A letter from John LeCarré

Cinema North West Adaptation Festival 2011



Dear Friends,

Thank you for giving time to the screen versions of my novels.  I’m sorry I can’t be with you but thanks not least to the success of Tinker Tailor, I’ve become a bit of a moving target. Now I have to tell you, you are in for a mixed bag.  In principle, unlike some writers, I like my work to be adapted.  The first and most obvious reason is that film and television reach an audience few writers can dream of.  A whole lot of people go through life without reading a single novel, others might not think of reading my work if they hadn’t first seen it on the screen.  

The second reason is more personal.  I find it thrilling when a skilled film-maker is inspired by my work to translate it into his own medium.  He takes the germ of the idea, and the characters, and the story, and lets it infect him.  He assembles his army of technicians and artists and players, and sets out on his march.  And now and then, something wonderful happens.  We don’t get the film of the book.  We get the film of the film.  We get the miracle of a full realisation in a different, sovereign art form with its own disciplines and values.

The average reader addressing a full-length novel will give it his creative attention for as much as fifteen or maybe even thirty hours.  The same person sitting in the audience at the cinema needs a good reason why the story is not realised for him in two.  The art of telling stories in pictures is plain  -  as the Russians say  -  to a hedgehog.  You never speak it if you can show it.  Words give way to images.  So in that sense, the novel and the film are from the start at odds with one another.

I have been very lucky, and also at times deeply disappointed with the translation of my work from book to film.  You will choose for yourselves the high points and the low.  
For me, the landscape is pretty clear.  There are four peaks, some foot-hills, and some pretty awful wasteland.   My peaks, in chronological order, areThe Spy Who Came in from the Cold , the television adaptations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People, The Constant Gardener , and the recently released movie of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  

Of all of them, I suspect that the last will endure, despite its seeming complexity, as the most artistically satisfying, the most accomplished and the most daring.   But this isn’t a beauty contest.  It’s your choice, not mine.  And if other adaptations of my work please you more than they do me, I can only be happy.  Each production, whatever its merits, has received the devoted attention of gifted artists and technicians who have given their hearts to the project.   And it’s more than possible that, where an adaptation has failed, the original novel has failed the adaptation.

Thank you again for being here.  I wish you a lot of pleasure, and a lot of boisterous argument.
John le Carré, October 2011.

Photo (c)Stephen Cornwell for White Hare 2010