Lonergan discusses adapting ‘Howards End’
“Howards End,” the upcoming four-part miniseries adapted from E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel, isn’t Kenneth Lonergan’s first foray into television. That would be the animated Nickelodeon kids show “Doug.”
Before Lonergan was one of the most acclaimed playwrights and filmmakers of his generation, he was like most young writers: hunting for work and for money. He and his friend Andy Yerkes wrote a pair of 1993 episodes for “Doug.” How it happened, the 55-year-old playwright can’t recall.
“Or why they only wanted us to write only two episodes,” said Lonergan. “I guess they didn’t like our episodes very much. I thought they were OK.”
“Howards End,” a BBC production that Starz will premiere Sunday, may be Lonergan’s second TV credit but - no offence to “Doug” - it’s his most substantial small-screen effort yet. Lonergan wrote the fourhour series, directed by Hetti MacDonald and starring Hayley Atwell, while working on “Manchester by the Sea,” for which he won best screenplay at last year’s Academy Awards.
Exhausted from the rigours of that Oscar campaign (“Those events really take over your consciousness, not just your life,” he says) Lonergan opted not to direct the British series and instead concentrate solely on adapting the book about three rungs of society in Edwardian England: the high-minded Schlegel sisters, the wealthy but obstinate Wilcoxes and the unfortunate Basts.
In a recent interview, Lonergan discussed making “Howards End” - previously made into the 1992 Merchant-Ivory film, with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins - seeing his 2001 play
“Lobby Hero” revived on Broadway.
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P: Had you been tempted by television for a while? Was it inevitable that you’d try it?
Lonergan: Probably. For a long time before I started screenwriting, I never had an idea for a movie. Once I finally had one, more came. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write for the movies. I just always thought in terms of plays. Since then, I’ve been thinking in terms of plays and movies, and now, possibly, I’ll think in terms of plays, movies and television.
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P: Was Forster’s book meaningful to you? Lonergan: No, it wasn’t, actually. I had tried to read it earlier in life and not been engaged by it. But I read it when they offered me the assignment and it’s something I actually came to admire more and
more as I worked on it.
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P: What do you admire about it?
Lonergan: When you put his dialogue into scene form, it really comes to life quite beautifully. Possibly because it’s a different time and place, a lot of the humour is more evident when you put it into teleplay form than it is when you’re reading it. It’s really kind of an amazing structure. And it has a great feeling of kindness and humanity to it. Some of it’s a bit schematic and some of the characters are better drawn than others, but as you’re working through your teleplay looking for material to plumb, you just find more and more. A
P: That compassion and wit make it a good fit for you. I imagine you’re unlikely to write anything that doesn’t include some humour.
Lonergan: Yeah, you have to be really good to get by without
any humour. It’s almost impossible.
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P: Why is it, do you think, we keep coming back to “Howards End”?
Lonergan: It seems to me that one thing it’s about is people coming up against the limits of their own experience, and also finding the value in their own experience. There are some things the Wilcoxes just cannot handle and that the Schlegels are very good at, and vice versa.
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P: Some have said “Lobby Hero,” about a series of moral dilemmas including one involving a police officer’s sexual harassment, is timelier now than it was in 2001. How does it sound to you, 17 years later?
Lonergan: It sounds pretty good to me. The production is very good. The cast is great. It’s been fun to revisit. It seems to hold up pretty well.