Cunningham crafts timeless novel with 'Hours'

By Nicole Rodriguez

"The Hours" was never supposed to be a hit.

"Neither I, nor my editor, nor my agent nor anyone involved with this book thought it was going to be a hit," laughs author Michael Cunningham. "I thought it was going to be my arty little book and we would print a few thousand copies and retire it gracefully."

As it is, Cunningham's "insignificant" novel topped numerous bestseller lists, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1999, and has recently been released in a film version that is up for nine Oscars, including Best Picture of the Year.

Both the novel and the movie tell the story of three different women across three separate generations: Virginia Woolfe as she struggles to finish her now-acclaimed novel "Mrs. Dalloway;" 1950s housewife Laura Brown who finds "Mrs. Dalloway" to be her only source of comfort in her unsatisfying life and Clarissa Vaughn who is planning a "Mrs. Dalloway" themed party for her AIDS-stricken ex-husband.

Cunningham's own love and admiration for Woolfe's work was what inspired him to write his novel in the first place.

"Virginia Woolfe lived at a time when the world was profoundly changing, when art of all kinds changed forever. I think more than anything we're interested in her because she produced work that still speaks to us today and we wonder how out of mundane life do people create something so great?"

Having been so deeply invested in his novel, he was a bit nervous as to how the final film came out, but was pleased with the final product.

"I'm really happy with the way the film came out. I'm proud of all of them, they did a beautiful job," Cunningham raves.

Although he is thrilled with the final product, Cunningham admits that when he first heard that Nicole Kidman ("Moulin Rouge") had been cast to play Woolfe, he was less than enthusiastic.

"I was a little surprised when Nicole was cast. I thought she was great, but she hadn't really done anything to make it clear that she was going to be able to play someone as complicated as Virginia Woolfe," reflects Cunningham.

"I think she did it magnificently and I now can't imagine anyone else doing it. And I think that is a huge testament not only to Nicole's enormous talent, but also to the notion that we've been underestimating her all of these years."

Cunningham was, in fact, the first person to congratulate Kidman backstage after she won the Best Actress in a Drama award at this year's Golden Globes, and he hopes that he will have the same opportunity to congratulate Kidman and her nominated co-stars (Julianne Moore and Ed Harris) come the Oscars on Mar. 23.

Although Cunningham did not write the screenplay adaptation himself, he asserts that he will also be cheering for British writer David Hare, who has also been nominated for his efforts in transcribing "The Hours" to the big screen.

"I was nervous about David at first, because he's British and proper and standoffish," Cunningham admits. "He's like Ricky Ricardo meets the Earl of Worcester. And then I spent 10 minutes with him and he is a funny, wonderful, deeply intelligent man."

"David and I had a long talk before he started writing the screenplay and I told him everything I knew about the characters from birth until death," he explains.

"Then he went to London and wrote the screenplay entirely on his own. He showed it to me and I gave him suggestions, some of which he took. It was the exact level of which I wanted to be involved.

"They didn't ask me to [write the screenplay] and I wouldn't have wanted to," Cunningham continues.

"I had just finished the book and I had done everything I could with those people. The only thing I could have done with the screenplay would have been to move it over to a new form, and it really felt like it needed a fresh eye. I wanted to give it to someone else and see what they could see."

In the future, however, Cunningham does want to try his hand at screenwriting. He has just finished penning the screenplay to one of his earlier books, "Flesh and Blood." The film will star Hollywood's latest must-have leading man, Colin Farrell ("Daredevil"), and is slated to begin filming this April.

Whatever Cunningham will write in the future, he remains steadfast that Virginia Woolfe will continue to be a great inspiration to him.

"Virginia Woolfe was the first great writer I ever read," Cunningham reflects. "She did with language what Jimi Hendrix does with a guitar - she was a rock star. And it thrilled me in a way that no language I'd read before that had ever thrilled me.

"And I began to imagine someday doing something that was one tenth as good as that. It was ["Mrs. Dalloway"] that started me thinking about reading and writing. It was my first book in the way that you have a first kiss, and it's stayed with me the way no other book ever has."