Some Like It Hot: Irish film producer Ed Guiney picks his favourite screenplays
Ed Guiney includes Some Like It Hot and Succession among his favourite screenplays.
Some of the world’s most respected screenwriters are heading to Ireland for Storyhouse, an annual festival which champions the art of storytelling for the screen. Storyhouse is a not-for-profit initiative spearheaded by Academy Award-nominated producer and co-CEO of Element Pictures, Ed Guiney.
Storyhouse Lab, an interactive programme for emerging writers, will take place in conjunction with the festival, which is already sold out.
“This year, we've got a great lineup,” says Guiney. “We have Peter Straughan, who's just come off an Oscar win for . Kenneth Lonergan, who's arguably one of the best writers in the world. Laurie Nunn, the creator of .
"It'll be great to hear from her about running a huge show like that over many series and seasons. And Nia DaCosta, who's a screenwriter and filmmaker and has just come off . She's doing the forthcoming .”
Guiney hopes that the event, now in its second year, could help drive the establishment of Ireland as a hub for exceptional screenwriting talent.
“It's great to have big shows coming into Ireland from abroad, and employing crew here. There's obviously huge positives around that in terms of economic impact and giving people chances to do really high quality work,” says Guiney.
“But I think ultimately, for the industry to grow and prosper here, we need to be developing our own stories and owning our own scripts. The really scarce resource is the great screenplay. There's no reason why we in Ireland shouldn't be a centre of excellence for screenwriting in the world.”
As the festival approaches, Guiney outlines some of the screenplays that he most admires.
“There are screenplays that mean something to me at different points in my life and for different reasons, and that I've often returned to and always enjoyed. Some of them are things that I've been involved in professionally. Others are from my youth that I absolutely loved and adored, and more recent ones that I've really admired.”
“I'm a huge Mel Brooks fan, and ultimately went with , a film that I watched again and again and quoted lines from and absolutely adored. I could have gone with Blazing Saddles, or I could have gone with Young Frankenstein. But The Producers was so cheeky, so fun, great acting, great characters, and Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, just a joy.”
(2018-2023, created by Jesse Armstrong)
“It's all about these incredible characters that Jesse and his team of writers have created. I recently worked with Will Tracy, who's one of the writers on who wrote Yorgos Lanthimos's new movie .
"He's shared with me some of the stories of how they made that show. I was so sad when it was over, but also it made you care about the most odious people in the world, which is a great triumph. It's creating these characters you can almost believe you might run into on the street that feel very present and very human, very real. That's such a hard thing to do.”
“Myself and my friend, we used to watch it again and again, and got so much pleasure out of it. They're so funny, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, and she's (Marilyn Monroe) brilliant. It's a multi-genre thing - it’s sort of a gangster movie.
"It's a screwball comedy. It's a love story of sorts. It has it all. The Apartment is another one I absolutely love, but Some Like It Hot has to win for devilment and bravado. It’s also so joyful.”
“I really love , which won best screenplay (one of four Oscar wins including Best Picture). That is a crazy screenplay as well. It's very different, obviously, to but what it shares in common is you're never on safe ground. You never know where the thing is going and you're always on your toes. I love things that take you on a journey that you haven't expected and really surprise you and pull the carpet from under you. It's a fable, it's a really dark comedy, it's social satire. It's got so much going on.”
“I haven't seen the extended version. I'm doing my very best to see it. But the original theatrical version was an extraordinary piece of screenwriting.
"At the centre of it is this adolescent young woman who is so richly drawn, so fully realised but also the world he creates around her, the characters around her.
"If screenwriting is about character, then it's very hard to think of a screenplay that creates a kaleidoscope of such well realised, interesting characters, any one of whom you could go off and make a film with.”
“The first two or three pages of that script are amazing because Mark sets up with very little description - and what I mean by that is very little stage direction, very little prose - the world, the character of Josie, the dynamics of this small town.
"Lenny made it into a great film, but it's always one that I remember being really impressed by when I first read it. You get a rush of adrenaline. You pick up the phone, and you articulate your excitement which I'm never slow to do.
"If you read a really good screenplay, and you're like: ‘I want to make this’, there's something incredibly powerful and positive about that that carries you a long way.”
“The book is a beast of a book, and it's got five different points of view, five different characters, all talking about this amazing woman, Bella Baxter, at the centre of the novel. It's dense and challenging. When the script of that film came in, it completely blew my mind, because obviously the book itself offered so many choices, but the script itself just had this very particular thread around this amazing character. Done with such humour and sense of life and mischief - it felt like nothing I'd ever seen before.”
“It's a kind of in a middle class family in Zambia set against the backdrop of a funeral of what turns out to be a very flawed uncle of this young woman. It's a kind of comedy. It's surreal, it's funny, it's incredibly devastating, it's incredibly rich. When I read the script it was something that was very easy to advocate for because she'd written such a brilliant piece of screenwriting.”
- Storyhouse, which takes place in Dublin’s Lighthouse Cinema on April 3 and 4, is supported by Screen Ireland, Fremantle and Element Pictures
