For some reason, I am very adaptable, in the sense that my books and stories have been of interest to people who work in other media - film and television, but not only film and television. There have been two movies of my first book, Fever Pitch, one set in North London, home of Arsenal Football Club, one set in Boston, home of the Boston Red Sox. There was a lovely film adaptation of High Fidelity, and an excellent TV series. There was a lovely film adaptation of About A Boy, and a TV series that was, um, less excellent. There have been movies of A Long Way Down and Juliet, Naked, which contained terrific performances by Ethan Hawke, Chris O’Dowd and Rose Byrne. The second series of Funny Girl, now Funny Woman, is on UK TV screens now. You may know some or most of those. You may not know about the one-man show of Fever Pitch, nor the opera that was staged in the Union Chapel, Islington, by the Highbury Opera Theatre, one of the more surreal events of my professional life: when I wrote the book, I was really not anticipating any of the incarnations that were to follow, but this one, perhaps understandably, I expected least of all. I certainly didn’t write Fever Pitch in the cynical expectation of opera option money.
© 2024 Nick Hornby
Substack is the home for great culture