DANGER! ENTER AT YOUR PERIL!

"If you have any talent as a writer, beware the film world!" This used to be common and somewhat sage advice.

Many there were, creative and gifted, who, lured by the glossy glamour and glitzy lucre of the big screen, packed up their quills, pencils, typewriters, laptops or whatever they were using, to record their imaginative glories. They fled from the tranquillity of their studies to visit the hurly burly of the film set, only to crash and burn.

It often seems incontrovertible that the movie business is no place for the true wordsmith. The two - words and celluloid - are fundamentally incompatible, at loggerheads. Literacy is not only not asked for in films, it tends to get in the way.

Here are a few successful lines from recent blockbusters:

"If you were to take a glass of cider your friends might stop staring, Inman." Ada, (Nicole Kidman) in Cold Mountain.

"Come on, let's get pissed and watch porn." Billy (Bill Nighy) in Love Actually.

"Yes" ...... Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) in Harry Potter.

Not much chance of a Nobel Prize for Literature for any of them, is there?

And yet a funny thing has happened to a library full of writers, recently, on their treks from relative obscurity in educated circles to global screen fame: they have made it.

Not so many novelists, admittedly. Stephen Fry has several books to his name, yet succeeded with the clever Bright Young Things. But it seems he can do anything he wants in the creative world. Julian Fellowes also scored a hit with Gosford Park and Vanity Fair, but he was actually an actor, not a true novelist, one of the suffer-for-art breed.

The transition still seems devilish for them. Graham Greene, the voice behind The Third Man, was a distinct exception, but then he was in so many writing enterprises.

And there’s Alex Garland, who had a hugely popular success with 28 Days Later, although it was more remarkable for blood-curdling effects than for turns of phrase.

However, playwrights, even some of the most erudite, have displayed an uncanny knack.

Here are just the most obvious of the British writing talents who have found a way to adapt scripts to their own purposes, with award-winning results, more often than not.

• Tom Stoppard, Shakespeare in Love, Brazil, Enigma, and most recently Casanova.
• Ronald Harwood, The Pianist, Being Julia and now Oliver Twist for Roman Polanski.
• David Hare, The Hours and work on Alexander the Great for Baz Luhrmann as well as The Corrections for Robert Zemeckis.
• Christopher Hampton, Dangerous Liaisons, The Quiet American, Imagining Argentina.
• Patrick Marber, who adapted his own play Closer.
• Harold Pinter, responsible for dozens of hits from The Servant in 1963 to The Handmaid's Tale and The Comfort of Strangers.

Obviously the words "Lights, cameras, action" are no longer inevitably fatal to bright minds. There is more than a little hope for star-chasing writers after all.

Panel – perhaps set out on a piece of notepad paper – and accompanying pix

Other great British script excerpts ... or not?

"I'll just put the kettle on." Vera Drake

"Didn't you know? ... An accident ... run over by a car ... saw it myself ... on his own doorstep ...bang, bowled down like a rabbit. Killed at once. They'll have a difficult time burying him in this frost." The Third Man

"That's, er, quite a stutter you've got there, Ken." A Fish Called Wanda

"But you're a doctor. You kill people every day." Shallow Grave

"I had that Christopher Marlowe in my boat once." Shakespeare In Love

"Madam, I had rather spend an afternoon in a Turkish bath with my mother than visit the dratted dentist." Topsy-Turvy

"Mark me, give it a few years and men won't exist, 'cept in a zoo, or summat. I mean, we're not needed no more, are we? What lasses not do now, eh? Tell me on things they can't do without us. One thing." The Full Monty

"Anyone else tread in a cowpat? No - thought not. See you in a mo." Four Weddings And A Funeral

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T/C Photos!!!