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Show Me The Money - adaptation
I've always been interested in adapting a novel for the screen, but am constantly frustrated by movie-goers' moan: "It's not as good as the book!"
Argh! A movie is not a book and a book is not a movie. Durr. Everyone knows the difference - you'd have to be half mad, surely, to think a visual medium and a psychological medium are one and the same? However, yet again and again you hear people say "Well that wasn't in the book", "They changed this or that or the other" or my absolute pet-hate, "It's just not the same, the atmosphere's changed"!!!!
It seems, to be deemed "successful", an adaptation must follow the same events as the book these days - yet we've seen again and again that these so-called "transpositional" adaptations are not the best kind of movie. Take Harry Potter for example. I'm not a fan of the books, they're too reminiscent of "The Worst Witch" for me as an eighties' kid, however, hats off to JK Rowling: she's got her market well and truly pinned down and movies of her books was the next logical step. However, the pace of the movies are long and arduous, the dialogue highly expositional with Deus Ex Machinas all over the place and nearly every single one finishes at the end of term Mallory-Towers-style. Yuk! For me, it's the ultimate screenwriting nightmare.
There are two other kinds of adaptation that are largely ignored by screenwriters at present in favour of the "transpositional" style and these are the "Commentary" adaptation (where the story is taken from the book, but a "new slant" is spun on it, so new audiences of a different generation and/or original readers might enjoy a different interpretation) and the the hardly-ever-seen "Analogical" adaptation, where only the "seed of the story" is taken - its inner theme and meaning/essence, so that entire characters, scenes, events etc can be rewritten or even dispensed with altogether.
Both involve risks (will an audience like it?), so of course there is no wonder - most movies after all are adaptations; why risk money on an original screenplay when you have a "trial run" as a novel first? (That's just my own twisted and cynical view, but I have no doubt it's true. So there.)
Audience goers are not passive; anyone who says the only choice cinema-goers have is buying a ticket or not is mental in my book - not least because males aged 15-25 years are still the main target audience for theatres. What about the women, the children? I've lost count of the number of children's movies I've HAD to take my children to because I've promised - and then spent two hours biting the back of my hand to suppress a scream (Harry Potter a case in point). As well as this "rabbit in the headlights" approach on whether you're a good parent or not due to your ability to not die whilst watching such drivel, market research in the form of past DVD and video rentals, novels bought, web forums and sites visited, movie books like Halliwell's film guide consulted, even children's games seen or people overheard talking in the street by potential and established screenwriters all have a part to play in whether a movie is written, optioned and/or sold.
So... If I obtained the rights to a novel for its adaptation, or was commissioned to write one on behalf of a production company, would I stick to my guns and say "Well, ONLY if it's a commentary or analogical adaptation, give me some artistic license, please".
Yeah, right - I'd probably be shown the door.
I think it would be more a case of "Show Me The Money", Jerry Maguire style. Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right...Works for JK Rowling ; )
bang2write at 15:30:00 o'clock GMT Blog about this entry |
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Some people DO say novels shouldn't be adapted, that's a very good point, and definitely a discussion we should have on here very soon, thanks for that! (Though I think maybe we should move UP the page and give it its very own entry, can't imagine there's too much space left in this spot!!! ) Lucy
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I've adapted short stories of my own. And I've adapted screenplays to novel form. I think what went through my mind most of the time I was doing the adaptation had to do with the opportunities. How doors opened up due to the change in medium. What I couldn't do in the source material was suddenly possible. A wonderfully invigourating process.
I recently looked at the pre-trailer for '300', which has been adapted from the Frank Miller graphic novel. I have to admit I winced watching it, because it's quite clear that everyone involved has painstakingly contributed to bringing each page to the screen. Now, I can't predict what it'll be like...but I can say that I think it's wholly misguided to take *any* piece of work and transport it to another medium. What you get is...well, a graphic novel-as-a-movie. But in the faitfulness to translate, much can be lost in translation. Because, as we all know, a film is not a book. Or anything else for that matter.
There is a particular novel I would love to adapt. It has held me enthralled for years; I've read it regularly for I-don't-know-how-long. I looked into the rights earlier this year; the option was running out on the adaptation effort. But of course, I wonder if I could get it right. Would I fail because I love the novel so much? Or has my experience as a screenwriter informed my abilities so that I could step back and look at the strengths, share effectively what I love about the story? What I do know is that it would be *my* version of it, and someone else could have an entirely different take on the novel and come up with something else again.
But of course, there are many out there who don't think novels should be adapted in the first place. Period. Full-stop. Which is another discussion entirely.
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Who would have thought that adaptation would provoke such an amount of discussion? I love to hear others' views. Given this topic is obviously so popular, I'd love to hear any more thoughts you have - including any on what else you'd like to read on this blog. Let me know! L
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i think you're completely right bang about the adaptation of the canons - since they've been done to death faithfully i'd love to see a different spin on them.
i wonder how many folks who disliked a movie adaptation, did so because either:
a) the movie just wasn't very good regardless (a high probability)
b) the filmmaker's (like in probitionate's example), were *too* faithful to the book, and thus missed the *experience* of reading the book - which to me is usually much more cinematic than a visual-representation of the written word. this is highlighted in this statement "When I hear people moaning about how a film 'wasn't like the book!' or 'wasn't as good as the book!'..."
there's quite a difference between a film not being like the book and not being as good as the book. and although obviously our language is sufficiently vague enough to render the distinction moot perhaps, if you dislike a film simply because it isn't the same as the book - you're missing the point of the strength of different mediums.
however, it's very possible the filmmaker's *also* misunderstood that difference and thus missed an opportunity to create a fresh new realization of the "seed" idea.
04/01/06 16:08
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0