Bookshelf Interview with Hossein Amini
- Olivia Morelli
- Nov 11, 2018
- 13 min read
Updated: Nov 12, 2018
Hossein Amini is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and film director. Best known for his adaptations, Amini has been nominated for multiple awards for films such as The Wings of the Dove (1997), Drive (2011) and The Two Faces of January (2014), which was also his directional debut. This year, he had huge success with the BBC crime drama television series McMafia and the period drama The Alienist.
Have you always wanted to go into screen writing or film?
I started off writing plays, but it was always with a view to learn different crafts that feed in to screen writing. I was interested in directing and writing at the same time. I think you can combine theatre and film more and more now. Multiple disciplines are merging into each other, playwrights can also be screenwriters and vice versa - it didn’t used to be like that.
Do you remember what your first play was? What it was about?
It was very pretentious - it was about Baudelaire, and it was at the Kings Head Theatre. It was really exciting, and it was great to have a play on in London while I was at university. We got some nice reviews, and that was it! It didn’t launch my career or anything, but it just gave me the confidence to know that the first thing I’d done had been fairly well received.
Do you think going to Oxford University gave you particular opportunities in the way of writing?
There was a lot of theatre. They had a system where each college would put on plays and finance them for students. If you wanted to direct or write something you would have to ask for money for a production, so there were productions on all the time. That was where I first adapted and directed a few things. I remember adapting Othello, I condensed it to have just three characters: Othello, Iago and Desdemona. So there were lots of opportunities to do many different things, and I really learnt a lot.
When you’re adapting books and plays, do you have a particular structure or system that you follow?
With pretty much all of the adaptations I’ve done, I’ve tried to base them around my memory of the book. There’s something special about that first experience of reading a book; a certain emotional reaction when finishing a book that you love. You feel like no one else has ever felt the exact same thing you felt, and that individual experience is truly special. I think that’s what the goal of an adaptation is for me: to try and capture the essence of those unique emotions you feel when reading a book for the first time, and the impact it had on you. Ultimately the adaptation process takes so long that you lose that essence over time, but I think the best adaptations are made when you are able to keep whatever it was that excited you about the book in the screenwriting.
How do you decide which book you want to turn into a film?
A lot of it is down to the book itself, how much I enjoy it or how much screenwriting potential it has, but I also love research. I did history at university so quite often I’ll take a project because I’m really interested in reading up around the subject matter. For example, I could suddenly have to dive in to 19th century New York, or Mexican cartels, or anything like that, and so I would generally read about 20 or 30 or even more books around a certain subject. The research period is the part I love almost as much as the writing itself.
Is there any book you’ve read that you’d loved to adapt, but haven’t had the opportunity to yet?
Until recently, I think most people tried to solely adapt books into films, but there has been a sudden revelation that some books are more suitable to television rather than film. Tender is the Night is a book I have always really loved because of its unusual structure. The first two books are set in the present, then it jumps back for the next two, and then goes back to the present again, so you’ve got this middle chunk which is a flashback. I think in a film it’s quite hard to capture that tripartite structure, whereas with television, those transitions in time are easier over episodes. With Tender is the Night, the film version wasn’t as good because it suffers from that exact problem. I think the only time it has been done really well before is when Dennis Potter did an adaptation in the eighties.
Do you have a preference in writing for television or film?
I think it’s the material itself that really dictates whether it is film or TV, rather than any preference. In terms of snobbery, there is nothing between the two these days. I think it is just as prestigious to do a television adaptation as it is to do a film adaptation, but that hasn’t always been the case. Another of my favourite books is The Black Dahlia, a James Ellroy book. It was made into a movie about ten years ago and, again, I don’t think it really worked. The whole book is an obsessive investigation over a period of time, and that is much easier to examine over eight or ten hours of TV rather than compressed into two for film. You really get the sense of the tragedy of time passing with television that you don’t get in a film.
You’ve mentioned time passing quite a lot, is that a theme you enjoy incorporating into your writing?
It depends of it is a theme of the book itself, but I think it’s a really important concept. For example, Tender is the Night for me is a book about how time defeats people, and how people start off golden and yet somehow, inevitably, let life grind them down. By the end of the book, whether it’s by age or tragedy or heartache, the original lustre and hope from the beginning is gone. With a theme like that I think it’s really important to show the passage of time in an adaptation. But then again, some books are much more visceral thrill rides that are actually about compressing time. I think sometimes those books are more suitable to film where you really want to be seeing everything second by second.
Would you say themes are more important than characters in your writing?
For me personally, characters are the most important thing. They contain emotion, which I find more interesting than any ideological point of view. I think there is a danger in screenwriting when focussing exclusively on themes. Human beings can’t necessarily follow one particular theme or idea over a long period of time with lots of distractions; we are inherently inconsistent and the nuances and transitions within writing mean that one can easily get lost if it’s too ideological. I think if you try to stick too rigorously to a theme you can lose the essence of what makes us multifaceted and interesting and complex: emotions.
Speaking of characters, do you have a particular actor that you have always wanted to work with, or do you think its very character-dependent?
I generally tend to write without having a specific actor in mind. The character that Ryan Gosling played in Drive is a kind of archetype that I’ve always been drawn to. I’ve always loved Clint Eastwood films and Westerns in general, and the main character in those films tend to be the sort of silent, inarticulate person who feels a great deal but can’t express it. It’s that idea of people not being able to express how they feel or love; they’re not quite buttoned up, but have a lot going on inside. Ryan Gosling is an actor who has one of those faces, yet it’s his talent and ability that he can do so much with so little. He is someone I really admire in that sense. One of the things I’ve always loved about film is that silences are often more interesting than words. What people don’t say is equally as important as what they do. You can stick a camera in someone’s face and capture them in their own private moment. Some of the strongest scenes are when someone is talking but you get a close up of someone else’s face; they don’t speak, yet you can almost follow their thought processes. The subtext on screen can be so rich that, actually, the dialogue becomes almost entirely irrelevant. It’s what is going on underneath that counts. That’s what I find so exciting about screenwriting.
You’ve previously said you use personal experiences to help you write. Did it take long to develop that skill?
That does take a bit of time. When you start writing it is easy to borrow too closely from yourself, and it’s easy to verge on the autobiographical. Unless you’ve had a really fascinating life, autobiographies aren’t necessarily very interesting to other people. But if you try to find a commonality with an experience that your character is having within the story, if you can find something that’s true to you, I think that allows for more resonant writing. People recognise emotions within themselves, and consequently can relate to experiences they’ve never had. Particularly in genre writing, where there are fantastical or heightened storylines, to be able to take something personal gives the plot a richness that stops it from being something completely impersonal. Everyone’s experiences are unique, so I think those elements bring different flavours to a story.
It’s obviously never easy to get negative criticism, but would you say that putting personal elements into your writing makes it even harder?
Having worked in the industry as long as I have, the tough criticism is always really hard, its maybe a little harder when its personal, but I wouldn’t say for me it’s hugely so. You built up defence mechanisms, almost shutting yourself off if you know that something is going to be bad. You generally get a sense of whether it’s going to be well received before it comes out, and then it’s just a case of self-preservation. As a writer you still have to get up and write the next day, and if you’re worrying too much about a bad review then it’s going to paralyse you.
Who has been your favourite author to adapt?
Out of all the adaptations I’ve done, I think the two I’m proudest of are Wings of the Dove and Drive, partly because both books didn’t end up being much like the final scripts. Henry James doesn’t really write scenes – it’s more interior reflections of past events, so I had to invent a lot of scenes. But the characters he had drawn in Wings of the Dove were so extraordinary that it felt so easy to invent the scenes around them. He’d given such detailed psychology of all the characters. Similarly, Drive didn’t really have a plot, so I made that up. That central character I understood because of how James Sallis had described him in such a short novella, but in such great psychological detail that it almost became a road map that allowed me to invent a scene or other characters but still be informed by the brilliance of what was originally written. It’s that mix of the adaptation and the personal, and it’s where the two connect that I find the most interesting. Both of those were almost half-original and half-adapation, as opposed to Jude, which was harder. Thomas Hardy had written scenes very clearly, so it then became a process of filleting what was there, and that’s never as satisfying. That again should’ve probably been done as a mini-series.
We’d love you to share your top five books for our bookshelf.
Tender Is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
It’s funny because when I was in my teens I used to think Hemingway was the greatest writer of all time and I didn’t really get Fitzgerald at all. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve really got to appreciate Fitzgerald. Even though he died really young, he captures this sense that life somehow defeats you, and your hopes that started off so pure become tarnished over time. He started off as this hugely acclaimed novelist with The Great Gatsby and his early stuff, and then suddenly had this fallow period, which is when he wrote Tender is the Night. It wasn’t particularly well received, and he ends up being this sad, drunk screen-writer living in Hollywood. Tender is the Night is where he really drew on his own personal life, with Zelda Fitzgerald and their life in the south of France. For me, it’s the best depiction of a marriage breakdown I’ve ever read. But it’s also the idea of Dick Diver, who starts off as this god-like, beautiful, angelic figure, and by the end of it is this sad, broken, defeated man. I think it truly captures what it’s like to be a human being; from all the hopes and the potential of youth, to the inevitable defeat of later life. To capture the essence of what we go through as individuals in a book is incredible, and he’s done it in the form of this beautiful, heart-breaking love story.
Crime and Punishment – Fydor Dostoyevsky (1866)
Crime and Punishment, unlike Tender Is The Night, is a book I’ve read throughout my life, and it has a different effect on me every time. It had a particularly strong impact on me when I was a teenager and in my early twenties. There is one scene that keeps coming back to me. It is after the protagonist has committed the murder, he goes to bed and wakes up the next morning, and for an instant he has forgotten what he’s done. Dostoyevsky describes how suddenly the memory just comes rushing back and - even though I’ve never murdered anyone or anything like that - it is so recognisable as something I think we all experience at some stage in our lives. That weird thing of forgetting something and suddenly the force with which that memory comes back, and how it almost physically affects you with its power. It was a huge moment for me, reading that. It made me think about how through writing you can capture a feeling that so many have felt before, and create connections with people through it. Crime and Punishment is a book that has lots of moments that really taught me about writing, and what was important to me within writing. It particularly taught me a lot about the ambiguity of character. You can have someone who has done what he’s done in the book, and yet still be able to find compassion and be compelled by him. I’ve always been drawn to writing dark characters, because there’s this challenge of how to maintain the character’s authenticity but also make a character who is attractive to a reader or audience. It’s a really exciting challenge, mainly because I think most of us house both good and dark character traits within ourselves, which is why we can all be drawn towards these type of ambiguous characters. I also just love the way Dostoyevsky uses religion. I do think there are certain archetypal stories that run through all great literature – whether it’s the Christ myth or just themes of redemption, etc – and to put these familiar concepts into a novel that is about something very different is a great lesson in how you can pull abstract religious mythological ideas and put them into contemporary narratives.
A Grief Observed – C. S. Lewis (1961)
This book is absolutely tiny. It’s really about his dialogue with God after his wife’s death. I think anyone who’s lost someone dear to them should read it. It’s an incredible raw depiction of what it’s like, moment by moment, going through the pain and dealing with loss but it’s also a really enthralling debate about faith. He’s very religious, and his wife’s death rocked his faith to such an extent that the book is as much about grief and how to deal with it as it is about how to still believe in god when he takes away something so important to you. It questions how a good god can exist when he makes two people fall in love, only to create such terrible heartbreak and separate them. The book uses a personal experience to bring to light even higher levels and questions, for example how can we believe in god when these terrible things are going on all around the world? How can god look on and do nothing? It’s a really fascinating debate, and one that he is clearly struggling and is torn over. In such a tiny book he captures such a vast philosophy of life and so much of the human struggle. It’s an extraordinary book, truly monumental.
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (1899)
Having said theme is something I avoid, there’s something about Heart of Darkness that sort of speaks to me really personally. It’s the idea of man going off in search of his shadow - which is really the essence of the book - and not just that, but going off to find the darker side of his own soul. It’s such a core story; it’s a bit like the Jesus myth in reverse: rather than finding redemption, it’s this notion of going into the heart of darkness and finding this abyss and emptiness, and staring into a horrible mirror. You can take that story and apply it to today – it’s no accident that it was remade as Apolcalyse Now. The core story Conrad created as a myth in that story now exists in so many other films, plays, and books. It’s this theme of the ‘quest’ to find something or someone, and the answer inevitably terrifies you and makes you look at the darkness in yourself. Lots of cop thrillers have that. Heat, which is one of my favourite films, has that shadow, these the two people hunting each other. Heart of Darkness has been a massive inspiration in terms of my screen writing, and determining what I’m drawn to. It’s this hunt and chase where at the end of it, you come up against yourself, which is, I think, a really interesting theme. You may catch the person you’re after, but that person makes you look inside and not necessarily like what you find there. I read it quite alot, it helps me with my writing. It’s interesting because even though it’s a hard book to read and isn’t really a page-turner itself, it actually inspires so many page-turners and truly gripping stories.
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy (1987)
This actually is a page-turner. It’s a story of two cops who become friends in the 40s in LA. There was a famous murder called the Black Dahlia murder, where a woman had been found literally chopped in half. Ellroy has taken this true story and turned it into this fictionalised account of the hunt of that person. What I loved is how it is a classic and brilliant detective story, but it also deals with that notion of time. Zodiac is quite similar as a film, and I think David Fincher was quite influenced by The Black Dahlia. Both have that notion of obsession, and again, a bit like Heart of Darkness, the concept of how this obsessive chase can start to reflect on the individuals themselves. There’s this Nietzsche notion of looking into the abyss and seeing yourself in there. I love crime thrillers and crime novels, but Ellroy uses the passage of time so well. In a lot of detective novels, the crime is solved in weeks, but when that happens it makes those books feel a bit slight. What Ellroy does is make it last over a long period of time. There are periods that the case goes cold, and everyone else loses interest, but the hero stays obsessed with it. I remember reading David Simon’s, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. It was his experience as a journalist in Baltimore - he eventually wrote The Wire based on it - but Homicide is about the obsession that policemen have with cases and victims. Usually the dead person is a MacGuffin at the beginning, a tool that is really there to propel the plot and that no one really cares about, but what James Elroy does so well in The Black Dahlia is make the victim come alive, and haunt the policemen who are trying to figure out who killed her. It’s a pulpy, violent story but there’s something really powerful and profound underneath. Those are the books I tend to like most which have got a mixture of genre, energy but also they’re trying to say something – I think it’s rare and extraordinarily powerful in crime fiction.
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