t really acting in film anymore so she didn’t really occur to me because I thought well she was off doing theatre after being in parliament so it hadn’t occurred up until that moment, but the minute Aisling said it there was nobody else. So, the script got sent to Glenda, she was in New York playing King Lear and she was on Broadway and Aisling flew out to Manhattan with a package which included a copy of the book and Aisling had done this beautiful mood board and a tone wall, what it would look like in her head, she is incredibly visual director and she spent a couple of hours with her and it wasn’t too long after that Aisling had come back that we heard Glenda wanted to do it and I count my lucky star every day when I think about Glenda and her interpretation of that character because there is no one else, no one else that could of played it in the way that she played it and I think the astonishing thing about her performance is its beyond acting it’s not acting its being! And I’d say for a writer to have had the opportunity of someone like Glenda to speak their words or to even interpret the character in that way I think it’s astonishing and I’m sure Emma feels exactly the same about Glenda and Maud. You know there are no superlatives enough to describe her performance and the way she worked with Aisling and everything it’s been a joy.

Question 6. What is the most valuable thing that you have learned about the art of storytelling?

Gosh, that’s hard. Be honest be true be authentic, do not patronise your audience. Know who your audience is, know what it is for, know what your story is, know why you are telling it – that’s more than one thing but I think it’s all part and parcel of the same thing. You have to know what you want to say and how you want to say it and why you want to say it and who you are saying it to. So I think that’s the most valuable thing. Other things you know, how to structure, how to write dialogue how to write good characters you can get advice on that you can get help people can read your stuff, give you feedback. Talent does come into it, people are talented and they have an instinct and they can write but there is also hard graft and hard work and persistence and being open and not being closed off. Listen to what people tell you because even if people who give you feedback it sounds ridiculous and you just think I’m never doing that because it’s the worst bit of advice I’ve ever been given there will be something at the heart of what they are saying to you that isn’t working about your story or your screenplay so you need to look underneath the note, underneath the question and dig out the answer for yourself because only you can find it, because you are the writer.

Question 7. Did you work with Emma Healey the author of the book when writing the screenplay?

We went to lunch and we talked about my interpretation of it and how I felt about it and what I thought I would do with it, how I thought it would unravel as a screenplay and at the beginning we were going to do it over 3 hours and it was only in the last part of the development that we actually, we changed it to 90 minutes which it should always of been but sometimes it takes you ages to find the right format for a story and you go down a lot of roads, long and wrong roads when you are developing a film or TV project and we had gone down a few blind alleys with this in development but that happened without consultation with Emma in some ways because once I’d had lunch with her I think she felt that she had given us the book, she trusted us to do the book and actually we were just to get on with it. She did not want to be involved in that way, she wanted to sit back and to wait until we were ready to show her the script and then for the film to happen. So she was quite hands off in that way. I’ve worked with other writers like Rose Tremain for example, who is also amazing and Rose is much more hands on and she likes to get in and dig about with you so she will read every draft. You’ll make a suggestion to Rose about say a change, changing something to do with the story or plot and she’ll think about it she’ll go, I wish I did that, I wish I’d done that or she’ll say what about this and what about that and you’d jump off each other and that’s just a different way of working. Neither are right or wrong, each author brings a different thing to the process and you go with what is best for that author and also in some ways what is best for you. You also have to have the freedom to make your own choices and your own decisions and to not feel that somebody is looking over your shoulder all the time judging you when you are not in a position or place where you have it fully formed. Rose never does that, Rose is a wonderful wonderful collaborator and I think that Emma just chose not to be that involved. Other write novelists will do it differently.

Question 8. Where do you start when inspiration hits?

Well I am arch procrastinator number 1, so I’m just going to tell you when inspiration hits I’m usually to be found looking at dresses on the internet, cleaning out my cupboards, washing my bathroom floor, which doesn’t get done very often but when inspiration hits, oh I’ve got a million and one reasons why I’ll do it in a minute, I’ll do it in a minute, I’ll start in a minute… Now people think procrastination is a bad thing but actually you know what? your subconscious is doing an awful lot of work while you are procrastinating so while I am washing my bathroom floor or looking at frocks my subconscious is working with the inspiration and telling me how to get going and where to start and what I’m looking for and how to find it. And then when I am ready my subconscious will hopefully speak to me and then I sit down and I just dive in. It’s weird when I first started you couldn’t of got me to write an outline I was no no no no no, how ridiculous, I didn’t have cards all over my wall like some people do, I didn’t write anything down, I just went for it. I started at the beginning, ploughed through to the end and then I’d end up with 145 pages of blurt really but at least it was there for me to then properly start working because until you’ve got it down on paper it’s not going to happen you can’t rework it you can’t hone it, you can’t find it you can’t tune it you can’t sort of fly with it really. So, at first I was adamant, stubborn as anything – I’m not writing an outline, no no I don’t know how to do treatments, oh god, I’ll write a draft, but, now I wouldn’t start without an outline actually so in all those years that I’ve been working my process has changed. It’s often as much work to do an outline as it is to write your first draft but it doesn’t half give you a good roadmap – you know where you are beginning and you know where you are ending and also it helps with the people that you are working with to give them that and to say right are we on the same page? Because if you are making a different film from your producer or your director or your script executive then you need to know really quite early on so you can adapt and adjust and negotiate and do all those things, you need to be on the same page. Outlines are really good for showing that up. You right an outline, you won’t stick to it. it’ll change, it’ll develop, it’ll adapt, it’ll go off on a tangent, you’ll find something new in the outline that you hadn’t even thought of but it’s there as a map, it’s just there as an aide memoir, it’s there to kind of guide you, so now I always do one but I still don’t use those weird index cards.

Question 9. Congratulations on the profoundly moving Elizabeth is missing. I was moved to tears for most of the last half hour. Having not read Emma Healey’s novel, what is the balance of the original story between uncovering what happened to Sukey and Elizabeth’s disappearance? Was the Alzheimer’s themes amplified in your script or was it already present in the original story?

It’s definitely already present, but Emma never names the disease. Because Maud is telling you the story, she is telling you her own story. Maud could not articulate to you what her disease is because that would be stepping outside herself. She never names it but when we gave the script to our advisor at Dementia UK, the doctor that read it, Karen, she told Aisling the Director and Glenda The Actor, that this was definitely Alzheimer’s rather than a vascular dementia or another kind of dementia so she could pin point it because of the behaviour, because of what was happening to Maud and what Maud was doing. So we took the decision to name it in the script and that is because we could because we had characters who could say it, that you could watch say it if you like, it wasn’t Maud articulating her own disease like it would have been in the book. The book has the capacity to go into so much more detail to have more event, have more story because it’s a longer read. I have 90 minutes as a dramatist, so I have to make choices and what I have to absolutely do is be true to the essence of the book otherwise what is the point of adapting it. If I feel I’ve done that, then I feel I’ve done my job as the adaptor because I know what the author wants to say, I know what her story is about and my adaptation has to be true to that, otherwise you might as well give up and not adapt anyone else’s work because it is a huge responsibility to the source material. You have a responsibility; you also have a responsibility to your audience so you have to make certain choices. Now, interestingly enough there is a story strand in the book which concerns the old woman from Maud’s past who haunts her if you like, because she was the only one as it transpires, and this is revealed in the book as well as in the screenplay who really knew what happened to sukey and because she was ‘mad’, because she was ‘raving’, because she was grief stricken in actual fact, nobody listened to her. So, the parallels between that old woman in the past and Maud in the present are there for all to see and that is present in the book. I have taken that and I’ve run with that slightly. In the book it is revealed that that old woman was Doug, the lodgers mother, so there is an emotional connection for him, which is why he steals food for her, why he keeps her in.. Why he lets her have the accommodation. In the book it’s in the removals van, in the script we do it slightly differently, we had to change that for various production reasons. So we understand why he is doing that. That connection, the old woman and her death and her connection to Doug, actually is in the script. Aisling filmed that scene, the old womans death where we revealed she was Doug’s mum, but when it came to the edit, it just didn’t work in the film as a whole, we couldn’t find, it just didn’t flow with the story and in the end it felt that the important thing we were doing was telling Maud’s story. Maud and Sukey and Elizabeth, it was about her quest, it was about her disease, it was about her family and actually Dougs relationship to the old woman wasn’t as important in the film as it was in the book. So, a choice was made there. That is what you have to do as filmmakers, as dramatists making your film from source material. In the end, it’s a film and it has to work as a screen story. So, when you get into the edit and even in script stage and into the edit, those decisions that you make are because it is a screen story. It isn’t the book anymore, it isn’t even the script it is a series of images of scenes of characters interacting together on screen for an audience. So choices get made sometimes in an edit, which, because they serve the film, not necessarily because they serve the script or the book, even though we would still hope we are being incredibly true to the essence of Emma’s book, which is Mauds story.

Question 10. What is the best way to start a screen writing career?

By writing, I think. Start your career by writing your story down, by saying what you want to say, by getting it down on paper, getting to the end, get it written, and then find somebody to read it. That’s the best way to get going, you need the feedback, you are not an island. When you work on a screenplay or you write for the screen, there are so many more people involved in the process than just you. There is that lovely great moment where you are writing your first draft and it’s just you, and you can do what you want and you can have a ball or you can fly, or you can beat your head off the wall because you can’t make one scene work or you can look at dresses or whatever it is that you do, but then you get the feedback and it’s not just an editor and a publisher, there is a lot more people coming back, there’s financiers, there’s commissioners, there’s script development people, there’s script executives, there’s producers, there’s directors, there’s everybody, there’s the world and his wife because film is collaborative, film is a communal experience, it is not you just sitting in front of your computer, re-writing. Move it on, develop your skill. Do everything you can in order to make yourself a better screenwriter, but listen, listen to other people, I think what other people say to you is really important, but at the same time, this is going to sound really contradictory, but trust yourself, trust your own instincts because it is your story and you’re telling it and you are the writer.

Ask the Write Questions – a Podcast from the 麻豆社 Writersroom. Find out more about us and keep up to date with news and opportunities on the and by following us on social media.

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