Based on a quartet of crime novels by David Peace, the RED RIDING trilogy is a noirish fiction of unfettered institutional corruption in Yorkshire, England constructed around actual events occurring between 1974 and 1983. It's an ambitious work, reminiscent of James Ellroy's L.A. quartet for its seedy embellishment of the historical record, but distinct in that each of the novels (save for the second, excised due to budgetary constraints) has been assigned to a different director with different stylistic dictates - e.g. 1974 is shot in 16mm by Julian Jarrold, 1980 in 35mm by MAN ON WIRE's James Marsh, and 1983 in flawless HD by Anand Tucker. Thanks to the seamless adaptation wizardry of screenwriter Tony Grisoni, the effect is anything but jarring.

Best known for taming Hunter S. Thompson's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS with frequent collaborator Terry Gilliam, Grisoni has successfully transferred the wild energy of Peace's prose while subtly imbuing the story with a necessary humanism that, in a way, rewards one's punishing trip through the mean streets of Yorkshire. The tale is still oppressively bleak in the noir tradition, but there is a narrow stream of hope flowing throughout these films; it's not an assurance that right will be done, but it's at least not completely inevitable that the wicked (i.e. one child murderer and most of the West Yorkshire police force) will triumph. This may sound like a betrayal of the source material, but it's akin to Brian Helgeland's brightening-up of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, and, therefore, acceptable.

With the RED RIDING trilogy debuting in theaters and on IFC On Demand this week (1974 and 1980 are currently available), I had the opportunity to discuss the rigors of adaptation with Mr. Grisoni, and was surprised to learn he rather enjoyed his extended stay in Peace's despairing universe. For Grisoni, it was an embarrassment of storytelling riches: four books with multiple, twisty, often unresolved character arcs in the grand Raymond Chandler tradition. It's not often a writer gets to romp about in a sprawling world like this in film or on television (for the most part, only the work of Charles Dickens gets this deluxe treatment).

Our discussion is largely focused on RED RIDING, but I did manage to ask after the status of THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE aka THE MOVIE THAT ALMOST KILLED TERRY GILLIAM (AND MAY YET). It sounds like things are progressing, dare I say it, nicely on this once-cursed project.

Amusingly, I didn't have to ask a question to get Grisoni going. He just tore right into it.

(We do get into spoiler territory below. I'll warn you ahead of time.)

Tony Grisoni: We had a read-through of all four scripts a while back. We had some fantastic actors, and they didn't just read through; they gave real performances. It was the most exhausting six-and-a-half hours, and we all kind of fell out of this room drunk - and then went and got drunk for real. It was grueling, but, at the same time, I think it's a good way to see them.

Beaks: How long had you been working on the scripts before you heard them read by actors?

Grisoni: I started writing in February 2006, so it must've been mid-2007. Maybe towards the end of 2007.

Beaks: Speaking of something being "grueling", did you ever feel like you were sort of trapped in a cave going at this dark material for so long?

Grisoni: I wish I could give you the bad news on this, because it would be better copy, but the truth is I was in a cave for a while of my own volition. It was a dark place, but it was also very enjoyable to have this much material to play with. You build up such a epic tapestry; to work on a piece of fiction like that, of that scale, was a real joy. In that fiction, I'm pretending all the time - that's the whole nature of it, isn't it? You're treading in the shoes of people who I wouldn't even dare look at if they existed in my reality. It was an incredibly pleasurable, but very intense experience. And, to be honest, the fallout continues: you can't walk away and climb out from underneath it so quickly. It's taking some doing, to be quite honest.

Beaks: Did you ever feel daunted by having to boil down this material into a four-part film?

Grisoni: No, because I didn't think in terms of boiling down. I asked for, and was given, enormous freedom. So, for instance, I didn't write treatments or outlines. I did have one person whose job it was to deconstruct all the books and cross-reference the characters and events, and then produce these charts; I could refer to the charts when I was good and ready, to check out to see what, for instance, Maurice Jobson [played by David Morrissey] was doing in '74, what he was doing in '80, what he was doing in '83. I could refer back to that, and that would be cross-referenced with page numbers so I could go and read what was there in the novel. I had that as a kind of safety net, as it were. I also had someone working in development who I could just go to and talk to every other day, someone I could go to and bleat. (Laughs) Anyone who's a writer will understand this: you just need someone you can go to and bleat and kvetch, and after you've exhausted yourself and the listener, you feel as though you've gained something; you've gained a better understanding, and now you can go and write. (Laughs)

Those two people were very key. And at the same time, my freedom to wade in was being protected by Andrew Eaton in particular. I really wanted to try and go on a journey which was as close as possible to the one that David Peace had gone on. Was it impossible to do that? Absolutely. But I got as close as possible to it by just launching in. I'd read a particular novel at night, and mentally make notes of "That's a good scene," "That's a really great scene," "That's a good run of dialogue..." things like that. And then I'd go back over it, and very often start writing immediately. I was thinking on my feet, and that made it very exciting, very alive. Any anxiety I'd had from not knowing how it was going to turn out was made up for by the fact that it was an adventure, and that it was unknown. It's very unusual anywhere to have that kind of freedom, particularly in television. It was something of a coup, I think.

Beaks: It's also my understanding that, as you were piecing together the narrative and trying to keep track of who did what when, there were points where you realized some things didn't quite connect up or fit. It reminds me of THE BIG SLEEP, where Faulkner and Brackett had to call Raymond Chandler to ask who'd killed a particular character, and he didn't know.

Grisoni: That certainly happened. David Peace was incredibly generous all through the process. He was living in Tokyo at the time, and he was always there on the other end of the email willing to go back to fictions he had finished with. That had been an intensely creative period for him when he produced the quartet, and now I was asking him to revisit it. The first thing that happens, of course, is you can't remember. (Laughs) But he was prepared to go back and find out for me. I think the nature of that kind of work, writing a novel, is such that he's continuing discovering at the point of that pencil, so everything isn't going to add up. But one of the darkest things about the whole quartet is that questions are asked and not always answered. Often, there are multiple possible answers: a guilty person isn't necessarily the guilty one or the only guilty one. This is part of the brilliance of those novels: they reflect the world more accurately, if a bit more darkly. We try to keep that alive in the screenplays and the movies.

(Begin spoiler-y talk)

Beaks: It does have that noir influence. We see in these films that the search for truth is a self-destructive act. Do you buy in to this worldview?

Grisoni: It's very difficult to explain this because... I think the responsibility of my job is being responsible to the characters. It wasn't about trusting David Peace; it was about trusting the novels, those fictions, and the people in those fictions. And I did trust them; they felt as if they came from a very true place. That's what I was serving. And then I discovered that there was enormous joy to be had out of being so rigorous, and that someone such as Eddie Dunford [played by Andrew Garfield], who becomes so obsessed with finding out what happened and what the truth was, and then is destroyed for it. The weird kind of joy, the same kind you get from watching those film noirs, is that here's a world that's so dark, and here is someone who is asking questions and going places we would not dare to go to. He asks those questions and goes to those places despite what happens to him, despite the threats, and despite the signs that are so clear. (Laughs) Eddie has this weird kind of innocence to him - which is partly to do with his age. But he will not stop. It's very clear that he should not continue this line of investigation, but he keeps going, and he does it for us. And even his destruction makes him, and the motion of pressing for the truth, heroic.

That's what we enjoy, I think. You have this character acting on your behalf, and the odds are so stacked, and yet he does not stop. And we continue to watch, even after Eddie Dunford's story; we watch the next one, and we know fairly swiftly that [Peter Hunter, played by Paddy Considine] is going down a dangerously similar path. After a while, being told again and again that this man is not going to succeed, that this man is going to come to a terrible end... and yet we keep watching. We need to because we enjoy seeing him pit himself against such awful darkness, and we stay there. (Laughs) I almost said "Greek Tragedy", but I didn't.

Beaks: But there is catharsis - certainly in the first film, maybe not so much in the second film, but definitely in the third. You are hoping for these characters to find a measure of satisfaction before they shuffle off. There must be a minor victory. We must feel as if they've achieved something.

Grisoni: I think they do achieve something - certainly in Dunford's case, and in Hunter's case as well. They reach a point where they are at the inner circle of hell and face the greatest evil they could imagine - and they [stand] up to it. That's their reward.

Beaks: And at least do some bit of good.

Grisoni: That's what they give to us. They tried. They try even though they may be deeply flawed characters. I used to have a couple of sentences for each movie to act as a guide, and for 1980 I had that Chandler quote: "But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." That was for Hunter, and that is how he would like to see himself: neither tarnished nor afraid. But he is both, of course. That's the beauty of those lines: they set a bar that you can aspire to but never quite reach because your connection to the world tarnishes you; that's what living is about. But you, and Hunter, aspire nonetheless to be that knight in shining armor - and we learn fairly early on that he is not as squeaky clean as he'd like to be, or people imagine he is.

Beaks: Although his failings are human.

Grisoni: Yes. Very human.

Beaks: So we go into the third film expecting that we're going to see another life destroyed, and get a slightly different result. You've said that saving one child was important to you. Was that just to break up the misery?

Grisoni: It was a completely emotional reaction. I'd been with four [books] by this time. Hunter has this great notion - and I dropped it finally from the script. But at the beginning he has this deal he makes. He does a deal with God: [Hunter] wants a child so badly [because he is unable to conceive one with his wife], so he asks if he can save just one. He wants to save one from child from death. So I took that from 1980 into 1983 with me, and made that my mission.

I also fell in love with these unlikely heroes. I fell in love with BJ [Robert Sheehan], who starts life as this very weak character, this rent boy who's so vulnerable and weak. He goes all the way through looking for a champion, and finally in 1983 he decides to be that champion. Then there's Maurice Jobson, a flawed man who's been at the center of this corruption, and who tried in a very ineffectual way to do something in 1974; now, revisiting things, he tries to do something again. And then there's [John] Piggot [Mark Addy], who has been so destroyed by the sins of his father that he's a mess. These are such unlikely heroes to somehow come together and face off against such huge corruption and evil. I just started to enjoy the idea of them managing to do this, so it became important to me. There is a chink of light. That's all.

Beaks: Have you spoken with David Peace about this alteration?

Grisoni: David has only said really sweet things to me about the adaptations. He loves them. We've never spoken about that one in particular, but that is certainly one that, at some point, I would love to have a conversation with him about. (Laughs) But his words have been very joyful and characteristically generous.

(End Spoiler-y Talk)

Beaks: Are you satisfied with the look of each film, and how they reflect what you put to the page?

Grisoni: I'm amazed. There's this wonderful place where you sit down to write these screenplays, and you are so far from the reality of carrying out, of extending and developing these films. You're a million miles away from "It's raining, the guy fell off his horse, there's a flash flood..." all of these things - not to mention the little things that happen, like different energies on the set. An actor could bring something new to you, scenes that seemed to work on the page aren't quite working in the same way... all of these things are going on. And what those three directors did with those scripts is nothing short of miraculous. "Satisfaction" doesn't come into it. It's something bigger than that.

You need a bad story! I must come up with something bad...

Beaks: (Laughs) Okay, what destroyed you about this project?

Grisoni: (Laughing) Well, it being very fucking difficult to get down to writing something else. That's what destroyed me about the project.

Beaks: Getting to stand on the shoulders of this author with these great books, and then having to go back and start from scratch, do you begin doubting yourself creatively?

Grisoni: Yes. All the time. Every day. It's a correct thing to do, to doubt yourself in every way. It's also... the people in these fictions are so real, I don't want to have Maurice Jobson walk in on every fucking drama I sit down to try to write, but there he is waiting in the wings saying, "Here I am. I'm a fully-formed character. I'm a person. I'm real. I'm here." And I say, "I don't want you, Maurice. I'm finished with you. Go away. Go somewhere else." But he's still there. There's a whole bunch of them pressing against the door while I'm trying to write; meanwhile, you're trying to start fresh. There's nothing more vulnerable than the very beginnings of a new story. There you go! There's your bad news!

Beaks: I must ask where you are with THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE.

Grisoni: I'll tell you where we are with it. We've got a new screenplay, and I just did a rewrite on it the other day. Jeremy Thomas is producing. All we've got to do now is find the money. That's the easy bit. (Laughs)

Beaks: Do you find that people are reluctant to invest because of the perceived bad mojo the project seems to invite?

Grisoni: Absolutely not. People are reluctant to invest in anything. (Laughs) But they will.

Beaks: You've been working on this project for so long. Is it still fun for you? Are you still discovering things in the story?

Grisoni: When Jeremy Thomas finally got the rights so that we could finally begin to work on it, ten years had passed [since the first attempt]. I was really upset because I really wanted to go back into that world. But Terry and I talked about the story, and we re-read the script, and we discovered what we thought was a work of genius probably wasn't a work of genius. In fact, we read it and thought, "This is not good. Why were we going to make that?" So we started to talk about the bits that didn't work and the bits that might work, and we completely re-thought the whole thing. That gave us a huge amount of momentum, and I think it's a far better screenplay that we've got. It's serendipitous, but I think it's a good thing that we're making a new start on it. It's a far stronger project.

Beaks: I think any lover of cinema is rooting for you guys to pull this thing together, get it up before the cameras, and make a great movie.

Grisoni: But we're up against it. We're up against the movie you've all got in your head.

Beaks: I think we're open to any possibility. Now that you've rewritten it, we can't possibly know what to expect. All is goodwill.

Grisoni: But you're right, it needs to be done, doesn't it?

Beaks: It would be a tragedy if it wasn't.

Grisoni: I know. Also, I think Terry would become some awful character in an Edgar Allan Poe short story, like he can't die. That would be horrible.

I don't know about that. Hard to see the downside of an immortal Terry Gilliam, actually.

RED RIDING 1974 and 1980 is available via On Demand right now. 1983 debuts this week. The trilogy is also playing in limited theatrical release. It is well worth your time.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks