'Tara Road' isn't the first of Maeve Binchy's novels to be turned into a film, but it is the first in which she and her husband have appeared - fake Martinis and all
They say that handing over your story to film-makers is like sending your first child to school. The book, like the child, still belongs to you in a sort of a way, but it's not the same way. Now there's a different life, with a lot of other people involved. But a child can't stay at home forever, and a book is better when it gets a further life, so I am always delighted when someone thinks that one of my stories is good enough to make into a movie.
I know, of course, that not everything will fit in. Tara Road is a long story, with many characters, so some have to go if we are to make sense of it in an hour and a half of cinema. I don't write the scripts myself; I have tried, but I'm not good at it. I prefer to tell a story in big, swooping terms, pausing to tell you what someone's thinking about, worrying over, hoping for. You can't do that in a screenplay. It's very brief, with lots of short sentences and plenty of white space on the page. That's not my scene at all.
You have to suggest things in a screenplay, so the director and actors can take it up and make sense of it. I find it much easier to tell things. So I have great respect for those who can write a script and then for the others who can turn a short screenplay, of about 100 pages, into a whole film.
The author has no say in casting, finding locations or choosing music. So you wait with eager faces to see what they will do. It's as much a surprise for the writer as it is for the audience.
Sometimes people have very unhappy times watching their beloved book transfer to the movies, but I enjoyed it all so much and had such good times on the set that I thought I would share it with you.
I have been lucky before. I enjoyed so much the filming of Circle of Friends, with Minnie Driver and Chris O'Donnell, the television version of Echoes, with Geraldine James, and the TV movie of The Lilac Bus. But Tara Road has long been one of my favourite stories. It's about two women who exchange homes and, in doing so, find more than a place to spend two months and lick their wounds: they discover redemption.
Many years ago we exchanged our London property for a house in Sydney, and it was a great experience. Tara Road is not our story, because nothing would be duller than reading about two happily married, settled couples, which is what we and they were. Still, it was fascinating living in their home, knowing their secrets and realising that they knew ours. They had no corkscrew; we had no cereal bowls. By the time I left their house, with its wonderful bottlebrush trees and exotic birds on the garden fence, I felt I knew them more than I knew neighbours of 20 years at home. And so I wrote the story.
I can't remember what I thought my characters Ria and Marilyn looked like, because all I can see are the beautiful, strong, sensitive faces of Olivia Williams and Andie MacDowell registering hope and grief and triumph when it is called for. I don't think I ever saw in my mind's eye all the other characters, either. I just had a feeling for them, and now they are brought to life for me: the strong-willed Mona, played by Brenda Fricker; the elegant and faithless Rosemary, played by Maria Doyle Kennedy; the sexy, feckless Danny, played by Iain Glen; the handsome Stephen Rea, playing Colm, the restaurant owner; and the children, who behave just like Ria's children would have behaved. I will never see any of them in any other way.
As for the house, I had a road in mind in Dublin for which I made up the name Tara Road. The film company asked where I was thinking of, and I told them. It wouldn't work, they said, as it was much too narrow. They would hold up traffic with their huge generators and all the crew. So the location people went out and found another house to film it in, which is perfect. It's almost as if it had been built for it, exactly the kind of road I had in mind, with those big, high-ceilinged rooms where Ria had been once so happy, then so lonely; where Marilyn tried to look for peace and found half of Dublin passing through to interrupt her.
So I approached the filming with great optimism. I have always known that film-makers hate the author around the place. They always fear that he or she is going to say that it wasn't at all like that. We are looked at with fear and mistrust. Yet it isn't human to expect us to stay away, especially when it's being filmed down the road. So I asked politely if my husband, Gordon, and I could come along and watch. Quietly. I stressed the word.
And that's what we did. We peeped in at the huge Tara Road house, the apartment where Bernadette lived; we watched astounded while our marvellous local fishmonger's was changed into a US delicatessen over a bank-holiday weekend. We were very polite to Gillies MacKinnon, the director, and to his camera and sound people; we admired all the actors and told them they were just the part.
Eventually they realised we were just ageing groupies, loving everything and therefore no trouble. And they sensed that Gordon and I were dying for little walk-on parts. So it was arranged that we were going to play Martini drinkers in Colm's restaurant.
I wish I could tell you how excited we were. We went to bed early the night before, because the limo came for us at 7am. Then we went to make-up. We didn't have to go to costume, because they asked us to wear anything of our own that was not black or navy. For some reason now forgotten, I wore lilac. Then it was time for our scene. We would be sitting on high chairs at the bar in Colm's restaurant. Stephen Rea was to serve us with two triangular Martini glasses, each with an olive in it. We were to say nothing aloud but to mouth thank-you words at him.
Just before they said "Lights, camera, action" I said to Gordon that I could murder this Martini. I felt we had been up for hours. He said he wouldn't hold his breath about its being a real Martini, but I am an eternal optimist. I said we should look at the way there was condensation on the glass; they wouldn't have gone to all that trouble to chill a glass of water.
"It's twenty past nine in the morning," Gordon said.
He was right. It was water.
I ate the olive resentfully. Each time during the three takes. Then the camera moves inexplicably from us to the stars. But we are there. You wouldn't want to blink or look down to choose a sweet or anything, or you would miss us, but we are part of it.
In the last cut I saw of the film we are still there, sipping delicately, mouthing our thanks and, in my case, wondering why on earth I wore lilac, which is the most enlarging colour in the spectrum.
It's a terrific, moving and touching film. We have all had losses in our lives, we have all loved foolishly and been lonely. The film tells very clearly, as the book tried to do, that the solution is in our own hands, that we have to make ourselves better. There is no cavalry waiting on a cliff to rescue us. We have to do it for ourselves.
Marilyn and Ria do that on the screen as much as they did in the book, played by two wonderful actors who, with the rest of my cast, told this story as well as I could have hoped and better. I was lonely when the film crew packed up and went away, as they do. But at least we have the book, and the movie is out there to be seen as well.
Tara Road is released nationwide on September 30th