EMMA THOMPSON THE ENSE SENSIBILITY SCREENPLAY & DIARIES BrinGine JANE Austen’s Novet to FirmAn uplifing moment on the set with Emma Thompson, director Ang Lee, and Kate Winslet ISBN 1-55704-260-8 978155704260650 illustrations, including 36 plates in fill color THE SENSE 2:SENSIBILITY SCREENPLAY & DIARIES Bringing Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility to the screen has been a labor of love. Vividly described by the producer, Lindsay Doran, in her Introduction, the process has taken fifteen years to come to fruition. In Emma Thompson, Doran found her ideal scriptwriter, since Emma ‘Thompson already had a lifelong passion for the novels of Jane Austen and a natural gift for writing, which Doran first recognized when she caught reruns of a comic British television series that Thompson had written. With characteris rigor and determination, Emma Thompson set about the job, between acting in many films and picking up an Academy Award en route. The script took her five years to complete. It is unusual for an actress to write a screenplay It is even more unusual that she should also publish a detailed domestic account of the mak- ing of the film in which she played a leading role. Directed by Ang Lee, the Columbia Pictures film also stars Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant. Emma Thompson's diaries, which take us from preproduction to the wrap party, answer the questions everyone asks about filmmaking, and provide a clear and often hilarious picture of what it is really like to be part of a film crew living the kind of intense communal life found on board large sailing ships, and yet just as subject to weather, diges- tive tracts and moods. This rare perspective, together with sumptuous photographs, makes this an irresistible book for all those interested in movies and the making of a great film. icPHOTO CREDIT: BRUCE MCBROOM EMMA THOMPSON won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1992 for her portrayal of Margaret Schlegel in Howards End and was nominated twice in 1993 for her leading role in The Remains of the Day and her supporting role in In the Name of the Father. Sense and Sensibility is her first screenplay. Before gradu- ating from Cambridge University in 1982 with a degree in English Literature, Thompson acted with Cambridge's first all-female revue Woman's Hour, which she co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed. Her additional film credits include Carrington, Junior, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, Dead Again, Peter's Friends, and Impromptu. This is her first book. Front jacket photographs: Emma Thompson (top) and Kate Winslet (bottom) as the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Front and back photographs by Clive Coote, copyright © 1995 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Jacket design by Tania Garcia 4 Newmarket Press New YorkTHE ENSE anp ENSIBILITY Screenplay ©& DiariesTUE ENSE AND ENSIBILITY Screenplay & Diaries “Br Bringing Jane Austen’s Novel to Film Emma Thompson Photographs by Clive Coote Introduction by Lindsay Doran Newmarket Press New YorkACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to acknowledge the profoundest debt for my having developed any sense of humour to Jane Austen, Monty Python and The Magic Roundabout We Introduction copyright © 1995 by Lindsay Doran. All rights reserved. Diaries copyright © 1995 by Emma Thompson. All rights reserved. Screenplay and all other text copyright © 1995 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographs by Clive Coote copyright © 1995 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. ‘This book published simultaneously in the United States of America and in Canada. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form, without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to: Permissions Department, Newmarket Press, 18 East 48th Street, New York, New York 10017. 96 9798 99 10987654321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thompson, Emma. ‘The Sense and sensibility screenplay and diaries : the making of the film based on the Jane Austen novel / Emma Thompson. p. cm. ISBN 1-55704-260-8 1, Sense and sensibility (Motion picture) I. Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Sense and sensibility. II. Title. PN1997.S36183156 1995 791.43" 72—de20 eee ee) cP Quantity Purchases Companies, professional groups, clubs, and other organizations may qualify for special terms when ordering quantities of this title. For information, write Special Sales, Newmarket Press, 18 East 48th Street, New York, New York 10017, or call (212) 832-3575. Book design by Bloomsbury Publishing, London. First EditionCONTENTS List of Illustrations 6 INTRODUCTION Lindsay Doran 7 The CAST 17 The SCREENPLAY 25 The DIARIES 205 Appendices 281LIST OF COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS eyAuakuUNE 10 i 12 13 14 15 16 7 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Norland Park Marianne Dashwood A village in Sussex Edward Ferrars approaching Norland Park Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars Elinor and Marianne Mrs Dashwood and her three daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret Sir John Middleton and Mrs Jennings Sir John Middleton and Mrs Jennings Marianne Colonel Brandon Marianne and Margaret Marianne and Willoughby Elinor Willoughby and Marianne Elinor and Mrs Dashwood Willoughby and Marianne Getting ready for the Delaford picnic Willoughby and Marianne Mrs Dashwood and Margaret Mrs Dashwood Elinor and Lucy Steele The Ball Elinor and Marianne at the Ball Fanny and John Dashwood and Robert Ferrars at the coffee house Marianne Mrs Dashwood and Marianne Elinor and Marianne Marianne and Elinor The Dashwood family Margaret Mrs Dashwood and Marianne Edward and Elinor Edward and Elinor WilloughbyINTRODUCTION and Prejudice was a very stupid book and that Jane Austen was a very stupid writer, and that I would never, ever read one of her stupid books again. I was thirteen years old. I knew that Pride and Prejudice was supposed to be this big deal classic and I F THERE WAS ANYTHING I knew for certain, it was that Pride everything, but I couldn’t see anything great about it at all. It was about these five sisters who seemed to live for only one thing: visiting. The most important thing that could happen in their lives would be that somebody would drop by, or that they would drop by the home of somebody else, or best of all, that somebody new would move into the neighbourhood so there could be a whole new round of dropping by. That was it. They talked to each other, they talked to some men they met, then they talked to each other some more. Then they all got married, resulting in every single character becoming related to every single other character, and the book was over. Really stupid. Mrs Ritter, who taught eighth grade at my all-girls’ school, certainly meant well by assigning the book for us to read, but I think what she liked best about it was that it was safe stuff for young female minds. She certainly never attempted to communicate to us that it was full of wisdom and humour, and we were too young and too unsophisticated to figure it out for ourselves. At least I was. So I did my paper on what women wore in 1800 (the clothes, I reported to my friends, were almost as stupid as the book) and that, I thought, was the end of me and Jane Austen. I was wrong, Five years later, when I was a freshman at Barnard College (another all-girls’ school), I signed up for a class taught by a professor named John Kowenhoeven in which each student chose an English-speaking author and tried to read every single work of prose or poetry the author had written, in chronological order, without referring to critical essays or biographies. The point was not to get through all the writings (as I recall, the girl who chose Herman Melville never even got to Moby Dick), but to try to make ourown judgements about the work of these authors without being influenced by what critics thought of it or what biographers implied had influenced it. At the first class, we each presented the name of the author we wanted to study. I chose James Joyce (probably because some boy I once had a crush on thought that James Joyce was the Living God) and, after a few questions from Kowenhoeven, the choice was accepted. This was how it went for most of the students until one of them said that she intended to study Jane Austen. Everything stopped. It became clear rather quickly that Jane Austen was the author whom Professor Kowenhoeven most loved and admired, and he didn’t think any of us was worthy of studying her. He grilled the poor student for what seemed like half an hour — why did she want to study Jane Austen? What books had she already read? What would she call the author in her term papers? (‘Jane Austen’ was the reply; it was clear that if the student had intended to refer to the author, even once, as ‘Jane’ or ‘Miss Austen’ or ‘Ms Austen’ or ‘The Bard of Bath’, Kowenhoeven would make her study someone else.) When question after question had been answered to his satisfaction, Kowenhoeven finally sat back in his chair, looked directly at (and somewhat through) the poor girl and said, ‘Do you have a sense of humour? ‘For Jane Austen I have,’ she replied with an equally level look. That did it. Her choice was accepted, and Kowenhoeven moved on to the girls who'd chosen to study Hardy, Woolf, Yeats, etc. But I sat there stunned. I adored this professor (in spite of — or perhaps because of — being terrified of him), and I couldn’t believe that he held Jane Austen in such high esteem. And the girl who had chosen to study Jane Austen (I don’t remember her name, only her aura) struck me as being the coolest girl in the class — she had short dark curly hair when the rest of us were trying to look like Mary Travers from Peter, Paul and Mary, and she always brought a cello case to class. I couldn’t figure it out ~ what did these people see in Jane Austen? And what did a sense of humour have to do with it? The only jokes I associated with Jane Austen were the childish ones I had made at her expense. Once a week during the term, each student had to deliver an oral report onher chosen author to the rest of the class. Kowenhoeven was terribly hard on us after these reports (‘I counted thirty-seven “‘y’know’’s before I stopped counting,’ he said to one girl; ‘When you say “Joyce gives a good descrip- tion” of something, what do you mean by “good”? he said to me), yet he was surprisingly easy on the reports presented by the girl who had chosen to study Jane Austen. But it would have been impossible to be hard on them. They were brilliant. They were also thrilling, and above everything, they were hilarious. The first pieces of writing by James Joyce that I'd come across were some school essays he’d written when he was about fifteen years old. They were rather dull, and didn’t at all hint at the magic to come. The first pieces of Jane Austen we were treated to were some stories and plays she had written when she was a little younger than fifteen. We were all entranced by them, mostly because they were so wickedly funny. (Later Emma Thompson would comment to me that she thought Jane Austen’s early works were more like Monty Python skits than anything else.) As an illustration, here are some lines from the short tale ‘Frederick and Elfrida’, written when the author was much younger than any of us in that class (the spelling, grammar and punctuation are the author’s own): But e’er (Frederic, Elfrida and Charlotte] had been many minutes seated, the Wit and Charms which shone resplendent in the conversation of the amiable Rebecca, enchanted them so much that they all with one accord jumped up and exclaimed. ‘Lovely and too charming Fair one, notwithstanding your forbidding Squint, your greazy tresses and your swelling Back, which are more frightfull than imagination can paint or pen describe, | cannot refrain from expressing my raptures, at the engaging Qualities of your Mind, which so amply atone for the Horror, with which your first appearance must ever inspire the unwary visitor. ‘Your sentiments so nobly expressed on the different excel-lencies of Indian and English Muslins, and the judicious preference you give the former, have excited in me an admira- tion of which I can alone give an adequate idea, by assuring you it is nearly equal to what I feel for myself.’ Over the course of the class, as we listened to Jane Austen’s short works evolve into full-length novels, we not only laughed but marvelled at the careful crafting of her sentences, the intricacy of her story-telling, and the accuracy of her observations on human nature. Everyone looked forward to the days when the cellist gave her reports, while I don’t remember anyone (including myself) looking forward to my attempts to explain Joyce’s ‘ineluctable modality of the visible’. When the end of the school year came and the class was over, I was resolved that as soon as I could find enough free time, I would try to duplicate the steps of the cello player and read Jane Austen’s works, every single one of them, in chronological order. But other interests and responsibilities inter- vened, and I wasn’t able to fulfil my promise to myself until I was twenty-two and living for a year in England. Soon after I arrived there, when I was crossing the street near my flat in Earl’s Court, | was hit by a very small car (probably because I was looking the wrong way). I was hurt just badly cnough that I couldn’t work, but not so badly that I couldn’t limp to the neighbourhood library every morning and limp home every night. It was freezing cold in my flat so the library happily provided a warm alternative, and as I sat among the stacks trying to figure out what | wanted to read for the next few weeks, I suddenly remembered my resolution concerning the works of Jane Austen. I went to the ‘A’ shelves and while they didn’t contain everything Jane Austen had ever written, they did hold all the major novels. So, since my reading was to be chronological, I started with Sense and Sensibility. (I remembered from class that, although Sense and Sensibility had been published in 1811, it had been written in 1795 and was therefore the first of her novels.) Over the coming months I read the books in order all the way 10through to Persuasion, loving every one of them and cursing the dim- wittedness of my eighth-grade self, but as soon as I was finished I went back and re-read Sense and Sensibility which had emerged as my clear favourite, not only of Jane Austen’s novels, but of all the novels I had ever read (fortunately, following Kowenhoeven's instructions, I hadn’t read any criticism or biographies so I didn’t find out till years later that | wasn’t supposed to like Sense and Sensibility as much as I did). Perhaps one of the reasons I loved that particular book so much was that it felt to me like a terrific movie. My father, D. A. Doran, had heen a Hollywood studio executive for forty years and had passed on a lot of his ideas at the dinner table about what makes a satisfying film. Some of that information came in the form of simple rules such as ‘Never advance the story by having a character say, “Why are you looking at me like that?” or “Why are you telling me all this?” ’ But he also taught my brother Dan and me how to recognise the qualities in a book (or play or script) that would translate into a good film. And Sense and Sensibility seemed to have them all: wonderful characters, a strong love story (actually, three strong love stories), surprising plot twists, good jokes, relevant themes, and a heart- stopping ending. I decided right there, in the reading room of the Brompton Road Library, that if I ever went into the movie business (only a vague desire when I was twenty-two), I would try to make Sense and Sensibility into a film. Eight years later that vague desire became a reality. I found myself working as an executive at a Hollywood studio and my first priority was still to make a movie out of my favourite book. That meant finding a screenwriter, and I felt | knew exactly what I was looking for: a writer who was equally strong in the areas of satire and romance (not an easy combination, I admit, since satirists are often too bitter to be romantic, and romantics are often too sentimental to be satiric); and a writer who was not only familiar with Jane Austen’s language but who could think in that language almost as naturally as he or she could think in the language of the twentieth century. I knew that in order to translate Jane Austen's somewhat sprawling book into a riveting, 11cinematic tale, some scenes and dialogue would have to be altered or invented, and the tone and language of the new material would have to match the tone and language of the original. So I set to work, reading screenplays by writers who were both male and female, old and young, English and American. Ten years later, I was still reading. Everything I'd looked at seemed so dry and polite — the romantic scripts weren’t funny enough, the funny scripts weren’t romantic enough, the attempts to write in the voice of the eighteenth century felt stilted and dull. I was beginning to think that what I was looking for didn’t exist. But around that time, | took a new job running Sydney Pollack’s production company Mirage. Sydney wanted Mirage to be a company that made movies based on our hearts’ desires, not on whatever material happened to be submitted from the agencies. He and Mirage colleague Bill Horberg urged me not to give up, so once again I began to look. The first movie I produced for Mirage was Dead Again starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. I got to know Emma very well over the course of the twelve-week shoot, and it wasn’t long before we discovered our mutual passion for Jane Austen. It was clear that she knew the books by heart, and that her appreciation of them was not of the dry, academic sort — she enjoyed them, and she loved their wit as much as she admired their intelligence. Also, she had had the good sense (and the satiric sensibility) to start loving Jane Austen’s books when she was nine years old, long before she studied them in secondary school and at Cambridge University. (Once again, 1 thought back disdainfully to my thirteen-year-old self, but eventually I came to realise that Emma is so smart and talented in so many areas that she makes everyone feel inadequate. Have you ever seen her dance? Have you heard her speak French?) As fate would have it, about two weeks into the Dead Again shooting schedule, the local PBS station KCET began airing the British television series that Emma had written called Thompson. The six half-hours consisted of a series of comic skits starring Emma, Ken, and a number of Emma's family and friends. My husband Rodney Kemerer and I foundourselves glued to it every week. Emma had told us that the British press, in their infinite wisdom, had dismissed the entire series, but we found it hilarious. In the first episode were two skits set in the past — in one of them Ken and Emma play Robin Hood and Maid Marian who are shown at a point in their relationship when the joys of living in the woods are wearing a bit thin. The second skit showed a Victorian mother’s attempts to explain to her newly married daughter what the mouse-like creature was that had crawled out of her husband’s trousers on their wedding night. The Victorian mouse skit was funny in exactly the ways that Jane Austen was funny, even though the subject matter was far more bawdy than what Jane Austen chose (or dared) to write about. And the Robin Hood skit was both funny and real, with a surprisingly romantic ending. Emma’s ability to write in period language seemed effortless. In short, it was exactly the kind of writing I'd been searching for. 1 knew that Emma had never written a screenplay before, but there was enough sense of story-telling even in those two- and three-minute sketches to indicate that writing a full-length script wouldn’t be too difficult a leap. So when Dead Again was finished, Bill and I asked Emma if she would be interested in adapting Sense and Sensibility into a feature film. She seemed surprised by the choice of that book over certain other novels such as Persuasion ot Emma, but eventually she came to share my feeling that Sense and Sensibility had more sheer entertainment value than the other books, and that it had the advantage of having two central female characters instead of the usual one. She agreed to try her hand at writing the script, but cautioned that she had ‘one little movie’ to act in first before she could begin. The little movie was Howards End. In the next few months, while Emma was in England giving the perfor- mance that would win her an Oscar the following year, Sydney and I went around Hollywood trying to find a studio that would put up the money for a 200-year-old English novel to be adapted by an untried screenwriter who was also, at that time and place, a little-known actress (“Does she have to be in it?” lamented one studio executive who eventually turned the project down.) But 13Amy Pascal and Gareth Wigan at Columbia Pictures saw the light. We showed them the first episode of Thompson which they adored, and we convinced them that Sense and Sensibility, while considered one of Jane Austen’s ‘lesser novels’ (to this day, I don’t understand that), would make a rich and entertaining film. Emma took the role of screenwriter seriously from the beginning. She not only knew how to think in Jane Austen’s language, but she understood the rhythms of good scene writing and how to convey a sense of setting. Like all good screenwriters (‘What do you mean by “good”? asks Professor Kowenhoeven in my head), she didn’t object to rewriting a scene again and again when it was required, and she wasn’t afraid to cut a line or a scene or a series of scenes when she saw that they weren’t working. Her experience as an actress served her well when it came to writing clever and efficient dialogue (you'll notice that no character says ‘Why are you looking at me like that?” or ‘Why are you telling me all this? even though there are ample opportunities for them to do so), but it also helped her to understand when silence could say more than any spoken word. In the years that followed, Emma would make a film and write a draft, make a film and write a draft, over and over again. Sometimes she’d make a film and write three drafts. Through it all, there were notes from Columbia and notes from Mirage. The Columbia executives were particularly (and rightly) concerned that we keep the story focused on the relationship between the two sisters so that it wouldn’t seem like a movie about a couple of women waiting around for men. And Sydney was ever vigilant about making the language and values of the late eighteenth century accessible to the average twentieth-century movie-goer. At one point he said to me, ‘You’re too close to all this, Lindsay. You know the book too well. Most people won’t even know that Norland Park and Barton Park are houses — they'll think they’re brothers.” But eventually, after Emma had appeared in seven films and had written probably twice that many drafts, we had a script we were ready to show to directors. And now a new search began ~ where would we find a director 14who displayed that same mixture of satire and romance that had been so hard to find in a writer? How long would we have to look this time? While Sydney, Bill and I were trying to figure out who could direct Emma’s script (most people assumed we would confine our search to English directors, women directors, or English women directors), our newest Mirage colleague, Geoff Stier, was becoming a devotee of a Taiwanese director named Ang Lee. Geoff was the first of us at Mirage to see Ang’s film The Wedding Banquet, and he told the rest of us that we should take a look at it right away and consider Ang for some of the projects we had in development at Mirage. Sydney was the next one to see it, and as he and Geoff talked enthusiastically about Ang’s work, there were two words which kept coming up — ‘funny’ and ‘romantic’. It was a familiar combination. Bill and I saw The Wedding Banquet soon afterwards, and then it became a matter of which of us had the nerve to suggest the idea first: a Taiwanese director for Sense and Sensibility? Were we crazy? (Later Ang, said, ‘When I opened the script and saw Jane Austen’s name on the title page, I thought you guys were crazy.”) But when we saw Ang’s next film, Eat Drink Man Woman, the idea of combining Ang Lee and Jane Austen became even more appealing. After all, Eat Drink Man Woman was a story of sisters, and it contained elements of both satire and romance. It even contained some of the same dialogue, word for word, as Sense and Sensibility (in both films, one sister says to another in an uncharacteristic moment of anger, ‘What do you know of my heart?) So we submitted the script to Ang’s agent. And then we held our breath. Two weeks later we received a call saying that Ang wanted to meet with us about the script, and it turned out to be the meeting we'd been dreaming of. Not only did he appreciate the script’s humour, but he said, ‘I want this film to break people’s hearts so badly they'll still be recovering from it two months later.’ And he spoke of the deep meaning that the title held for him — Sense and Sensibility, two elements that represent the core of life itself, like Yin and Yang, or Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. Ang was not a student of Jane Austen (although James Schamus, his co-producer and frequent co-writer, 15knows her work intimately), but he immediately recognised the universality of this story and of these characters. So Ang signed on to be the director of Sense and Sensibility, and his first act as director was to ask Emma if she would play the part of Elinor Dashwood. This was an idea that Mirage and Columbia had been encoura- ging for some time, and Emma graciously agreed to accept the role. So now we had our script, we had our director, and we had our star — it was time to make a movie. The first part of the Sense and Sensibility journey = the process of finding a writer, developing a screenplay, and then finding a director — took fifteen years. The rest of the journey - the actual making of the film — is recorded in Emma’s diaries which are presented here along with the shooting draft of her screenplay. Our fondest hope is that people who love Jane Austen will find the film to be faithful to the humour and wisdom of the original novel, but we also hope that the film will be a satisfying and entertaining experience for people who have never read any Jane Austen novels at all, or who have read the novels, but thought they were stupid. If there’s just one thirteen-year-old girl who sees the film and afterwards decides to revise her opinion of Jane Austen, that’s good enough for me. Lindsay Doran, Producer 16The CASTELINOR DASHWOOD Emma ThompsonEDWARD FERRARS Hugh GrantONEL BRANDON Alan RickmanMARIANNE DASHWOOD Kate WinsletMARGARET DASHWOOD Emilie Francois MRS DASHWOOD Gemma Jones MR PALMER Hugh Laurie CHARLOTTE PALMER Imelda Staunton LUCY STEELE Imogen StubbsFANNY DASHWOOD Harriet Walter JOHN DASHWOOD James Fleet JOHN WILLOUGHBY Greg Wise » - aan Fin’ SIR JOHN MIDDLETON Robert Hardy MRS JENNINGS Elizabeth Spriggs ROBERT FERRARS Richard LumsdenThe SCREENPLAYABBREVIATIONS CAM cont. CU ECU EVE EXT INT POV vio camera continued close-up extreme close-up evening exterior interior point of view voice-over Note: Gaps in the numbering of scenes are due to the omission of some scenes during filming.0 EXT. OPEN ROADS. NIGHT. TITLE SEQUENCE. A series of travelling shots. A well-dressed, pompous-looking individual (JOHN DASHWOOD, 35) is making an urgent journey on horseback. He looks anxious. 1 EXT. NORLAND PARK. ENGLAND. MARCH 1800. NIGHT. Silence. Norland Park, a large country house built in the early part of the eighteenth century, lies in the moonlit parkland. 2 INT. NORLAND PARK. MR DASHWOOD’S BEDROOM. NIGHT. In the dim light shed by candles we see a bed in which a MAN (MR DASHWOOD, 52) lies — his skin waxy, his breathing laboured. Around him two silhouettes move and murmur, their clothing susurrating in the deathly hush. DOCTORS. A WOMAN (MRS DASHWOOD, 50) sits by his side, holding his hand, her eyes never leaving his face. MR DASHWOOD (urgent) Is John not yet arrived? MRS DASHWOOD We expect him at any moment, dearest. MR DASHWOOD looks anguished. MR DASHWOOD The girls — I have left so little. MRS DASHWOOD Shh, hush, Henry. MR DASHWOOD Elinor will try to look after you all, but make sure she finds a good husband. The men are such noodles hereabouts, little wonder none has pleased her. They smile at each other. MRS DASHWOOD js just managing to conceal her fear and grief. 27MRS DASHWOOD But Marianne is sure to find her storybook hero. MR DASHWOOD A romantic poet with flashing eyes and empty pockets? MRS DASHWOOD As long as she loves him, whoever he is. MR DASHWOOD Margaret will go to sea and become a pirate so we need not concern ourselves with her. MRS DASHWOOD tries to laugh but it emerges as a sob. An older MANSERVANT (THOMAS) now enters, anxiety written on every feature. THOMAS Your son is arrived from London, sir. MR DASHWOOD squeezes his wife’s hand. MR DASHWOOD Let me speak to John alone. She nods quickly and he smiles at her with infinite tenderness. MR DASHWOOD Ah, my dear. How happy you have made me. MRS DASHWOOD makes a superhuman effort and smiles back. She allows THOMAS to help her out. She passes JOHN DASHWOOD as he enters, presses his hand, but cannot speak. JOHN takes her place by the bed. JOHN Father... MR DASHWOOD summons his last ounces of energy and starts to whisper with desperate intensity. 29MR DASHWOOD John — you will find out soon enough from my will that the estate of Norland was left to me in such a way as prevents me from dividing it between my families. JOHN blinks. He cannot quite take it in. JOHN Calm yourself, Father. This is not good for you — But MR DASHWOOD continues with even greater determination. MR DASHWOOD Norland in its entirety is therefore yours by law and I am happy for you and Fanny. JOHN looks torn between genuine distress and unexpected delight. MR DASHWOOD But your stepmother — my wife — and daughters are left with only five hundred pounds a year, barely enough to live on and nothing for the girls’ dowries. You must help them. JOHN’s face is a picture of conflicting emotions. Behind them is the ominous rustling of parchments. JOHN Of course — MR DASHWOOD You must promise to do this. A brief moment of sincerity overcomes JOHN’s natural hypocrisy. JOHN I promise, Father, I promise. MR DASHWOOD seems relieved. Suddenly his breathing changes. JOHN looks alarmed. He rises and we hear him going to find the DOCTOR. 30JOHN Come! Come quickly! But it is we who share the dying man’s last words. MR DASHWOOD Help them . . . 3 EXT. JOHN AND FANNY’S TOWN HOUSE. LONDON. DAY. Outside the house sits a very well-to-do carriage. Behind it waits another open carriage upon which servants are laying trunks and boxes. FANNY (V/O) ‘Help them? 4 INT. JOHN AND FANNY'S TOWN HOUSE. DRESSING ROOM. DAY. JOHN is standing in mourning clothes and a travelling cape. He is watching, and obviously waiting for, a pert WOMAN (FANNY DASHWOOD) who is standing by a mirror looking at him keenly. FANNY What do you mean, ‘help them’? JOHN Dearest, I mean to give them three thousand pounds. FANNY goes very still. JOHN gets nervous. JOHN The interest will provide them with a little extra income. Such a gift will certainly discharge my promise to my father. FANNY slowly turns back to the mirror. FANNY Oh, without question! More than amply . . . JOHN One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. 31A pause as FANNY turns and looks at him again. JOHN Of course, he did not stipulate a particular sum . . . 5 INT. LAUNDRY. NORLAND PARK. DAY. A red-eyed MAID (BETSY) plunges a beautiful muslin frock into a vat of black dye. 6 INT. NORLAND PARK. MRS DASHWOOD’S BEDROOM. DAY. MRS DASHWOOD is rushing about, mourning ribbons flapping, putting her knick-knacks into a small valise. The room is in chaos. A young WOMAN (ELINOR DASHWOOD) looks on helplessly. MRS DASHWOOD To be reduced to the condition of visitor in my own home! It is not to be borne, Elinor! ELINOR Consider, Mamma! We have nowhere to go. MRS DASHWOOD John and Fanny will descend from London at any moment, followed no doubt by cartloads of relatives ready to turn us out of our rooms one by one — do you expect me to be here to welcome them? Vultures! She suddenly collapses into a chair and bursts into tears. ELINOR I shall start making enquiries for a new house at once. Until then we must try to bear their coming. 7 INT. JOHN AND FANNY’S CARRIAGE. DAY. JOHN and FANNY are on their way out of London. JOHN Fifteen hundred then. What say you to fifteen hundred? 32FANNY What brother on earth would do half so much for his real sisters — let alone half-blood? JOHN They can hardly expect more. FANNY There is no knowing what they expect. The question is, what can you afford? 8 INT. NORLAND PARK. DRAWING ROOM. DAY. A beautiful young WOMAN (MARIANNE DASHWOOD) is sitting at the piano playing a particularly sad piece. ELINOR enters. ELINOR Marianne, cannot you play something else? Mamma has been weeping since breakfast. MARIANNE stops, turns the pages of her music book and starts playing something equally lugubrious. ELINOR I meant something less mournful, dearest. 9 EXT. ROADSIDE INN. DAY. JOHN and FANNY are waiting as the OSTLERS make the final adjustments to their carriage. The LANDLORD hovers, waiting for a tip. JOHN A hundred pounds a year to their mother while she lives. Would that be more advisable? It is better than parting with the fifteen hundred all at once, He displays some coins in his hand. FANNY removes one and nods. FANNY But if she should live longer than fifteen years we would be 33completely taken in. People always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid them. JOHN gives the coins to the LANDLORD. 10 EXT. NORLAND PARK. MARGARET’S TREE-HOUSE. DAY. ELINOR comes to the foot of a large tree from which a small staircase issues. ELINOR Margaret, are you there? Please come down. John and Fanny will be here soon. A pause. ELINOR is about to leave when a disembodied and truculent young voice stops her. MARGARET (V/O) Why are they coming to live at Norland? They already have a house in London. ELINOR Because houses go from father to son, dearest — not from father to daughter. It is the law. Silence. ELINOR tries another tack. ELINOR If you come inside, we could play with your atlas. MARGARET (V/O) It’s not my atlas any more. It’s their atlas. CLOSE on ELINOR as she ponders the truth of this statement. 11 INT. JOHN AND FANNY’S CARRIAGE. DAY. JOHN and FANNY joggle on. JOHN Twenty pounds now and then will amply discharge my promise, you are quite right. 34FANNY Indeed. Although to say the truth, am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them money. JOHN They will have five hundred a year amongst them as it is - FANNY — and what on earth can four women want for more than that? Their housekeeping will be nothing at all — they will have no carriage, no horses, hardly any servants and will keep no company. Only conceive how comfortable they will be! 12 INT. NORLAND PARK. SERVANTS’ HALL. DAY. The large contingent of SERVANTS who staff Norland Park are gathered in gloomy silence as ELINOR addresses them. ELINOR As you know, we are looking for a new home. When we leave we shall be able to retain only Thomas and Betsy. CAM holds on THOMAS and BETSY, a capable woman. ELINOR (cont.) We are very sorry to have to leave you all. But we are certain you will find the new Mrs Dashwood a fair and generous mistress. 13 EXT. NORLAND PARK. DRIVE. DAY. JOHN and FANNY’s carriage approaches Norland. FANNY (V/O) They will be much more able to give you something. 14 INT. JOHN AND FANNY’S CARRIAGE. DAY. JOHN and FANNY are about to get out. 35JOHN So—we are agreed. No money — but the occasional gift of game and fish in season will be very welcome. FANNY Your father would be proud of you. 15 INT. NORLAND PARK. DINING ROOM. EARLY EVE. The entire family, with the exception of MARGARET, is present. BETSY is serving food in an atmosphere of stiff silence. Cutlery clinks. JOHN chews loudly. MARIANNE is rigid with resentment. MRS DASHWOOD maintains a cool, removed dignity. ELINOR tries to play hostess. ELINOR How is Mrs Ferrars? FANNY My mother is always in excellent health, thank you. My brother Robert is in town with her this season and quite the most popular bachelor in London! He has his own barouche. In the brief silence which follows this, FANNY surreptitiously checks the hallmark on her butterknife. ELINOR You have two brothers, have you not? FANNY Indeed, yes. Edward is the eldest Mamma quite depends upon him. He is travelling up from Plymouth shortly and will break his journey here. MRS DASHWOOD looks at ELINOR pointedly. JOHN notices. JOHN (to MRS DASHWOOD) If that is agreeable to you, of course. 36MRS DASHWOOD My dear John ~ this is your home now. FANNY looks about, barely able to conceal her satisfaction. 16 INT. NORLAND PARK. ELINOR’S BEDROOM. DAY. ELINOR is sitting with a little pile of parcels. She puts a shawl into some paper and ties it with ribbon as MARIANNE thunders in, looking mutinous. MARIANNE Fanny wishes to know where the key for the silver cabinet is kept. ELINOR Betsy has it, I think. What does Fanny want with the silver? MARIANNE Ican only presume she wants to count it. What are you doing? ELINOR Presents for the servants. Have you seen Margaret? | am worried about her. She has taken to hiding in the oddest places. MARIANNE Fortunate girl. At least she can escape Fanny, which is more than any of us is able. ELINOR You do your best. You have not said a word to her for a week. MARIANNE (truculently) I have! I have said ‘yes’ and ‘no’. 17 INT. NORLAND PARK. BREAKFAST ROGM. DAY. FANNY, MRS DASHWOOD, ELINOR and JOHN are at breakfast. MARIANNE enters. ELINOR catches her eye and indicates FANNY with a slight motion of her head. MARIANNE makes a face. MARIANNE (very polite) Good morning, Fanny. 37FANNY is rather startled. FANNY Good morning, Marianne. ELINOR is relieved. MARIANNE (to Fanny) How did you find the silver? Is it all genuine? ELINOR rushes in before MARIANNE gets any further. ELINOR Pray, when may we expect the pleasure of your brother’s company? FANNY Edward is due tomorrow. And my dear Mrs Dashwood, in view of the fact that he will not be with us for long, I wondered if Miss Margaret would mind giving up her room to him — the view is quite incomparable from her windows and | should so much like Edward to see Norland at its best. MARIANNE slams her cup down and throws a furious look at ELINOR. 18 INT. NORLAND PARK. MARGARET’S BEDROOM. DAY. ELINOR and MARIANNE are removing MARGARET’s toys. MARIANNE Intolerable woman! ELINOR There is but one consolation — if Edward is anything like Fanny, we shall be only too happy to leave. 19 EXT. NORLAND PARK. DRIVE. DAY. A very capable HORSEMAN (EDWARD FERRARS) canters up the gravel drive. CLOSE on his face as he gazes up at the elegant facade. 3820 INT. NORLAND PARK. DRAWING ROOM. DAY. Everyone except MARGARET is present. EDWARD has just shaken hands with ELINOR. He behaves with great respect to the DASHWOODS and seems embarrassed by FANNY’s proprietorial air. FANNY But where is Miss Margaret? I declare, Mrs Dashwood, I am beginning to doubt of her existence! She must run positively wild! MRS DASHWOOD Forgive us, Mr Ferrars. My youngest is not to be found this morning. She is a little shy of strangers at present. EDWARD Naturally. I am also shy of strangers and I have nothing like her excuse. MARIANNE (dangerous) How do you like your view, Mr Ferrars? ELINOR glances at her warningly but EDWARD replies with careful consideration. EDWARD Very much. Your stables are very handsome and beautifully kept, Mrs Dashwood. FANNY Stables! Edward — your windows overlook the lake. EDWARD An — oversight, Fanny, led me to the wrong room. I have rectified the situation and am happily settled in the guest quarters. MARIANNE and ELINOR look at each other in surprise. FANNY looksfurious. MRS DASHWOOD smiles warmly at EDWARD. CLOSE on ELINOR. She is impressed. 21 INT. NORLAND PARK. STAIRCASE. DAY. FANNY is walking with EDWARD, who looks at the pictures with interest. FANNY They are all exceedingly spoilt, I find. Miss Margaret spends all her time up trees and under furniture and I have barely had a civil word from Marianne. EDWARD My dear Fanny, they have just lost their father — their lives will never be the same again. FANNY That is no excuse. 22 INT. NORLAND PARK. LIBRARY. DAY. FANNY leads EDWARD in. She sniffs with distaste. FANNY I have never liked the smell of books. EDWARD Oh? No. The dust, perhaps. As they speak, EDWARD notices a large atlas retreating apparently all by itself across the floor. Someone is obviously under the table, pulling it out of sight. He registers it and immediately moves in such a way as to shield it from FANNY. He turns back, searching for something to divert her. EDWARD T hear you have great plans for the walnut grove. FANNY Oh yes! I shall have it pulled down to make room for a Grecian temple. 41There is a stifled wail from under the table, which EDWARD covers with a cough. EDWARD How picturesque. Will you show me the site? And he ushers FANNY out, flicking a quick glance over his shoulder at the fugitive’s foot. 23 INT. NORLAND PARK. VELVET ROOM. DAY. ELINOR, MRS DASHWOOD and MARIANNE are sitting round a table with a pile of letters. ELINOR is handing one back to her mother. ELINOR Too expensive. We do not need four bedrooms, we can share. MARIANNE This one, then? ELINOR reads the letter quickly. ELINOR Marianne, we have only five hundred pounds a year. I will send out more enquiries today. There is a knock on the door. Hesitantly, EDWARD appears. EDWARD Pardon my intrusion, but I believe I have found what you are looking for . . . MARIANNE and MRS DASHWOOD are puzzled by his elliptical manner but ELINOR immediately understands and rises, in smiling relief. 24 INT. NORLAND PARK. ENTRANCE HALL OUTSIDE LIBRARY. DAY. EDWARD is standing outside keeping a discreet lookout. The door is half open and he can hear ELINOR trying to coax MARGARET out. FANNY walks by with a BUTLER to whom she is giving instructions. EDWARD 42pretends to examine the mouldings and she passes on unsuspecting. ELINOR (V/O) Won't you come out, dearest? We haven't seen you all day Mamma is very concerned. More silence. EDWARD thinks hard. He makes a decision. 25 INT. NORLAND PARK. LIBRARY. DAY. EDWARD walks in loudly. EDWARD Oh, Miss Dashwood! Excuse me—I was wondering — do you by any chance have such a thing as a reliable atlas? ELINOR looks up at him in astonishment. ELINOR I believe so. EDWARD Excellent. I wish to check the position of the Nile. EDWARD appears to be utterly sincere. EDWARD My sister says it is in South America. From under the table we hear a snort. ELINOR looks at him in realisation. ELINOR Oh! No, no indeed. She is quite wrong, For I believe it is in — in - Belgium. EDWARD Belgium? Surely not. You must be thinking of the Volga. MARGARET (from under the table) The Volga? 43