Make It About One Thing: A Conversation with Adaptation Whisperer David Magee
Screenwriter David Magee shares with Script his writing process behind tackling adaptations, character development, his writing journey from actor to abridging 80 novels, his daily writing routine and so much more.
Far and in between, there are few lucky screenwriters that find their true calling and longevity in their careers. For some, it's being in the right place at the right time. For others, it's having a strong network. For most, it's perseverance and a deep understanding and love of character and story. And in the case of screenwriter David Magee's screenwriting career, it's a little bit of all of the above. It certainly helps that David is by far one of the most humble, well-spoken, effervescent people you'd ever be lucky to cross paths with, let alone collaborate with.
David has been quite busy this year, having penned three new films; Lady Chatterley's Lover, The School for Good and Evil, both available on Netflix, and the soon-to-be-released film A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks. And believe it or not, all three films have one thing in common - they're all adaptations.
Having made a name for himself in Hollywood by adapting a play by the name of The Man Who Was Peter Pan, written by Allan Knee, which would become Finding Neverland in 2004 - David would go on to adapt Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Life of Pi and more. And as they say, the rest is history. We'll definitely be seeing more of David's craftwork in 2023 onward, with The Little Mermaid and The Tiger's Apprentice. Suffice to say, David is indeed the "Adaptation Whisperer."
David recently carved out some time during his incredibly busy schedule and spoke with Script about his writing process behind tackling adaptations, character development, his writing journey from actor to abridging 80 novels, to his daily writing routine. Plus, David shares invaluable advice for writers tackling an adaptation of their own.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
Sadie Dean: Your two latest films, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and A Man Called Otto, are both very different, but both are in the same wheelhouse of what you've been doing with your writing career to date, which has been predominately shaped by adaptations. What do you find yourself gravitating towards the most and wanting to draw from the story during that initial adaptation process?
David Magee: I think the biggest rule of thumb I have is that you have to respond emotionally to something and thematically to something in the story that you want to focus the story on, because novels are anywhere from 10 to 20 times longer than your screenplay is going to be. After you've cut away all the descriptions of backgrounds and the kind of asides, you have to focus on something, you can't make it about everything.
The analogy easiest for me to always go back to is you can write a nonfiction or a fictional version of the life of JFK, but you can't write about all of it. You can write about Camelot, you can write about the assassination, you can write about the missile crisis - trying to write about all of it, you'll end up writing about none of it, unless you are writing a 10-part series. And in that case, you better be focusing on one aspect.
Trying to focus on one thing that the central character is going through, experiencing, and trying to overcome. And at a certain point, they realize that in order to overcome it, they have to examine how they handle situations, or they have to change their thinking either about themselves or about what they truly want, which is kind of a midpoint turn in some cases. So, if you can find that, you can build everything off of that. And if you don't find that eventually, I mean, you can kind of wander around in the desert for a little and try out scenes and see what makes you happy, but if you just try and stuff in all the fun things that come to mind, you'll end up with nothing.
Sadie: Yeah, it's important. I recently spoke with author and screenwriter Scott Myers. He published a book earlier this year about The Protagonist’s Journey, and it focuses on characters and just really diving in, and one very important note he puts in there is “characters are complicated.” In your own writing, you do a really good job at examining that through all of your characters and have a way of just getting into their psyche.
David: That's great. Thank you very much. And I do think that it still gets down to kind of understanding the character spine first. I'm a moderately OK person at drawing, when you draw a figure, if you don't put the main parts of the body and you just concentrate on one part, your proportions all wrong, it doesn't quite fit, it doesn't look normal. So, you really have to focus on the spine first in both writing characters and in doing sketches. And then you can get as detailed as you want.
Sadie: And then there's that beauty of exploring and discovering all those nuances and how you can add to your story and character. With A Man Called Otto, which is based on both a novel and Swedish film, what were you navigating in terms of character and story but also finding that universal thread for American audiences, and hopefully, globally as well?
David: Well, I think the character of Otto is universally recognized on some level. We all know that cranky uncle, neighbor, cousin, grandfather, or whatever, who has at a certain point in their life, become disillusioned, become angry, become disappointed, suffered loss, or is feeling pain. And rather than express or reach out or feel like they can connect to other people about that, they allow that frustration and disappointment to come out in frustration and disappointment toward others.
I've said this in a couple of places that my father was the sweetest man, ever. But he was of that generation where he didn't express things when things were going badly, when he was disappointed, he just muscled it all down and soldiered on. And he had an illness for the last nine years of his life that left him in pain and frustration and disappointment at several points. And every time you asked him how he was doing, he'd say, 'I'm doing good. I'm doing fine.' But you would see his frustration come out in other ways and in other moments. And if you didn't know him, and you were in the restaurant, and suddenly, you saw him getting angry at a waiter for trying to help him with his menu, which is the last thing he wanted, ‘I don't want your help!’ you would think what a cranky old dude. But if you know him, and you know what he's going through, and you know what he experienced, which is kind of the key to writing a character like Otto, you understand why he's doing the things he's doing and what he's been going through.
That's kind of the trick of writing Otto at first in those first scenes. You see him being cranky, and you don't know why. But then very shortly afterward, you realize why, and now you feel for him, and then the next time he gets cranky, I've given you a little clue as to what's going on in his head and why this situation bothers him.
So, while you can still watch from the outside and if you were in that room, you would think this guy's a monster, you understand that it's actually something very serious to him. So that's kind of the trick to inviting you into that world. And that was the central focus of that character for me. And once you kind of find that, it's just fun to write, quite honestly. [laughs]
Sadie: And all the supplemental characters as well, they're so fun and they're just nice humans that you would have as a neighbor.
David: You identify with them. Yeah, absolutely.
Sadie: What is your writing routine, especially when taking on a new adaptation project?
David: Well, having done this for a while, I realized that the best way for me to handle anything is just to have some sort of schedule. And to stick with it. That doesn't mean I turn off my phone and lock the door and don't let anyone talk to me while I'm writing, but I have my routine after I go to the gym, and I'm trying to try to take care of myself. And then I get to writing at 10 am. And I stay in there with a quick lunch break until 6 pm, and then I'm off. I try not to spend my time with my family thinking about movies, because when I'm too much in my head, my wife knows it and I get in trouble. [laughs] And so I've tried to make a very strong habit of being a 10 to 6 writer, and if I have to work extra, and sometimes I do, I set that up for a very limited amount of time.
I think that having time on and time off is crucial to being a writer. I know there are writers who carry around their little notebooks and they come up with ideas at two in the morning. And if that works for you, great. I'm not critiquing anyone. If you managed to find out what works for you, great. I have never been that person. I've tried to be that person. I jot down ideas and sometimes they're mildly interesting, but the fact is if I don't remember it long enough to get back to my computer the next day it wasn't that great. So, that's really my process.
When it comes to specific projects, I have different routines when it comes to writing a pitch versus writing an outline versus writing a script. But sometimes you just kind of have to play it by ear and figure it out as you go - depends on the project, you know.
Sadie: Each one's unique. In terms of pitching, how often are you find yourself finding a book, or an IP that you resonate with and then building a pitch around that? Or are projects brought to you?
David: I've had the great fortune of having projects brought to me over the years. But that doesn't mean I don't do that - I absolutely do. And I have found projects that I love. And I've come up with original things that I love. I have the great luck and not curse exactly, but you know, when projects are brought to you, and you get to sign on, and you get paid to start writing, and you get paid for every step, it becomes very hard to justify going, 'Guys, I'm gonna go off for a half a year and just write something and then bring it back and see if you like it.' So, I don't do that. I don't write spec scripts. I've only written a very few because I felt passionately in love with an idea or a book. And some of those are still on my hard drive because I couldn't sell them and not because they weren't good, but because they weren't necessarily as viable commercially.
I do tend to take projects - I have the fortune to be able to be offered first, which is why I think I've become known for adaptations [laughs] because that's the job. Even if it's a news article or an interview, or recently I've been working on a project, I'm not going to go into it in detail, but it's based on a book in science that has nothing to do with any characters per se, except maybe you can imagine a character coming out of the lead person writing in the first person about this science, that would still be an adaptation. And so, I've kind of given up on concerning myself with getting my spec scripts out there.
Sadie: When you're doing an adaptation, do you heavily outline? And if you're lucky enough, do you find yourself having conversations with the original author, if possible, to have them help with additional background or navigate the world that they've created?
David: I have spoken to and I've been treated very well by writers whose works I've adapted. This is worth going on a slight tangent, when I first started, I was an actor, very long story short, I ended up narrating audiobooks, then I started abridging audiobooks, then I abridged 80 novels. So, I chopped up and cut apart and damaged other people's writing a lot. And I did my best to represent in 29,500 words what they were trying to do in 200,000 words. In the best scenario, those writers would say, 'Thank you for capturing everything that I was trying to do in those few words. I know I missed some stuff, but I get what you were trying to do.' In other circumstances, I don't think anyone was outright unhappy, because they knew that was what I had to do, but I knew that they didn't like to see that. It's got to be very hard to do to which I get it. I tried to do the best job I could.
When I actually got to writing adaptations of people's novels, I kind of made it a point maybe I'd introduce myself, or I might ask them key set questions, but I kind of prefer keeping a distance on that. Because what I'm responding to is the book and what I loved in the book, and as soon as you start drawing out parts of the book that you love, and putting them next to each other, you need more connective tissue, or you need to rearrange the order in which those scenes happen where you need to build out a character that played a very minor role in order that you're going to understand what's happening in the sequence. And sometimes you're still trying to capture the intent of that book. You're still, in my ideal world, someone who sees the film, who loved the book will say ‘you really captured it.’ But that doesn't mean if they went back and read the book, it would be the same, they might realize, ‘oh, wow, I thought that was in the book.’
Life of Pi was a good example of that, in that, I had to kind of create a narrative structure to take us on a journey of two hours and express what was going on in the mind of that character when he was hanging out on a boat with a tiger. I had to get into his head and let you see what was going on in his head through those actions. And Life of Pi is a beautiful book that is written in 100 very, very episodic chapters – ‘Today, I got sunburned. Today, I went fishing.’ - and it's a wonderful book. I'm not trying to diminish it by saying that, but that's not how you tell a film. So, I had to kind of remake the story in order to tell that character's story.
In that particular circumstance, late in the going Yann Martel who was lovely, and read the script and was very excited about it, sent a bunch of suggestions for dialogue. And I was so thrilled that he was happy with it, that I took almost every suggestion. And then the studio reached out and said, 'What happened? The character changed.' Unconsciously and over time, the character of Pi in the film was slightly older, slightly more rebellious toward his father, slightly more savvy about the world and what was going on. And the Pi of the original story was more naive, or wide eyed, a little bit younger. And when you put those lines in, I kept some of them obviously, but I had to be very careful not to change to a character that was three years younger, because a lot of our journey in telling Life of Pi was deciding that this is a story of coming of age, which was not essential in the novel. All respect to say, Yann Martel for the book he created that we would never have made a film out of otherwise, but we had to find that balance between bringing the author in and telling it as its own story.
Sadie: What kind of characters are you drawn to?
David: I'm interested in characters discovering things about themselves. I'm interested in characters who can make me laugh and cry, who I can care about no matter how easy or difficult they are to deal with. I can write a villain, but I'm less interested in writing a villain than I am interested in writing a complex character whose actions are horrific. I'm much more interested in telling stories about people that I can believe exist, even if they're in a fantasy. I want to feel like, ‘OK, so, you have magic powers, I still want to know what's your problem?’ [laughs] What are you dealing with in the morning? Are you anxious about meeting other people? Are you secretly in love with someone? What are you going through? And then if on top of that, you have other abilities, or you're able to step into worlds of fantasy, great, but I want to feel like I understand you as a human being first.
Sadie: Yeah, again it goes back to character building. You previously touched on this, but what was the decision behind pursuing writing?
David: Well, it was kind of a confluence of things. I got married. I had a wonderful wife. We were talking about having a kid someday soon. I had no money. I was doing theater and a bit spots on soap operas, stuff like that. And I had fun, but I was making nothing. And so, the abridging gave me a chance to learn about writing. I became disillusioned with acting. I have tremendous respect for actors - I haven't really acted in years, except I do have a tiny cameo in Otto.
If you're Tom Hanks, or you're lucky enough to have become established, and, and can really explore a character in depth, that's fantastic. And you have more control. But when you're starting out as an actor in theater, and you're just doing the kind of slightly idiotic lover in a Molière play you can go real tired of doing the same role night after night, and then going on to another role that you didn't really love. But now, you got a job. So, I wasn't having as much fun as I was getting stubbornly determined to succeed at it.
And then when I started playing with the writing, I was having a blast. I was in a workshop, and I wrote a monologue. It was a workshop where people tried out new material, and I was usually reading other people's stuff, but I brought in something I wrote, and they liked it. And so, they said, ‘Keep writing it.’ So I wrote more. And then it became a small play that I ended up performing out in the Hamptons. And then a woman, Nellie Bellflower, who directed the play and got me into the theater out in the Hamptons, said, ‘Well, what are you doing next?’ And I said, ‘What are you doing?’ And she said, ‘Well, there's a guy in the workshop Allan, he wrote a play about James Barrie, the man who wrote Peter Pan, he wants to make a movie out of it but he doesn't know how to write a screenplay.’ And I said, 'I'll write it.'
And that became Finding Neverland - very different from the play, no slight to the play, but it was very much a play of memories and kind of lyrical and lovely, but I had to figure out how to write a film. And that was the one I wrote. And by crazy luck, someone from Miramax read a blurb about Allan's play in Backstage or Variety or something and called asking to read it. And Allan said, ‘Well, I sold the rights to Nellie Bellflower for $1. And Nellie hired David Magee to write it for $1.’ And they said, ‘Then we'll see that script when it's done.’ And that was how I sold Finding Neverland. They bought it.
Sadie: That's incredible.
David: Yeah, there's no planning - people ask how do you get in this business? I'm like, ‘I don't know how you do that.’ [laughs] I was kicking around trying to become an actor for years. And I didn't know how to do that either. And sometimes if you just hang around long enough, a door opens. That's kind of what happened.
Sadie: Yeah, when an opportunity presents itself like that - that's incredible. Because you were doing roles that you just weren't really in love with were you hoping that you could write something for yourself that you'd be excited about performing? Or did you cross over that mountain knowing you’d be writing for others to perform your work?
David: I think I've crossed over that mountain. I think now if I were to write something for myself, I'd have fun performing it, like in a theater, that’s something I could see doing. Although, I don't really know when I'd do that. But back then the joy had gone out of it for me. I was working so hard. I don't mind being rejected, but I'm not comfortable with auditioning again and again and again, only to get a part that didn't feel that satisfying. I wasn't really excited about it. And I'm not really so enamored of being in front of the camera or being on stage and having people look at me. I was more interested in exploring the characters.
When I found another way to explore characters, it was fun, but I didn't like go, ‘OK, what am I gonna write for myself next?' If I had, I might have had a completely different career not necessarily better or worse, but it would have been a very different focus. Then I was like, ‘No, I want to have a family. I want to have enough money to pay for my kids to go to school someday.’ And so, at that point in my life, I was just grateful that it all took off the way it did, and I never looked back.
Sadie: Do you ever find that your acting background informs your writing or how you approach writing dialogue?
David: Constantly, absolutely. I know there are plenty of writers who are wonderful writers who don't come from that background. But for me, I'm imagining a script in front of me how it would sound, how I would say it. Do I understand what the character motivation is at that point? If I was handed the script, would I understand what's going on in the scene? Understand that while he's talking, like he's just having a great time, but he's actually enormously jealous of what's going on across the room?
I always feel like if I know how I can say it without sounding like an idiot, then better actors can do the same. I go back through and I'm either reading aloud, or I am kind of acting it in my head, all of the parts. And when I go back through it, I frequently go, 'Oh, wait. I wouldn't say it that way.' And so that's a lot of what I do is going back through and back through and refining until I feel like that's expressing the most about what's going on with the character at this moment. And it's the simplest way of doing it and I could play that.
Sadie: Any advice for those who are adapting anything from an article, a true story, a book to a play?
David: I think on some level, I covered it already, and that is it's about one thing. If it's about one thing, then you can explore that one thing 19 different ways. If it's about 19 different things, you're not going to be able to make it cohesive.
I'll just give a very quick example, Finding Neverland - I'm not a guy who's like, ‘I always wanted to be a kid forever.’ That's not who I am. So, when I had a chance to write about James Barrie, I was like, ‘Well, that's not what this is about. What is this about?’ And at the time that that was happening, my father was very sick, and I was thinking about having a child – but I realized I had to grow up. And the title of the book is Peter Pan; Or, The Boy who Would Not Group Up - the point is, ‘OK, that's my theme.’ What does it mean it?
All of my character arcs were based on that one idea. James Barrie was the adult who didn't want to grow up, who didn't want to have to grow up, Peter, was the boy who had to grow up too quickly because his father had died. His brother, George the oldest, was on the cusp of becoming a young man. And in fact, there's a line where James Barrie says in the screenplay, “Look at you, the boy is gone." So, each of the characters were shaped in relation to that spine. And then I had the map of a story. That's my best example of make it about one thing.
Based on the # 1 New York Times bestseller “A Man Called Ove,” A Man Called Otto tells the story of Otto Anderson (Tom Hanks), a grump who no longer sees purpose in his life following the loss of his wife. Otto is ready to end it all, but his plans are interrupted when a lively young family moves in next door, and he meets his match in quick-witted Marisol. She challenges him to see life differently, leading to an unlikely friendship that turns his world around. A heartwarming and funny story about love, loss, and life, A Man Called Otto shows that family can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places.
A Man Called Otto will be in Select Theaters on December 30, 2022 and in Theaters everywhere on January 13, 2022.
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Sadie Dean is the Editor of Script Magazine and writes the screenwriting column, Take Two, for Writer’s Digest print magazine. She is also the co-host of the Reckless Creatives podcast. Sadie is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, and received her Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from The American Film Institute. She has been serving the screenwriting community for nearly a decade by providing resources, contests, consulting, events, and education for writers across the globe. Sadie is an accomplished writer herself, in which she has been optioned, written on spec, and has had her work produced. Additionally, she was a 2nd rounder in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and has been nominated for The Humanitas Prize for a TV spec with her writing partner. Sadie has also served as a Script Supervisor on projects for WB, TBS and AwesomenessTV, as well as many independent productions. She has also produced music videos, short films and a feature documentary. Sadie is also a proud member of Women in Film.
Follow Sadie and her musings on Twitter @SadieKDean
