Fifty Shades of Grey Screenwriter Speaks Out
I cant imagine how someone could take a book like Fifty Shades of Grey and write it into a movie that could be presented to a large audience. The expectations from the millions of fans are high and they want the movie now. Kelly Marcel took on the challenge with help from E. L . James along the way. She has had various writing experiences ranging from Terra Nova to Saving Mr. Banks. She talks of her experience in the recent Vanity Fair.
“There is a book. . . there [was] a template to follow on that one,” Marcel said of her Fifty Shades of Grey script. “It’s all laid out. So no, I didn’t worry about it. I had E.L. James with me every step of the way and she is very, very tied to her fan base and she really wants to make the film that they’ll be happy with. She knows her fans. She knows her audience. She knows her book, so having her around was invaluable because you can’t really go wrong when the author is overseeing it. I think it was a great thing.”
Despite her recent success, Marcel modestly describes herself as a prize-winning procrastinator. Among her favorite distractions: “Walk[ing] the dog, cooking, watching things on the T.V. pretending that it’s research. ‘Oh, I just need to see an episode of that because it is similar tonally to what I’m writing now.’” Asked whether she “researched” anything while writing Fifty Shades of Grey, Marcel joked, “Apart from the porn? Lots of porn. No, there wasn’t really anything.”
Fifty Shades of Grey to The Little Mermaid, now that’s quite a jump.
