Berlin film fest, day 4

Stephen Frears spoke to a roomful of screenwriters and directors from all over the world at the Talent Campus in Berlin. Some of the Young Auteurs were shocked to find out he has no ambition to write himself and that he will happily work with someone else's material.

On adaptating Nick Hornby's High Fidelity: "John Cusack, who's been a friend of mine since we worked together on The Grifters, called me to say he had the rights to the book. John and his friend who co-wrote the script are from Chicago and they had written their own biography into it, which is good. John's script made me see the good bits in the novel, which is quite stream-of-consciousness. But Nick really was the secret weapon. You don't want to muck up his book."