Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows part of a discussion on adapting the novel That Eye, the Sky for film and stage. It is conducted by arts journalist and television presenter Andrea Stretton with screenwriter John Ruane and playwright and author Justin Monjo in the studio, and the novel’s author Tim Winton by satellite link from Perth and seen on a screen. They talk about the challenges of adaptation, Winton’s feelings about the adaptation of his novel and difficulties encountered in adapting it. Stretton and the studio guests sit around a table in front of a stark set.

Educational value points

• Difficulties in translating books into films and plays are identified in the clip with particular reference to Tim Winton’s novel That Eye, the Sky. A novel can blur the distinction between the real and the imaginary in a way that challenges film and theatre. Other aspects of the novel, such as the central character’s viewpoint, the language and the humour, are difficult to replicate in an essentially visual medium such as film.

• Tim Winton (1960–), one of Australia’s most successful contemporary novelists, explains that his key concern when his work is adapted for screen or theatre is that the writers show respect for the original work. He describes how novelists build pictures with language and identifies this as one of the difficulties that screenwriters and playwrights face in adapting or translating a novel for a visual medium. He accepts that consequently something may be lost in translation.

• Winton’s reputation as a craftsman of language is referred to in the clip. Reviews of the more than 20 books he has written since he became a full-time writer in 1982 invariably refer to the quality, originality and expressiveness of his language, which can integrate poetic imagery with spare, direct and colloquial Australian expression and observation.

• John Ruane, who successfully adapted That Eye, the Sky for film, outlines one of the challenges facing screenwriters adapting a novel for the screen – that a novel contains within its text many more ideas than can be translated onto the screen. A screenwriter adapting a complex text such as That Eye, the Sky must decide which key ideas they want to explore and how those ideas can be conveyed in images or expressed in dialogue.

• The clip shows Winton being interviewed at a time when his reputation as one of Australia’s foremost writers was already assured. Still only 35, he had written eight novels for adults, six for children, collections of short stories and travel books. His first novel, An Open Swimmer (1982), written when he was 19, won the Vogel Award. He has won the Miles Franklin Award twice, for Shallows and Cloudstreet, and in 1995 Riders was nominated for the Booker Prize.

• Andrea Stretton (1952–2007) shows her skill as an interviewer, acquired over many years in television broadcasting, through the knowledge of the artist’s work that her questions reveal and through her warm yet respectful manner. She was producer and presenter of television arts programs on SBS and the ABC from 1987 to 2001. Her questions could be challenging but her manner, which indicates a genuine desire for enlightenment, reassured her interviewees.