ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore the multifarious drafting and redrafting of scripts and full screenplays for a film based on George Shipway’s controversial political satire The Chilian Club (1971), the story of a quartet of elderly assassins – former army officers – who believe they are saving their country from Communist subversion. Although The Chilian Club was never produced, ten complete adaptations were written involving four different hands – writer-directors Peter Collinson and Mike Hodges, Benny Green, the well-known radio scriptwriter and broadcaster, and Michael Klinger who was to have been the film’s producer – over a six-year period (1972-7). As discussions of screenwriting often emphasize (Rilla 1973: 12-16; Cook and Spicer 2008: 213-16; Maras 2009: 11-15), it is important to establish what is understood to be the object of study. Thus, although there will be a detailed examination of the scripts themselves and the aesthetic difficulties of realizing Shipway’s novel, the chapter will also pay close attention to the fluctuating nature of the collaborations involved and contextual factors that shaped them. This was a period of exceptional volatility and uncertainty in the British film industry, and Klinger, as an independent producer, faced extreme difficulties that had a direct bearing on his attempts to film The Chilian Club.
