Tony McNamara likes a challenge but when Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos first presented him with Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel by Poor Things to adapt into a script, even the seasoned Australian writer admits he found the material daunting.
“When Yorgos first gave me the book, I read it and thought, ‘Oh, this is great – I’ve never adapted a book before’ and then I read it and thought, ‘Well, this should not be the book,” McNamara told an audience at Dublin’s Storyhouse festival. “I mean, it’s a book about a baby’s brain in a woman’s head – let’s not do this. But Yorgos and I had a great time working together on The Favourite and The Great and we clearly get along so eventually I said, ‘Alright, I’ll do it’ and I was up for the challenge.
“But after writing seventy pages of the first draft, I wrote to Yorgos and said, ‘I can’t do it, it doesn’t work, I can’t make it work and I don’t know what to do. And he wrote back and, being the kind of person he is anyway, he said, ‘We knew it would be hard and it will be worth it – keep going.’”
Poor Things, which is the third collaboration between Lanthimos and McNamara, went on to score 11 Oscar nominations, including a Best Adapted Screenplay for McNamara and Best Director nod for Lanthimos, and solidified a solid shorthand between the writer and director.
McNamara recalled how he and Lanthimos hit it off almost instantly when the pair met years ago. “My agent called me and said there’s a great director who wants to talk to you and there’s no money, but you should see his film. And then I saw Dogtooth and I was like, ‘I don’t care if there’s no money’ – I just felt like I got him.”
McNamara said the two set up a Zoom interview and “twelve minutes later Yorgos walked out of the office past the producers, and they asked what happened or if it went badly and he just said, ‘It’s fine – we’ve got it’.”
He added: “I think we just have a very similar sensibility and a sense of humor and we just understand each other in a very easy way and that’s our part. Our process is very easy and very simple and low stress.”
McNamara, who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for The Favourite, sat down for a wide-ranging discussion about his career at Storyhouse, the brainchild of The Favourite and Poor Things production and distribution powerhouse Element Pictures. where he offered established and burgeoning screenwriters in the Irish capital some insight into the challenges and rewards of the screenwriting process.
“The process of writing to me is the reward, is the joy, and it’s the only thing I can control so it’s on me if I want a measurable life,” said McNamara.
“All you’ve got is, ‘Did I love writing that story?’, ‘Did I love the challenge of my craft?’ The challenge of the craft is the joy for me and it’s a craft that’s really hard to learn and is a constant challenge. Every story asks new things of you, personally and philosophically so, for me, that’s what it’s about.
He added: “I’m just interested in being a writer. I’m interested in the experience of writing and working with creative people and the business of what happens to your thing – I can’t control it. I’ve had it go well, clearly, but I’ve also had it not go well. But it’s better to view it as a long road and get joy out of the process.”