I guess my approach to adapting books is to treat them with a deep respect on one level and at another level part them to one side and go, 'I'm doing something completely different here.'

When you make a movie, a dramatization based on the real experience of a living subject, you cant airbrush that away into to a perfect movie arc.

I guess my approach to adapting books is to treat them with a deep respect on one level and at another level part them to one side and go, 'I'm doing something completely different here.'

For me, as a writer who comes from quite a naturalistic tradition, British screenwriting is quite delicate, quite small, and rarified in a way.

There isnt a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were a notional threat.

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.

I'm very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk.