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With the long-awaited adaptation of her 2015 novel Eileen set to hit cinemas this Friday, we talk to both the author and her co-writing partner Luke Goebel about perfectionism and the tricky art of screenwriting
“I felt I’d walked into a scene from a movie in which someone was going mad, the air heavy with suspense,” says the first-person narrator in Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2015 novel Eileen. “I tried my best to look natural, smile, to read Rebecca’s stilted cues.” A debut that launched Moshfegh’s career, Eileen is a haunting read, a book that’s sometimes so unsettling the words almost poke you in the eye. With its queer love story, noir tone, and twisted humour, a movie adaptation always felt inevitable.
Eight years on, the film version of Eileen, directed by William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth), is an eerie, messed-up tale of loneliness that does away with voiceover and applies nightmarish fake-outs and anguished silences that never existed on the page. In 1960s New England, Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) is a prison administrator who, in an early scene, masturbates in her car and shoves snow down her underwear to calm herself down. Otherwise, Eileen’s life revolves around vomiting from alcohol, spying on a male love interest, and surviving abuse from her violent, gun-wielding father. That all changes with the arrival of Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), a psychiatrist whose elegance hypnotises Eileen to the point of obsession.
For the adaptation, Moshfegh penned the screenplay with Luke Goebel, her husband and cowriter on A24’s Jennifer Lawrence-starring drama Causeway. As a novelist, Goebel wrote Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, while Moshfegh followed up Eileen with My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona. In a London hotel, I spoke to the duo about getting angry with each other, who did the typing on Eileen, and writing drafts of My Year of Rest and Relaxation for Yorgos Lanthimos and Margot Robbie.
The first draft of Eileen, the novel, was written in the third person, then subsequently rewritten in the first person. How was it adapting the book into a screenplay, which is inherently a third-person format?
Ottessa Moshfegh: When I rewrote the book in first person, I could have an older Eileen looking back and saying, ‘Here’s what I was thinking at the time, but here’s the way I see it now’. In the screenplay, the objectivity was crucial. It wasn’t judgemental. It’s seeing Eileen as a real person moving through space, and reacting to things in real time.
Luke, as you didn’t write the novel, did you help in the transition to a third-person perspective?
Luke Goebel: It worked really well that Ottessa was the insider, and I was the outsider. She could so perfectly keep us where we needed to be in terms of structure, characters, and storytelling. I could keep throwing the curveball that would break it into a new territory.
What’s your co-writing setup like? Whose laptop gets to store the Final Draft file?
Ottessa Moshfegh: When we were writing Eileen, I was the one with the laptop.
Luke Goebel: Although we traded it.
Ottessa Moshfegh: Sometimes.
Luke Goebel: You were pretty grabby with the laptop.
Ottessa Moshfegh: I was very controlling, especially with the first draft.
If you disagree on dialogue, are you peering over to see what the other person is typing?
Luke Goebel: Oh, yeah. We used a shared screen.
Ottessa Moshfegh: Sometimes [laughs]. There was something about Eileen; on the first draft, I felt very proprietary. On subsequent drafts, I felt way more flexible.
Luke Goebel: But then there’s also the printing of the drafts. There’s the slashing and cutting and rewriting in the margins. Every single word is debated.
Ottessa Moshfegh: I remember being very angry!
Luke Goebel: You did not want to give up control.
What were you angry about?
Ottessa Moshfegh: I guess being challenged on the version I had in my head, because I was so attached to it.
Luke Goebel: Which is a terrible position to be in for both of us. If you’re a man adapting her female-centric book, and she’s the ultimate authority? I have to really believe in what I’m saying.
Ottessa Moshfegh: The standard was really high, and it worked well.
Luke Goebel: We’ve got another film with Will Oldroyd, and then we’ve got another project that we’ve just handed in the first draft on. On those, the laptop definitely got shared equally.
Ottessa Moshfegh: I’m not sure that I would work on another adaptation of my own book in this partnership again. Having moved away into shared, new territory, the dynamic feels way more creative and fun.
Luke Goebel: Also, pretty much everything that gets said, gets changed. When you’re married… [laughs] It’s like, ‘Today, we’re saying this is the rule. Tomorrow, the rule changes’.
“It’s giving birth to something out of connecting with your own spirit, and the inspiration that’s out there. Writing Eileen is what made me fall in love with novel-writing” – Ottessa Moshfegh
Did you read Erin Cressida Wilson’s attempted screenplay of Eileen?
Ottessa Moshfegh: We didn’t want to see it. Secretary and Fur – she’s an amazing screenwriter. But I didn’t want to be influenced at all because it’s a completely new take after I got the IP back.
Luke Goebel: Have you read it?
No. I was just wondering because when she was hired, the movie was touted as the next Gone Girl, and I could imagine lots of voiceover.
Ottessa Moshfegh: At one moment we considered having a voiceover.
Luke Goebel: At the end, we had a voiceover. It lasted about an hour.
Ottessa Moshfegh: It was important for us to put into words what we wanted the viewer to understand. But we didn’t need it, nor did we want it.
How did you decide on the images that would introduce Eileen in the first few scenes?
Ottessa Moshfegh: It’s Eileen being silent. That restraint is the effort she puts into controlling the way she feels.
Luke Goebel: That’s why we didn’t do voiceover. Rebecca has to be the opportunity for her to attempt to speak and open up.
Rebecca is introduced a lot earlier in the film than in the book.
Ottessa Moshfegh: That’s often the note on a first draft, to get to the inciting incident faster.
Ottessa, you’ve mentioned using Alan Watts’ The 90-Day Novel for Eileen. Did you look at Save the Cat! or any other screenwriting books?
Ottessa Moshfegh: Coming from an experimental short fiction background, I had such a prejudice against any kind of traditional narrative form. The 90-Day Novel was a very healing experience. It totally tapped into what I love about writing. It’s giving birth to something out of connecting with your own spirit, and the inspiration that’s out there. Writing Eileen is what made me fall in love with novel writing.
No, we never consulted Save the Cat!, although I do own that book. Maybe I should read it [laughs]. We got lucky in that we were working with a novel that already had the story, and we were working with Will, so we could see the movie already.
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Has screenwriting changed your novel-writing?
Ottessa Moshfegh: It did. Lapvona is my first book in the third person, which speaks to your very wise assessment of screenwriting being a third-person process. The story moves cinematically. It would be the most expensive movie in the world.
Yorgos Lanthimos was announced a few years ago as the director of My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Did you write those drafts together?
Ottessa Moshfegh: That was just me.
When writing drafts for Yorgos Lanthimos, did you study his films? For instance, did you look at The Lobster, and wonder if you wanted a detached voiceover like that?
Ottessa Moshfegh: When you’re working with a director, you need to understand their visual language, their psychology, and how they like to tell stories. Yorgos is an auteur. You can look at a still from one of his movies, and know that it’s a Yorgos movie. That’s how specific his style is. Having to apply something that had been in my brain to that aesthetic and tone and pace and style isn’t easy.
But for some reason, I feel like Will was just a really natural fit with Eileen. It was a perfect marriage of content and direction.
Because you’re both producers on Eileen, did you watch versions of the edit?
Luke Goebel: Yeah, we gave detailed feedback. We watched all the auditions, and had a very active role in determining who our stars were.
Ottessa Moshfegh: It was amazing to work with a director who was that collaborative, and had so much respect for our opinions.
Would you want to direct?
Ottessa Moshfegh: I would totally want to direct one day. It’s hard when you write screenplays to know that someone else is going to do it. I mean, you have to imagine how to direct something if you want to write it well.
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What are you writing next? Ottessa, I know you’re adapting Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room.
Ottessa Moshfegh: I’m excited about The Mars Room.
Luke Goebel: We’ve got two scripts under contract that we’ve just handed in drafts on, now that the strike is over. I’ve got a couple of things that aren’t ready to be announced.
They’re on your laptop, Luke?
Ottessa Moshfegh: Yeah. He definitely has his own stuff.
Luke Goebel: I feel like there’s now this thing where it’ll say that you wrote Eileen on your laptop.
Ottessa Moshfegh: What? No!
I’m going to emphasise the shared screen.
Luke Goebel: OK, OK. Those are solo. Are you writing anything?
Ottessa Moshfegh: By myself? I mean, I’m working on an original screenplay.
Is My Year of Rest and Relaxation still happening with Yorgos Lanthimos and Margot Robbie?
Ottessa Moshfegh: They’re still attached for now. It’s amazing that it’s a possibility to work with these enormous people. Everyone’s really busy. It’s still moving forward, but not fast.
Eileen is out in cinemas on December 1
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