Memento Mori

Jack Clayton spent many years trying to set up a film of Muriel Spark's novel, which was first published at the end of the 1950s. He was repeatedly told that too many of the leading characters were old people for any film version to be a box-office success. After Driving Miss Daisy (1989) had proved a great hit, he tried again, but, even then, could only set the film up as a TV movie, using the same screenplay that he had prepared for the cinema.