North-East writer Peter Straughan was overjoyed when Hollywood star George Clooney called to say he liked his script. But, he tells Steve Pratt, it still took several frustrating years before the film was finally made.

THE week that Peter Straughan’s script for The Men Who Stare At Goats was put in circulation, the call came that Hollywood superstar George Clooney was interested in directing it. “It was an amazing weekend. We got quite a good reaction straight away and, funnily enough, one of the first people to respond was Clooney,” recalls the North-East born writer.

“And then, on Monday, he decided he wasn’t going to direct it because it was too close to him directing Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind.”

The script returned to the marketplace, gathering much interest without getting the green light and gaining a reputation as one of the best unfilmed screenplays around.

Several years down the line the movie has been made with Clooney, as the star not director, and his Smokehouse production company partner Grant Hershov making his directorial debut.

With a red carpet premiere at this year’s London Film Festival, the movie marks another step in Straughan’s blossoming filmwriting career after gaining a reputation as a theatre and radio playwright, including work developed at Newcastle’s Live Theatre and Northern Stage.

He has – to quote the production notes for The Men Who Stare At Goats – “become one of the most sought-after writers in the movie business”.

He’s written screenplays for Sixty Six (with Bridget O’Connor) and the Simon Pegg comedy How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, and for Shakespeare In Love director John Madden and Fight Club director David Fincher.

A future project is a screen version of John Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

He adapted The Men Who Stare At Goats from Jon Ronson’s book telling the strangerthan- fiction story of a top secret US military operation training men to use psychic powers to read enemy’s thoughts, pass through solid walls and even kill a goat by staring at it.

“The script was around a few years waiting to be made,” explains Straughan, over a drink in pub before the premiere. “There were a lot of people interested, it was just one of those scripts that people liked. Directors were talking about doing it but they all had films that they were in the middle of doing. You become part of a development chain and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.”

“Eventually, Clooney’s company came back and said if you still haven’t made it, how about Grant directing and George being in it. And it ended up being almost the first draft they went with.”

He hadn’t read Ronson’s book before being approached to adapt it. “I read the first chapter when the general tries to walk through the wall of his office and thought, ‘I want to do this’,” he recalls.

“Jon circled round the central story and there were a lot of different areas that sprang from that. It was very episodic and fragmentary, like a mosaic. I made it more of a narrative.

“I thought it was more interesting if it was during a war and then we had to decide which war. In the book, part of the story is from Iraq and it seemed a natural progression to end up there.”

The tone was difficult to get right. “Also, at that time a comedy that’s ostensibly set in Iraq wasn’t an easy sell, another reason why it had done the rounds for a while. If we hadn’t have got someone of the stature of Clooney, I don’t think it would have got made.”

The quest to find financial backing for films can be frustrating but “you get used to it,” says Straughan. “It often takes two or three years to get off the ground. It’s a long process and you’re usually on to the next project.”

Since Noir was staged at Newcastle Playhouse in 2002, Straughan’s been writing for movies. Although a film lover, the move was “sort of accidental” but writing screenplays he’s discovered that “I really, really love films”.

There were practical considerations, too. He and his partner moved down South, and had a daughter. There were bills to pay and film pays better than theatre.

“So there’s a bit of that sort of stuff involved and, of course, there are the jobs you’re offered.

But I do love films. Goats has made a big difference probably. I’ve started being offered more interesting projects. Plus, because it’s a slightly less mainstream topic, you’re identified with less obvious projects and get sent more interesting material.”

His film-writing began with Sixty Six, with Helena Bonham Carter, and about a boy’s barmitzvah heading for disaster when it coincides with the 1966 World Cup Final.

“Film work just carried on. Once I started doing it, in some ways, I felt more comfortable with film than theatre, which I never thought I would have done,” says Straughan.

‘ITHINK that’s because I come from a background that didn’t go to the theatre.

That’s not part of my childhood.

We used to watch films on television. You soak up the grammar of film without even watching it when you’re a kid.”

He hopes to do a new project with Live Theatre next year, if his film-writing schedule allows.

“There’s still something about theatre that has its own joys,” he says.

“I used to play in bands when I was young and theatre reminds me much more of that. It’s a much more writer-friendly environment in some ways, more writer-led.”

The Gateshead-born writer lives on the South coast now and shows no intention of swapping that for Hollywood. “Perish the thought. I’ve got an American agent and some of the work is coming from the US, but there’s no need to live there,” he says.

“Goats wasn’t at all typical of the Hollywood experience because the finance was independent.

It was an incredibly uncomplicated, easy, friendly process. You hear all these nightmare stories about working on Hollywood movies and it wasn’t like that at all.”

There’s another project with Clooney and Smokehouse in development as well as co-writing a script with Ronson.

His theatre and film interest could come together in a screen version of his Newcastle-set play Noir. Sunderland-born producer David Parfitt bought the rights and is trying to set up the movie. “Whether it will happen I don’t know,” says Straughan philosophically.

■ The Men Who Stare At Goats (15) opens in cinemas today.