Peter Straughan

0:12We tried to stay very true to the main plot and to the spirit of the book, but it's a very, very complicated labyrinth of a book that's kind of the point of it in a way that it's like a maze that smiley has to walk through to get out the other end. So we couldn't fit everything in. I mean, there was a BBC, TV series of it in the 70s, and that was about seven hours long, I think. So we knew we couldn't do it all, obviously, we only had two hours roughly to play with. When we first got the call to say, do you want to do it? We said to each other, not knowing anything about the project at that point, we said, look, if they want to update it, if they want to put car chasers in and kind of sex it up when they're doing it, but we went in and it was immediately a pound that nobody was interested in doing that. Everybody wanted to make the book, you know. But it was, it was, yeah, we felt quite nervous because it's such a kind of iconic book, especially in the UK, and the TV series had been very, very famous as well, and it's a brilliant adaptation.

1:02So there was a lot of holy cows in the room. I haven't been in many films where I've had the director on board from the beginning, and this is one of them, and it was fantastic because, especially because we got on so well. So we were on the same page from the beginning, we could work through ideas, we knew exactly what each of us were thinking at all times, so it made a big difference. And Gary also went to the book, I think, to try and find Smiley and find the character and all those layers in the novel. He was, you know, like all actors, good actors, he is incredibly sensitive for dialogue, and some of the dialogue we changed and simplified, and there were a couple of lines that he said, can we go back to the book's version because it just sounds like the music. He had some of the Smiley's voice by then, he had the music with Smiley's voice, because there always comes a point in an adaptation where you do have to take a step off the path

1:50and move away from the book, and you have to write a scene that isn't from the book, and have Smiley say things he doesn't say in the book. So you have to kind of, a little bit like the actors, you have to get the voice yourself, you have to hear the rhythm of it, otherwise those lines are going to stick out like a soul film. You just get to see what's underneath both characters, and it's the opposite of what's on the surface with both characters. You get to see Georges in their strength, and you get to see the Mo's weakness, which you haven't seen before, and the breakthrough. And you know, we worked in a very sort of tight parameter of emotion, and it does one point at the end where Georges raises his voice, and he doesn't even raise it that much, but it's just like a bonger enough, because he's been so quiet throughout the movie. So it was one of those ones where you sit back and watch it like the audience and think

2:37out that good.