RONALD HARWOOD - HARWOOD NEARLY QUIT SCRIPTING DIVING BELL

HARWOOD NEARLY QUIT SCRIPTING DIVING BELL

Screenwriter RONALD HARWOOD found creating the screenplay for THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY so hard - he nearly quit the project. The 73-year-old agreed to the job years after reading the autobiography of the same name by Jean-Dominique Bauby - and struggled desperately when he began to script the "untellable" story of a man completely paralysed except for his left eye. He says, "I read it five years before being offered it and thought it was an extraordinary book. "Five years later (producer) Kathy Kennedy offered it to me and I said yes without re-reading it. It was not a clever thing to do. When faced with reality I was totally stuck. I had no idea how to proceed." And the writer - who won an Oscar for his screenplay to 2002's The Pianist - was so ridden with anxiety, he began to suffer panic attacks - and even considered returning the advance he received for his work. He adds, "As I was about to say 'I can't go on' I had the idea of seeing it from his (Bauby's) point of view and the camera did the blinking, and that was the breakthrough." "Then I knew what story I had to tell - one of illness and imagination. This was the most difficult screenplay I ever had to write, no question."