The greatest stories ever told balance plot and character. Davies’ has
a lifetime stock of both. His breakout film – 2006’s Candy – chronicled
his own near-crucifixion on a heroin needle throughout most of
the ’80s. Having built a reputation as a writer of prose, poetry and
screenplays, a relationship breakdown tempted him to La-La Land
in 2007. Then pretty much nothing happened for five years. He wrote
film reviews for The Monthly, picked up the Prime Minister’s Literary
Prize For Poetry in 2012, which helped clear some debts, and scripted
the film Life. Then he encountered a story about a young boy adopted
from India to Australia who wanted to find his birth mother.
And along came a Lion.
Today, the script looks something like this. It’s late afternoon in
Los Angeles and the sun is liquid gold. A telephone rings three times;
a figure shuts his laptop and walks past a BAFTA for Best Adapted
Screenplay positioned discreetly in shot. Cut to a close up. It’s Davies –
mid-fifties, thick black frames, a generous sprinkling of grey through
the hair and the hint of a California tan. He puts the phone to his ear...GQ: So Luke, does LA feel like a different town now that people will
take your calls?
LUKE DAVIES: Lion has changed the way things are playing out, right
now, but I say that with a grain of salt as everything could change
instantly. For the moment, people are taking my calls and I have offers
coming in – whereas the old thing was just desperation. For years, I was
scrambling, wondering how I was going to pay the rent next month.Luke
Davies
CREATIVE FORCE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE STARAFTER BATTLING ADDICTION AND CAREERSETBACKS, THE LIFE OF AUSTRALIA’SMOST IN-DEMAND SCREENWRITERCOULD BE A FILM IN ITSELF.GQ: Was there an immediate connection with the
story that became Lion?
LD: It was not just immediate but strong. More than that,
I completely knew how to do the story and really hoped to
get the job. It wasn’t an offer as such. I was asked to look at
the book and then put forward my ideas of turning it into a
script. Others had been asked too and there was a six-week wait.
Kind of like a Hollywood audition.
GQ: You were recently tapped by Tom Hanks to work on the screen
adaptation of the News of the World novel. Is he really that nice?
LD: (Laughs) I’m working on the script right now and his involvement
is going to increase more when I deliver it next month. All I can say
is, I met him when I got the job and he’s every bit the completely
wonderful guy you’d expect.
GQ: In addition to News of the World, you’re also doing a television
adaptation of Catch-22 and film of the memoir Beautiful Boy: A Father’s
Journey Through His Son’s Addiction. What are the challenges involved
with working with an existing entity, as opposed to having the
freedom to create your own world from scratch?
LD: For me, it’s a positive already having a world and a bunch of
characters to work in. The challenge lies in what to keep, what to
emphasise and what to discard. A novel is 10 hours long and movie
is two. The second factor is what do we change. You don’t have to be
loyal to the structure or contents of the book, you have to be loyal
to making the best film you can possibly make. Even in Lion, Saroo
actually had three relationships during the obsessive period of his
search but that would only have added complications to the film
so we stuck with the one Rooney Mara character.
GQ: Back to Beautiful Boy, is it personally confronting to delve back
into addiction post-Candy?
LD: My first reaction was not to do it and I felt I’d moved on. But the
week I met with the production company, Philip Seymour Hoffman
died. My dad remembered that when Candy came out 10 years earlier,
we were at the Berlin Film Festival and ended up having dinner with
the team from Capote. He’d read that Phillip was something like 22
years clean – I’m 27 – when he relapsed [into drug use] then died. The
night before the meeting, Dad emails me to say, “Luke, sometimes
I think this family is so blessed”. It was an incredibly moving moment
and I realised that the one character that doesn’t exist in Candy is that
of a father. That was my way of being able to add to the Beautiful Boy
story without feeling like I was going over old ground. It would be
my way of doing this for my dad.
GQ: Is the Oscars the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it seems?
LD: It may well be – I’ll let you know how things pan out. But I
completely embraced the circus of the build up. My mum was my
Oscar’s guest and she’d never been to America. She now thinks that
every night, I put on a tuxedo and go to some amazing party. Oscars
week was like a big surreal hallucination. A good hallucination.
GQ: Your agent calls and says they want you to write Avengers 23.
What do you say?
LD: You never say never. Right now I’m going to try and stick with
the original stuff but I’ve also got to be careful of not being seen as
the guy to go for orphanage films because he’s really good with the
emotional stuff.FADE TO BLACK.
ROLL CREDITS.
PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES. WORDS: DAVID SMIEDT.