Screenwriter David Solomons on his Hollywood struggles and the making of a superhero
The Scottish writer of Five Children and It, recently at the Hong Kong International Young Readers Festival, talks about why the LA life was not for him and about tasting success with his first children’s book
First words I was born in Glasgow’s Southside, in Scotland, in the small Jewish community there. I had a fairly unremarkable, happy childhood. I often blame my parents for not giving me trauma that I could use to write darker, bitter books. I was state educated all the way through. As a child I was a big reader and had a fertile imagination. In 1980, the teacher said to the class, “Let’s write the school Christmas play together.” That was the first bit of creative writing I did. There was a visceral thrill to being part of it and even though I was a very shy, retiring little boy, I ended up acting in the play and loving it. I didn’t write creatively again for a very long time, but I knew from that moment I wanted to be a writer – it just took me a long time to get around to it.
Poor relations There was a tradition of growing up in Glasgow and going to Glasgow University and I followed in that. I didn’t even move out of the family home. I studied English literature. Shortly after graduating I had a go at writing a novel, but it was self-indulgent and went nowhere. My first job was wholly unsuitable. I found myself working for a public relations company in Glasgow. I was cripplingly shy and hated talking to people on the phone, which the job required. I was terrible at it. There was a little design agency in the middle of this PR company and I wheedled my way into there and started writing copy for brochures and from there I forged a career in copywriting.
Screen dreams I decided I wanted to write screenplays so in the margins of the day I started writing some to practise – none of them were very good. I was fortunate to have a connection to someone in the business and I showed him one. He didn’t take the screenplay, but he asked me to write a pilot for a TV series. He needed it done in two weeks. I got paid, but the series never came off. This guy had a connection with the horror director Nicolas Roeg and he asked me to work on a screenplay for him, but again it wasn’t turned into anything.
I wrote another spec script that found its way onto a desk at the Jim Henson Company and next thing I knew I was asked to write an adaptation of Five Children and It, the E. Nesbit book. I got to work with a fabulous bunch of people and we actually made a movie that came out in 2004. Eddie Izzard voiced the Psammead, the magical wish-granting creature in the story, and Kenneth Branagh played a part. Until that point I’d been a freelancer for advertising agencies – a glorious existence where you go in a couple of days a week and people are happy to see you, unlike staff, in which case you are just in the way. It became clear that I could support myself financially with the screenwriting and I needed more time to dedicate to that so I stopped freelancing.
