![]() ![]() ![]() For example, if you have an introverted protagonist in a book, the way you get to know her or him on the screen would have to be creatively reconceived in order to achieve the same intimacy with the character. HANNAH: I’d say the biggest challenge I personally faced is how to externalize or dramatize internal thought and character development. what are the challenges of adapting a book to a script? You've had a little experience with screenwriting and are probably interested in doing more. LUCY: I could ask a million more things, but here's one last question. These books would ideally have some dynamic female characters, compelling visual setting or style potential, something about it that feels totally unique or never-before-seen on screen, and the story would have substance and sophistication and its telling would promote our core value of common humanity. So to answer your question more directly – we are constantly reading fiction, but at any given time we are seriously considering only a few books to adapt. We tend toward female-driven content, which I don’t think is a coincidence, us being a company of women, but I think it’s also because we see a need in the culture for more stories by and about women. Being a small and very hands-on production company, we only have the bandwidth to pursue a handful of projects at a time, so we only take on the projects that we feel in our bones, the stories that we can’t imagine not telling, content that has an important and rightful place in the culture at this moment. An adaptation is really hard work – it requires so much heavy lifting creatively – so whatever the book is has to completely consume us, mind and soul. When one of us falls madly in love with something and we think it might be a viable adaptation, we stop the presses and make sure everyone at our company gives it a read to see if there’s consensus. The ladies of Okay Goodnight (myself, Marta Kauffman, Robbie Rowe Tollin, and our two amazing coordinators) are voracious readers, so the way we typically find the books we want to adapt is just by working through the towering stacks of leisure-reading books on our nightstands. Where do the ideas come from, and how many books do you look at, and what catches your eye about something that might translate well into film or TV? I suspect we'd all be interested in the process of how you choose projects to develop. LUCY: We have both writers and readers who regularly visit our blog. AND they’re hilariously funny! I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for them, and I hope a small fraction of their vitality and amazingness has rubbed off on me over these past couple of years. And work aside, they still manage – at 78 and 80 years old! – to carve out time to volunteer and organize for causes they hold dear to their hearts, that benefit the victimized and underserved. They are so immensely talented and elevate everything they touch with their work ethic and their spirit – it makes you feel like you’re a part of something big, something meaningful. They are consummate professionals, always prepared, always on time, always eager to do their best work. It’s hands-down the most fulfilling and inspiring professional experience of my young career, in no small part because of Jane and Lily themselves. I had just starting working for Marta Kauffman at the time, and we were in the car together and I turned to her and said “What if their husbands are gay and leave Jane and Lily for each other?” I am a producer on the series, but my involvement actually goes all the way back to the development of the show, over four years ago, when we at Okay Goodnight (our production company) caught wind that Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin were interested in doing a television project together. ![]() HANNAH: Thank you! It’s hard to believe we’ve been at it for over four seasons now. ![]() Congratulations! Tell us a little about your role as this launches and what it's like working with those icons. LUCY: The TV show Grace and Frankie launched its fourth season on January 19th and its fifth season was just announced. And then, on top of this production journey, to be in the US Documentary Competition at the first post-Weinstein Sundance Film Festival – Gloria happens to also represent a few Weinstein accusers – on the one year anniversary of Trump’s Inauguration and the Women’s March, with Gloria making impassioned remarks at the Park City Rally for Respect… it was kismet. We feel really lucky and really proud to have been able to capture a soldier on the front line of this movement as it was building. ![]()
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