An Education (4 page)

Authors: Nick Hornby

BOOK: An Education

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Lone and I are interviewed together by a young woman from a news agency. For some reason, the news agency has positioned itself for the duration of the festival on the second floor of a guitar shop, in what looks like a broom cupboard; underneath them, rock bands are playing short, loud sets. It’s as if they have deliberately chosen the worst spot in Utah for recorded interviews. It takes us about half-an-hour to push through the music fans to the cupboard, and when we get inside it, it’s obvious that the young woman hasn’t emerged to see any films.

‘Tell us about your characters,’ is her opening shot.

‘Lone’s very calm,’ I tell her. ‘But I can be moody.’ She looks confused.

‘We’re not actors,’ I confess.

Flustered, she consults her notes.

‘It must be hard, working together when you’re married. Was there any tension?’

‘We’re not married,’ says Lone. Still. Where would we be without the press?

In the evening, Carey, Amanda, Finola and I go to see another film, and then attend yet another party. I think I have been to more parties here than in the whole of 2008. By now it’s obvious that things have gone much better for us than we dared hope: the reviews we’ve seen have been unbelievable (one of the first, on the normally snarky ‘LA gossip rag’
Defamer.com
, I wouldn’t have dared write myself), the film is almost certainly going to sell for a decent amount, and to cap it all, here I am giving Uma Thur-man a light. I don’t have a lighter, so I hand her my cigarette. (I can only just reach - she’s about a metre taller than me.)

‘If you can live with the intimacy that implies,’ she says.

And then I woke up.

I am always on the verge of giving up smoking, but my habit has resulted in my meeting both Uma (as I now think of her) and Kurt Vonnegut. Where’s the incentive?

Amanda and Finola sign an agreement with Sony Picture Classics in the Virgin lounge at the San Francisco airport. When we get home we are told that
An Education
won the Audience Award and a prize for John de Borman’s cinematography. Nothing from the Danish juror, though.

CAST AND CREW

Cast (in order of appearance)

Jenny CAREY MULLIGAN
Miss Stubbs OLIVIA WILLIAMS
Jack ALFRED MOLINA
Marjorie CARA SEYMOUR
Graham MATTHEW BEARD
David PETER SARSGAARD
Hattie AMANDA FAIRBANK-HYNES
Tina ELLIE KENDRICK
Danny DOMINIC COOPER
Helen ROSAMUND PIKE
Headmistress EMMA THOMPSON
Sarah SALLY HAWKINS
Nightclub Singer BETH ROWLEY

BBC FILMS PRESENTS

IN ASSOCIATION WITH ENDGAME ENTERTAINMENT

A WILDGAZE FILMS / FINOLA DWYER PRODUCTION

A FILM BY LONE SCHERFIG

Casting Director LUCY BEVAN Line Producer CAROLINE LEVY Music Supervisor KLE SAVIDGE

Makeup & Hair Designer LIZZIE YIANNI GEORGIOU Costume Designer ODILE DICKS-MIREAUX

Music by PAUL ENGLISHBY

Editor BARNEY PILLING

Production Designer ANDREW MCALPINE Director of Photography JOHN DE BORMAN BSC Executive Producers JAMES D. STERN, DOUGLAS E.

HANSEN, WENDY JAPHET, DAVID M. THOMPSON, JAMIE LAURENSON, NICK HORNBY

Based on a Memoir by LYNN BARBER

Screenplay by NICK HORNBY

Produced by FINOLA DWYER & AMANDA POSEY Directed by LONE SCHERFIG

AN EDUCATION:

The Screenplay

1
INTERIOR: SCHOOL - DAY

Montage: A nice girls’ school in a south-west London suburb.We see girls doing what girls did in a nice girls’ school in 1961: walking with books on their heads, practising their handwriting, making cakes, playing lacrosse, dancing with each other.

2
INTERIOR: CLASS ROOM - DAY

In one of the classrooms,
MISS STUBBS,
an attractive, bright, animated schoolteacher, is talking to a small group of sixteen-year-old girls. Some of these girls seem to be daydreaming - looking out of the window, examining their fingernails. A couple, including a bespectacled girl
(ANN),
who looks five years younger than everyone else in the class, write down everything the teacher says. Only one,
JENNY,
beautiful and as animated as her teacher, seems to be listening in the spirit in which
MISS STUBBS
would like her to listen. She’s smiling, eyes shining - she loves
MISS STUBBS
and these lessons.
MISS STUBBS
asks a question and looks at the girls for a response.

MISS STUBBS

Anybody? . . .

JENNY
puts up her hand - the only person in class to do so.

Anybody else? . . .

No one else reacts.

(mock-sighing)

Yes. Jenny . . .

JENNY

Isn’t it because Mr Rochester’s blind?

3
INTERIOR: JENNY’S HOUSE - DAY

Title:
TWICKENHAM, LONDON 1961

JENNY
, her mother and her father are finishing Sunday lunch. Jenny’s father,
JACK,
is in his forties;
MARJORIE
, her mother, is slightly younger than
JACK
, but every bit as middle-aged.The food is grey and brown, in keeping with the colour scheme of the house.They aren’t talking - they’re listening to Mantovani on the radio.
JENNY
gets up from the lunch table.

JENNY

I’ve got an English essay to do by tomorrow morning.

JACK

Right. So, the only sound I want to hear coming through the ceiling this afternoon is the sound of sweat dripping onto textbooks.

JENNY

Cello?

JACK

No cello.

JENNY

I thought we agreed that cello was my interest or hobby.

JACK

Well, it already is your interest or hobby. So when they ask you at the Oxford interview ‘What is your interest or hobby?’ you can say, ‘The cello’ and you wouldn’t be lying. But you don’t have to practise a hobby. A hobby is a hobby.

JENNY

Can I stop going to the youth orchestra, then?

JACK

No, no, no. The youth orchestra’s a good thing. Shows you’re a joiner-inner.

JENNY

Ah.Yes. But. I’ve already joined in. So now I can stop.

JACK

No, no. Well, that just shows the opposite, don’t you see? That shows you’re a rebel. They don’t want that at Oxford.

JENNY

No. They don’t want people who think for themselves.

JACK

(
missing the sarcasm, as is his wont
)

’Course they don’t.

4
INTERIOR: SCHOOL HALL - DAY

JENNY
with cello sits in the string section. Everyone is getting settled, tuning up, latecomers still arriving. Along the row from
JENNY
, tuning his violin, is a nice-looking boy of her age,
GRAHAM
, and she waves at him.Two thirteen-year-old boys sitting between them wave, too, parodically, and then blow kisses, much to
GRAHAM’S
embarrassment and
JENNY’S
fury.

The silly boys dissolve in fits of giggles: this is clearly one of the funniest moments of their lives - until one of them farts noisily and, it would appear from all the frantic gesturing, pungently. The comic value of the fart tops even the comic value of the wave, and they are scarcely able to stay seated, such is their mirth.

5
EXTERIOR: SCHOOL - DAY

JENNY
and
GRAHAM
are talking while he struggles to take his bike out of a bicycle rack, slightly unbalanced by the violin strapped to his back.
GRAHAM
is ner vous, chronically unconfident and shy.

GRAHAM

Should I wear, you know, Sunday best?

JENNY

You’d better, I’m afraid. Just to show my father you’re
un jeune homme serieux
, not a teddy boy.

GRAHAM

Oh, God.

JENNY

(
looking up at the sky
)

I’m going to go. It’s going to bucket down in a minute.

GRAHAM

Oh, OK, right . . .

JENNY

I’ll see you at the weekend.

GRAHAM

Bye, then.

JENNY

Bye.

They move at the same time and bump awkwardly into each other.

JENNY/GRAHAM

Sorry.

The two silly boys from before are sitting on the school wall and start to blow more kisses.

SMALLER BOY 1

Goodbye, my love!

GRAHAM
blushes as he and
JENNY
head off in opposite directions.

6
EXTERIOR: BUS STOP - DAY

The rain has begun.
JENNY
attempts to cover herself. A mother pushing a pram and holding the hand of her little boy crosses the road in front of her, and a beautiful, sleek red sports car - a Bristol - stops to let them across.
DAVID
, possibly in his mid-thirties, dapper, and almost but not quite handsome, is driving the car.
DAVID
, distracted, impatient, spots
JENNY
at the bus stop.

In front of the car a small Wellington boot drops off the foot of the boy, further slowing down their painfully slow progress across the road.

JENNY
is wet.
DAVID
makes eye contact.
JENNY
smiles ruefully and enchantingly. Once the mother and boy have crossed the road,
DAVID
pulls the car over by the bus stop and rolls the window of the Bristol down.

DAVID

Hello.

JENNY
ignores him.

Look. If you’ve any sense, you wouldn’t take a lift from a strange man.

JENNY
smiles thinly.

But I’m a music lover, and I’m worried about your cello. So what I propose is, you put it in the car and walk alongside me.

JENNY

How do I know you won’t just drive off with the cello?

DAVID

Ah. Good point. How much does a new cello cost? Ten pounds? Fifteen? I don’t know. Let’s say fifteen.

He pulls out a wallet, takes out three five-pound notes, hands them to her.

JENNY
laughs and waves the money away.

No? All right . . . Up to you.

DAVID
gets out of the car to help Jenny with the cello.

I’m David, by the way.

JENNY

(
hesitates
)

Jenny.

DAVID

Very good.

He gets back in the car.

7
EXTERIOR: STREET, NEAR SCHOOL - DAY

Moments later.The cello is in the backseat of the Bristol.
JENNY
is trotting alongside the car, while
DAVID
leans nonchalantly across the passenger seat to talk to her while driving.

DAVID

How did the concert go?

JENNY

It was a rehearsal. The concert’s next Thursday.

DAVID

What are you playing?

JENNY

(
making a face
)

Elgar.

DAVID

Ah, Elgar. I think it’s a shame he spent so much time in Worcester, don’t you? Worcester’s too near Birmingham. And you can hear that in the music. There’s a horrible Brummy accent in there, if you listen hard enough.

JENNY
looks at him and smiles. She hadn’t expected him to be able to make Elgar jokes.

Anyway, Elgar and the Jews don’t mix very well.

JENNY

I’m not a Jew!

DAVID

(
laughing
)

No. I am. I wasn’t . . .
accusing
you.

JENNY

Oh. (
She smiles awkwardly
.) Can I sit in the car with my cello?

DAVID
stops the car.

DAVID

Jump in.