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Office. Following that breakthrough, Reeve was looking for projects of a similar
style and theme—the good old-fashioned love story yam with an international
cast—as he described it in a 1984 interview, and had at one time considered
adapting another M.M. Kaye novel for the small or large screen (interview with
Wolf).
Follett wrote back to Reeve within one day, expressing considerable
enthusiasm for the proposal to adapt Lie Down with Lions, but also making light
of his excitement. Agreeing with the general comments, he noted that he could
‘‘think of lots of good ways to implement these new ideas but I had better keep
them to myself until I start writing the script, for fear of what might be called
literary premature ejaculation.” Although Reeve had years of production
experience in television commercials and in film, his company was newly
formed in 1985, following the completion of H a lf Moon Street.
Interestingly, it was during this same time period that Follett was attempting
another radical departure from his previous books. Fascinated by medieval
cathedrals ever since he had written an article on the topic as a journalist, he had
developed an outline in 1976 for a story about the building of a medieval
cathedral. However, that same year he wrote an outline for what would become
Eye o f the Needle, the novel that charted the direction of his writing for almost a
decade (Kirchhoff A25). Archival materials indicate that he returned to the
cathedral-building story in the final months of 1985 and the first few months of
1986, when he produced an outline and handwritten notes for the novel he
would develop over the next several years, The Pillars o f the Earth. In other
words, the drafting of the two projects—the screenplay for Lie Down with Lions
and the 1,000-page novel of medieval life—coincided to a large degree.
Almost a year after writing his enthusiastic letter to Geoff Reeve Ltd.,
Follett was still working on the screenplay. He was able to submit a “revised
first draft screenplay” in April 1987, after considering comments from a reader
who described the dialogue as flat, verbose, and sentimental; complained that
the characters lacked complexity, with the central character, Jane, appearing
“stupid,” gullible, and hysterical; and described the ending as “altogether too
glib ... a disappointing and frankly incredible end to a fine action drama”
(unsigned notes). As indicated earlier, Follett is known for taking readers’
comments seriously, and his own handwritten note after one of the more
melodramatic scenes in the screenplay reads “too much” (36). His valued
colleague and agent, A1 Zuckerman, also offered comments on the draft. In a
letter dated March 20, 1987, Zuckerman observed that the problem in the script
is more than just reworking Jane’s dialogue for the screen; as a novelist, Follett
is probably too close to the characters and “read[s] into the screenplay personae
qualities which you gave them in the novel, but for which you did not fully find
equivalencies in the screen treatment. . . .”
Zuckerman went on to suggest that the screenplay should be turned over to
a third party for revision, adding “1 do not think it would be wise for you
personally to do any more work on this screenplay without the active