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00:16so you had me crying you know with this one i was blubbing at the end um are you are
00:22you a crier
00:22at movies and tv and and uh adverts and all that kind of stuff um i have to say i
00:28have cried every
00:29time i've watched this film and that's bizarre given that i wrote the story and i knew exactly
00:33what was happening but uh i think it's sort of testament to augustine's vision and the acting
00:40involved that it just takes me away every time um and i love it i love being made to cry
00:46uh if
00:47anybody can make me feel an emotion in a book or a film then frankly they've got my loyalty for
00:52life
00:53i probably cried i reckon i've cried more in the last year just because of everything that's going
00:58on i think we've all been well i at least have been um a bit more fragile would you agree
01:04with that
01:04i think kleenex has done good business this year i think there's very few of us who haven't cried
01:10more tears but hopefully if they watch this film these are good tears these are redemptive tears
01:15rather than oh god the world is ending tears yeah it does feel like the kind of movie we need
01:22right now doesn't it because there's just no it's so brilliantly lacking in cynicism it's just
01:28unashamedly romantic and happy well when i wrote the story initially i wanted to write a book that
01:34was like the kind of old-fashioned movie you would watch on a sunday afternoon you know when it rained
01:39curled up under a blanket something you could just kind of sniff away at and so whereas all my other
01:45books are kind of a story with a love story running through this is an absolutely unironic
01:52uncynical sweeping epic romance and i i really loved the fact when i met augustine that she totally
02:00committed to that you know there's not a nudge and a wink to camera it's not you know it's not
02:05clever
02:05or funny uh in bits when people are encouraged to feel things it just says i'm gonna rip your heart
02:13out
02:13play with it a little and then pop it back in at the end it's nice that there's still room
02:19for
02:19things like that though um in in a world where we think we've seen it all before and we think
02:23we know
02:24everything it's nice that there is room for something old-fashioned and heartfelt well it does exist you
02:30know people fall in love all the time and it's not always kind of desperately cynical and sad um but
02:36also i think after the year that we've had it is important just to be reminded that good things do
02:42happen um i i just was so sad when this movie kept getting put back because originally i think we
02:50were even talking about last december and the studios kept pushing it back and now i'm so glad
02:55because i feel like there is going to be an appetite to escape in a cinema and this movie is
03:03such escapism geographically and emotionally you you cannot not be transported and given that we're now
03:11in a year where we can barely travel i think there is sort of added pleasure in getting to witness
03:17kind
03:17of amazing locations uh it just you know i every time i've watched the scene in the riviera i've ached
03:23to be somewhere like that and wearing those floppy hats and bikinis and all the rest of it
03:29so ellie's life as a journalist is this harking back to your time as a journalist are there echoes there
03:36of
03:36of what you did i was certainly never as messy a character as ellie uh i mean felicity jones plays
03:43ellie and i think people are going to be surprised uh because she's usually playing quite formal or
03:50slightly buttoned up characters and here she is i think what the americans call a hot mess
03:55you know behaving badly sleeping with the wrong guys drinking too much uh she's she's not in control
04:02of her own life and but she's also really funny um there is a scene involving a croissant that means
04:09i can never eat a croissant in the same way again and i think audiences are going to be quite
04:13surprised
04:14by her um and it also seems to me to be uh a movie that celebrates the tradition of letter
04:23writing
04:23uh something that we've lost um is that something you do whenever i try to write i always realize
04:30that my handwriting has got so bad because i'm now so used to typing everything yeah i mean i grew
04:35up
04:35with a kind of soft pad on my finger where i rested my pen and kids don't have that anymore
04:40it's quite
04:41interesting and have you ever noticed if you do handwrite a letter your hand aches by the end of it
04:45because it's such an unfamiliar thing but i do think it was only when writing this that i realized how
04:52much
04:52the art of letter writing had died out my cousin who was 10 years younger than me told me that
04:57she'd
04:57never received a love letter and it wasn't through lack of her being gorgeous and funny and desirable
05:01it was just because people didn't do them anymore and i think you know in a world where you can
05:07communicate any way we're actually less clear about our intentions than we ever were i mean you ask
05:13anybody who uses the dating apps and they'll tell you it's a minefield uh and i just think if someone
05:20has taken the trouble to write you a letter and put their thoughts to paper handwrite it put it in
05:26an envelope spend money on a stamp walk it to the mailbox it's it shows that they are really committed
05:33to what they want to say and i think i think it's kind of useful actually i love the idea
05:40this has
05:41happened occasionally when you find a letter let's say you've bought a secondhand book and you find a
05:46postcard in there or even uh you know someone's written in the opening on the first page to happy
05:52birthday whatever it is you know you're just finding a little bit of someone else's history
05:57there aren't you it's so exciting to do that funny enough there's a there's a little twitter feed that
06:02i follow called i think it's called something like postcards from history where somebody has clearly
06:06just collected a load of really random postcards and the messages are always hilarious well i hope
06:11you've stopped eating now or or you know i really can't bear this any longer and you just think what
06:17is the story behind this postcard it's always fascinating which is exactly what ellie thought
06:22you know she read something and she wanted to find out more yeah and if frankly if i'd seen a
06:27love story
06:27you know committed to paper in the way that the the letter she finds i would want to know as
06:32well i
06:33mean we're all nosy at heart we all want to know what what goes on in our love affair
06:37not every author gets involved with their adaptations um is that something you always
06:44want to do uh i do now um it only really started with me before you and uh as you
06:51know i wrote the
06:52script for that and i was on set every day and i was lucky enough to get educated if you
06:58like by
06:59somebody who was experienced in the film business as to what not to do as a writer on a film
07:04set you
07:05know don't start telling the actors what to do don't rewrite dialogue don't start talking about
07:10performance because it's not your business and i think the the first thing you have to realize as
07:14a writer on a film set is you're actually the least important person in the room and once you
07:18understand that there's a hierarchy and you're at the bottom of it then you can be there to answer
07:23questions or be helpful and i think because i understood that role and i learned from it uh the
07:31directors that i've worked with have actually found me a helpful presence rather than a a pain in the
07:35backside so i'm in the lucky position where most people want me to be involved now because
07:42i think if you want to maintain the voice of the book it's quite useful to have the author around
07:47but to any writers thinking of doing it i would say take a crash course in what not to do
07:52because
07:52that saved me so much stress and embarrassment do you think the position you're in now um
07:59you the the the the material that you write now you're thinking more about a possible movie version
08:06or a tv series compared to when you were writing 15 years ago no but i tell you why and
08:12that is
08:12because i think writers divide quite cleanly into those who are very language focused and those who are
08:19kind of cinematic in how they write and i have to see a scene before i can commit it to
08:26paper i have
08:27to my you know my modus operandi is to lie on the floor of my study and literally run through
08:33various
08:34scenarios until i can make it work so i'm very visual so i think my work lends itself quite easily
08:39to
08:40adaptation in a way that perhaps some other writers don't um but i never think about it in terms of
08:46whether it will make a film because you can never tell what is going to attract you know attention or
08:54what's going to work i mean i've written two books that are set on water and anybody involved in the
08:58film industry will know that it's almost impossible to film stuff on water because it adds kind of 50 to
09:05the cost before you've even started um i think it's just all about character and story and then if
09:11somebody wants to pick it up then that's fantastic but that's not the reason i do it
09:18last letter is out august where are we at with giver of stars because that's been
09:23um optioned hasn't it yes it has uh i think it's still at the script stage um i don't know
09:31is the
09:31answer but a bit like last letter i'm just very zen about these things you just have to
09:35let them come at their own time and you know keep other projects going in the meantime
09:40yeah because they take so long i wonder if you ever just think oh you know forget it because i
09:46mean for example last letter it was a long time in the making wasn't it you have to have a
09:51lot of
09:51patience 11 years no i think whenever you get something optioned as a writer you're best off
09:56thinking of it as a lottery ticket basically the chances are it's going to come to nothing there's
10:01certainly no point going out and buying a new outfit um but you may be lucky and then two five
10:08ten you know 20 years you you know you you're a long-standing film critic you know some of these
10:13things take decades to get made but sometimes they do and it's a lovely thing and i've been really
10:19lucky in that the two directors who've adapted my english language books have done so beautifully
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