The novel is written in a first-person narrative by Mouse, is that right?
Yes, it’s Mouse who speaks and it starts with a trial. In fact, it begins chronologically later than the action we see in the film, when the whole ordeal at the boarding school is dragged through court. The book involves more dramatic events than we included in the film, which we left aside for various reasons. Mostly because when you’re dealing with a subject like homosexuality, you have to be very careful. It’s a theme that isn’t easy to swallow for the general public, and to include scenes of violence and drama that would alienate people…we wouldn’t be serving the gay community, we wouldn’t be serving anyone. I wanted, rather, to push the story as a love story, and in love we are taken to extremes. I thought it was important to create empathy for the characters. When Susan saw the film at Sundance, she saw that it didn’t betray the sense of her book. The project was really built in three stages — Swan, Thompson and me, three very, very different people each bringing her vision. S
