Nocturnal animals meaning tom ford how to#
Nocturnal animals meaning tom ford cracked#

I’m literally doing nothing, even if I’m feeling uninspired and unmotivated, except writing this screenplay”. I really did say “OK, every day from 8am until 1pm I’m sitting down, not taking any phone calls. I then spent the next two or three months highly organized and disciplined.

Nocturnal animals meaning tom ford how to#

Once I figured out how to structure it and what the key changes I needed to make with the book were, then I wrote the first draft in about six weeks.

Nocturnal animals meaning tom ford cracked#

Once I cracked the fact that I needed to dramatically exaggerate Susan’s life with Edward compared to her life with her current husband, I knew that I needed to have a sort of pivotal moment where he really realizes how devastating her leaving him was. And in the end it was the same with Nocturnal Animals. I altered A Single Man quite a bit as well, but I knew that I could figure out a way to bring out what spoke to me in a way that would make it cinematic. But I didn’t know how I was going to structure it, or what I was going to do to it. And while I was doing that – and for almost a year afterwards – I knew something was speaking to me. It took me two years to get the option for the book. And in the book, the young struggling writer goes on and becomes an insurance salesman and has three children, and her husband becomes a doctor.īut their quality of life, in terms of the financial appearance of it, is not terribly dramatic – which ultimately makes it not very cinematic. She leaves a young, struggling writer for a medical student. In the book, this woman does leave her husband for someone who she believes can provide her with a better life. And thereby communicating something that they had not been able to really communicate clearly. However, the central themes are the same, meaning that when I read the book, what appealed to me as a writer and a filmmaker was the idea of this device of communicating to someone through a work of fiction. Well, the film is very different than the book it’s based on. Tom Ford with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon on set of Nocturnal Animals, a Focus Features release.Ĭredit: Merrick Morton/Focus Features What appealed to you about this project? Ford weaves together three complex storylines, while the story-within-a-story structure allows him to stretch creative boundaries.Ĭreative Screenwriting spoke to him recently about Nocturnal Animals, how he manages to balance design with writing, and how the one has influenced the other over the course of both careers. Visually, of course, but also thematically. But when she receives a manuscript from her ex-husband in the mail and an invitation to meet for dinner, she’s forced to confront her history, and read between the lines of a dark story she seemingly inspired.Īs one would expect, the film is striking. In Ford’s film version, Adams’ character is an art gallery owner with a distant past she would rather forget. Starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who has just won the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe for his role), Nocturnal Animals is based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan. Most recently, the film has also received 9 BAFTA nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Tom. Having won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Tom received two Golden Globe nominations (Best Director and Best Screenplay), and a Writers Guild Award nomination (Best Adapted Screenplay.) With a longstanding successful career in fashion design already under his belt, Ford wrote and directed his first film in 2009, the critically acclaimed A Single Man, starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore.Ģ016 then saw the release of his chilling neo-noir Nocturnal Animals, which has rapidly been collecting awards and nominations.

Whether he is working in the fashion or cinematic world, he closes his eyes, sees the story he wants to tell and then puts pen to paper (or pencil to sketchpad).