Author Colm Tóibín has said that his novel Nora Webster would need a different approach to Brooklyn if it were to be made into a film.
Speaking during a public interview with The Guardian about the possibility of Nora Webster following Brooklyn to acclaim on the big screen, the Wexford-born writer said. "You don’t have the crossing the Atlantic.
"Crossing the Atlantic is itself such a dramatic business, and John Crowley (Brooklyn director) could work with that idea of the first farewell being mirrored with the end of the film. There are things that you could do with this (Nora Webster) but it would be a different sort of film."
When it was suggested that the late Ingmar Bergman might have directed a film of Nora Webster, Tóibín said: "I took a lot from Bergman in order to write it so it would be great if he was still alive," said Tóibín said.
He revealed that he left novelist Nick Hornby to his own devices when it came to the Brooklyn screenplay. “If it came to Nora Webster, I would want the same, maybe just to disappear into the shadows. "
He was very happy with Hornby as Brooklyn's screen-writer. “There were a few tiny things to do with Irish usage that I think anyone would have told him, the differences between English and Irish usage that I just pointed out to him.
"We met in the afternoon, we had a cup of coffee, and I thanked him for doing it and I went home again. The experience was fine, no tension, no difficulty, no screaming matches.”
