Kill Your Friends is influenced by Money by Martin Amis, Nabakov's Lolita, The Player and Swimming With Sharks. John is totally upfront about the command of film in his writing, largely because his first writing — post-A&R — was two screenplays with co-writer, Nick Ball (Zoe Ball's bro). One of these, Junk Mail, is finally coming near development with Heavenly Films (yes, part of the record company), but it's taken a long time. “Writing a screenplay that doesn't become a movie is a bit like being an architect who doesn't get any buildings built,” Niven says. “A screenplay's just a blueprint for a movie, and if you never get one made it can be very frustrating. So in the end, I just thought: I'm gonnae write a novel, a novel is a fully realised artistic thing and of itself.”
His first was the novella, Music From The Big Pink, loosely based on The Band and Bob Dylan's album of 1969 (currently being transformed for screen by playwright wonderlord, Jez Butterworth). After which, Kill Your Friends was born, and published in February 2008.
Set in 1997, Niven suggests: “Maybe we broke [the music industry] for [the new generation].” And the film is very much a mirror where New Labour's Britain is snorted up with the appetite of Pablo Escobar and Tony Montana. “Evil never comes to the ball dressed as monstrous evil, it comes as the boy next door. Or whenever one of these psychopathic killer guys gets caught, it's always the neighbour saying, 'He seemed like such a nice guy'.”
“Nick [Hoult] is fabulous in the film,” John continues. “Stelfox had this handsome boyish charm, the secretaries in the office all had crushes on him but he also had to have this murderous, psychotic streak that you believed too. The book was written... first and foremost it was supposed to thrill and entertain the reader, but what is depicted in Kill Your Friends is what happens when ambition, pure ambition, achieves primacy over any values, or talent.”
Ed Chemical recently tweeted: “Really enjoyed screening of @NivenJ1's Kill Your Friends last night... so funny, dark, feeling of uneasy nostalgia, profound... it's brilliant.”
Finally, other than reading and watching Kill Your Friends, does John have any advice for people about to start in the music industry? “Don't do it! Do video games, where you'll make some money... I'm being facetious because music, as Nathan McGough [son of Roger, the poet, and erstwhile manager of the Happy Mondays] once said: it's as primeval as firelighting and fucking, people are always going to want to be in bands, and fuck bands and put records out.”
Which is perhaps the true reason for why the novel and the film feel strangely familiar.
* Watch DJ Mag's interview with John Niven online on DJ Mag TV.
His first was the novella, Music From The Big Pink, loosely based on The Band and Bob Dylan's album of 1969 (currently being transformed for screen by playwright wonderlord, Jez Butterworth). After which, Kill Your Friends was born, and published in February 2008.
Set in 1997, Niven suggests: “Maybe we broke [the music industry] for [the new generation].” And the film is very much a mirror where New Labour's Britain is snorted up with the appetite of Pablo Escobar and Tony Montana. “Evil never comes to the ball dressed as monstrous evil, it comes as the boy next door. Or whenever one of these psychopathic killer guys gets caught, it's always the neighbour saying, 'He seemed like such a nice guy'.”
“Nick [Hoult] is fabulous in the film,” John continues. “Stelfox had this handsome boyish charm, the secretaries in the office all had crushes on him but he also had to have this murderous, psychotic streak that you believed too. The book was written... first and foremost it was supposed to thrill and entertain the reader, but what is depicted in Kill Your Friends is what happens when ambition, pure ambition, achieves primacy over any values, or talent.”
Ed Chemical recently tweeted: “Really enjoyed screening of @NivenJ1's Kill Your Friends last night... so funny, dark, feeling of uneasy nostalgia, profound... it's brilliant.”
Finally, other than reading and watching Kill Your Friends, does John have any advice for people about to start in the music industry? “Don't do it! Do video games, where you'll make some money... I'm being facetious because music, as Nathan McGough [son of Roger, the poet, and erstwhile manager of the Happy Mondays] once said: it's as primeval as firelighting and fucking, people are always going to want to be in bands, and fuck bands and put records out.”
Which is perhaps the true reason for why the novel and the film feel strangely familiar.
* Watch DJ Mag's interview with John Niven online on DJ Mag TV.
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