The response to James Frey’s 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces is the stuff most authors only dream of. His unflinching retelling of his alcoholism, drug addiction and subsequent rehabilitation, aged just 23, spent 15 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Three years later, in 2006, controversy hit when it was revealed that Frey had embellished certain details. Yet, while he was publicly criticised for this—in particular by one of his most ardent supporters, Oprah Winfrey; at the time, A Million Little Pieces was the fastest-selling book in her television books club's 10-year history—his captive audience only grew, and to date it’s sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
Frey sold the film rights to A Million Little Pieces in the early 2000s, however, the movie was never made. Until now. Directed and co-written by Sam Taylor-Johnson, a friend of Frey’s and director of Nowhere Boy and Fifty Shades of Grey, the film debuted at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Taylor-Johnson collaborated on the script with her husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who stars as Frey, and he’s joined on screen by Charlie Hunnam, Juliette Lewis and Odessa Young as Frey’s fellow patient and girlfriend Lily.
Vogue sat down with Frey and Sam Taylor-Johnson to hear about the making of the long-awaited big screen adaptation.
It’s over 15 years since the publication of A Million Little Pieces, why is now the right time for the film adaptation?
Sam Taylor-Johnson (ST-J): “We made this film on a shoestring and shot it in just 20 days; to shoot something at such breakneck speed really requires a strong community spirit and a degree of spontaneity. The film we made is an exact representation of the book in that it’s very raw, very tough and adrenaline fuelled. It felt more authentic this way. The way not to make it would have been a big budget Hollywood production.”
James Frey (JF): “For me it was always going to be about who was making the movie adaptation and the spirit with which they were approaching it. I had sold the rights to the book, and there had been a few attempts at making the film that didn’t work out for whatever reason. The movie business is tricky: you get an actor or director and their schedule changes; you have funding and then the company has two films in a row that don't work and it falls apart. Anyway, a few years ago the rights came back to me and, although I got enquiries about adapting the book all the time, I decided that I just didn’t need this film to be made.”
What made you change your mind?
JF: “As if by some perfect synchronicity, around mid-2016, I got an email from Sam followed by a phone call. She asked if I was doing anything with A Million Little Pieces. I wasn’t. So she said: ‘Can Aaron and I make it into a movie?’. I’ve known Sam for a long time and she is somebody I admire as an artist, a director and a human; she always stays true to her vision. If one of your friends is a great chef, and they call you up and say, ‘Hey, can I cook a meal for you?’, you say, ‘yes of course!’. It's a simple as that. The phone call ended with me saying: ‘You can have the rights for free. I trust you so just do whatever you want to do.’”
How did you and Sam first meet?
JF: “We first met in 2004 at Sam’s solo show Sorrow, Suspension, Ascension at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. I have always been obsessed with art and I knew [Sam’s then husband, art dealer and founder of the White Cube galleries] Jay Jopling and some of the artists he represents, like Damien Hirst. Sam had given Jay and Damien a copy of A Million Little Pieces and they both loved it.”
How did you set about finding the right cast and crew for the film?
ST-J: “Well, no one was shooting this movie for the money. Despite the small budget we had a top cast and crew. Jeff Cronenweth, who has worked on just about every David Fincher movie from Fight Club to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, did the cinematography for pretty much nothing. Then we had Mary Claire Hannan, who cut her teeth working with Quentin Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, making the costumes. Martin Pensa (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) came on as editor, so we really have people who are at the top of their game doing it for the soul; many of them had strong personal reasons to make this movie.”
How involved were you in Aaron’s characterisation of you, and the making of the film overall?
JF: “I handed it over to Sam and Aaron and told them to make the film they wanted to make, and to call me if they had any questions. I never read the script, and I was never on set because I didn't want to put undue pressure on anybody; I didn't want them to have to shoot a scene and worry about what I thought. What I thought was irrelevant to the making of the film.
“I did visit Hazelden (where I went to rehab) with Sam, Aaron and other members of the cast. I showed them all the real locations where the events in the book took place. They met a number of people who were at the treatment centre when I was there 26 years ago and talked to them. But for the most part, I was exceedingly hands-off.”
This is your and Aaron’s first feature length script, how did you set about adapting A Million Little Pieces for the big screen?
ST-J: “Our intention wasn't to write a script, our intention was to just lay down some ideas and take them to one of the many writers we had optioned. While we were waiting to hear about their availability, Aaron and I wrote the synopsis and a couple of scenes, and then got so involved we really didn't want to hand it over to anyone else. We wanted to keep going and crack it.
“So we spent 18 months working on the screenplay—one of my proudest achievements—and from there we pretty much went straight into shooting.”
When you and Aaron are working together every day, how do you maintain a balance between work and family life?
ST-J: “It’s kind of organic. We drop the kids off at school, sit and work on it for eight hours until they come home—you have to work around that schedule otherwise it's craziness in the house. Then, after the kids have gone to bed, we get right back to it until the early hours of the morning. We were really living and breathing it.”
There have been a number of books published since 2003 on the subject of addiction, what was it about James’s story that resonated with you so deeply?
ST-J: “When I first read the book, it affected me on such a deep level, it really shook my DNA. The years went by and that feeling never diminished, nor did the experience of re-reading the book. The way that James writes is so unique, so creative and real. He writes with darkness, but there's always a balance, there's always optimism, however desperate things get. A Million Little Pieces is a book you can laugh and cry with in equal measure. This isn't just the tale of recovery, it’s a story about hope, life and a community that supports each other through the process of recovery.”
A Million Little Pieces received criticism for blurring the lines between fact and fiction, do you stand by your storytelling approach?
JF: “As a writer, I don’t feel a particular responsibility to do anything but write the best book I can, and that's what I did with A Million Little Pieces. I continue to work in that grey area between fact and fiction.
“The core of the story is what happened: I went to rehab, I've been sober for 26 years, and all my friends but one in that facility are now dead. I often draw the analogy between what I do and what painters do when they paint a self portrait—it’s never a perfect photographic representation of their own image, and A Million Little Pieces isn't the perfect photographic representation of my own image. But it's true to who I am, it's true to the experience I lived and it's true to my life. If the book helps one person like me get better or feel better, or if it helps one family member or spouse or friend of a drug addict understand what that person is going through, to me, that's all that really matters. I try to write books that change people's lives, and in the pursuit of that I follow my own rules.”
How many times have you read the book?
JF: “I've never read the book. I've actually never read any book I've written and I don't think I ever will. I don't think painters go to museums to look at their own paintings, or at least none of the painters I know do.”
Film adaptations are often judged by how closely they follow the book, but obviously some things have to go in order to condense 500 pages of text into a 113 minute movie. How did you approach this challenge?
STJ: “There were a number of challenges, especially trying to convey so many characters on screen. We had to condense some into one, or lose characters altogether. James’s brother Bob [played by Hunnam], for example, represents the whole family, while Lincoln and Ken [Frey’s counselors] became Lincoln.
“Then of course there are budget restraints. Entertainment One funded the film through a new company called Make Ready, it’s the first movie out of the company so there was a lot riding on it. When I’ve told people I was turning A Million Little Pieces into a film, often the first thing people say is: “Oh, the one where the guy wakes up on the aeroplane.” [The book opens with Frey, mid-air on a flight to Chicago, after falling face-first down a fire escape while high on drugs.] So that's obviously a very important scene. Aaron and I worked twice as hard to save time on the schedule, and with that money we rented an aeroplane.
“The important thing is to continue to hold the main relationships and events in the book, so that if you read and love the book, the movie is something you also hold dear.”
Will you watch A Million Little Pieces together?
JF: “Yeah probably. I’ve seen it once, by myself, in a screening room in LA, which was a pretty profound experience. When it ended I just sat in the room alone for 10 minutes and cried. Partly because the movie was made, partly because of the way it got made, partly because it flooded me with memories of my friends and that time in my life. It was hard to watch, honestly, because Sam and Aaron got it right.”
—A Million Little Pieces is on initial release in the UK from August 30
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