Inside the Hornby Files
English writer (and one-time secondary school teacher) Nick Hornby has a golden touch when it comes to writing popular novels that make the transition to feature film adaptations. This success is driven, in part, by his curiosity about what is current in the world in which he lives, from sports and music to popular culture. More subtly, though, his success reflects his skill at capturing just the right tone for his protagonists as they lead audiences on idiosyncratic wanderings through life philosophies, current obsessions, and the detritus of failed romances, forsaken dreams, and stalled ambitions. Here is a quick look into the fascinating world Inside the Hornby Files.
Fever Pitch (1997)
Based on Hornby's near-obsessive support for Arsenal Football Club, Fever Pitch (1997) stars Colin Firth and Ruth Gemmel in an admittedly thin, standard-issue romantic comedy. It was remade with the same title in 2005, this time starring Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore, and the Boston Red Sox. Interestingly, the remake clocked in at #172 on Rotten Tomato’s list of “The 200 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time.'
High Fidelity (2000)
Hornby’s first novel, High Fidelity (1995), reset the bar with its 2000 movie adaptation claiming spot #48 on the Rotten Tomato Rom-Com ranking. With John Cusack as compulsive list-maker and bumbling romantic Rob Gordon, the movie not only grossed almost $48 million worldwide but introduced audiences to a rising star, Jack Black (as Barry Judd), whose closing rendition of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” steals the show at Gordon's record release party. True fans can tell you all three names of the band Judd fronts in that memorable scene: Barry Jive and the Uptown 5, aka Kathleen Turner Overdrive, aka Sonic Death Monkey.
About a Boy (2002)
A few spots higher on the RT RomCom list at #44 is the 2002 adaptation of Hornby's 1998 novel of the same name. Starring Hugh Grant as a self-declared “shallow” playboy who is suddenly out of his depth when he befriends an introverted twelve-year-old boy, it leverages the traditional scoundrel-finds-love tale into a deeper reflection on why no man can ever be an island unto himself. As Slate’s David Edelstein said of this movie, however stock its premise might be, it does understand “the chasm between what people permit themselves to say to one another and what they’re actually thinking is the source of all the comedy—and the terror of isolation, too."
A Long Way Down (2014)
Hornby’s run of RomCom winners ended with A Long Way Down (novel 2005, movie 2014), a dark comedy about four people planning to use the same roof to kill themselves on New Year’s Eve. While the book was shortlisted for the prestigious Whitbread Novel Award, the movie adaptation did not fare nearly as well despite having a cast that includes Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots, and Aaron Paul. Sadly, this one really does prove the adage that the book is almost always better than the film.
Juliet, Naked (2019)
Music returns to the forefront of Hornby’s next novel Juliet, Naked (2009), and its accompanying adaptation in 2019. The plot is standard Hornby fare (not a bad thing necessarily), but the movie sparkles thanks to the chemistry of its three stars: Chris O'Dowd as the obsessed fan/music snob, Rose Byrne as his long-suffering girlfriend, and Ethan Hawke as the faded, jaded singer-songwriter who completes this oddest of triangles. The movie polarized critics and disappeared with barely a whisper at the box office, but the charm is, like many other things in life, in the eyes of the beholder.
Screenwriting
No look into the Hornby file would be complete without mention of his stellar work as an adapter of other people’s books for the big screen. His skilled touch with journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir An Education (2009) garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He returned to another memoir in 2014 when he adapted Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail (2012) into the much-celebrated Wild (2014), starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.
Hornby collected his second Oscar nomination for his adaptation of Colm Tóbin’s novel Brooklyn (2009), a movie that definitely helped launch the career of Saoirse Ronan though younger audiences will likely have met her a few years later via Ed Sheeran’s music video for the song “Galway Girl.”