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Like
many literate hipsters, I went through a Truman Capote phase
in high school. Luckily for me, my mother had a collection
of Capote paperbacks, including a very old and tattered copy
of In Cold Blood. I saved this one for last, not expecting
to enjoy it very much—I knew it was drastically different
from his other books, having been based on a true story. Of
course I was absolutely blown away by it, and as much as I
love Capote's fiction work, In Cold Blood remains my
favorite.
After
I finished, I ran to Mom. "This was amazing!" I screeched,
much in the way teenagers now screech over getting tickets
to see Soulja Boy. "Oh, you have to see the movie," Mom said.
"It's so good." Now, my mother had already told me that the
movie of Breakfast at Tiffany's was enjoyable but lacked
the emotional complexity of the book. But she also liked Ace
Ventura: Pet Detective a lot, so she wasn't completely
reliable. Plus, the movie version of In Cold Blood
featured Robert Blake, who starred in a bad '70s TV show called
Baretta. It was kind of like Kojak, but instead
of a lollypop, Baretta had a parrot. How good could
it be with Baretta in it?
 Again,
as some of you know, I was wrong. (I was wrong so often back
then! Not at all like now.) The film version of In Cold
Blood brought the story's vivid brutality into bright
focus in a way that was not possible for the book.
Good
movies made from good books showcase how different the two
media are, not that one is intrinsically better or worse.
A good adaptation does not just remake the book, but instead
deconstructs and then reconstructs the story. The best movie
adaptations encourage viewers to examine the books in a new
light. The worst just add narrative voice-overs and leave
out the subtext.
As much
as we as readers like to rail against the adaptation, there
are more than a few pairings where both the story and the
movie are incredibly good in their own rights, like No
Country for Old Men, A Clockwork Orange, Fight
Club, Brokeback Mountain, and Midnight Cowboy.
(If it seems that only books about men fighting and cowboys
having sex can be made into films, that's just my bias showing.
I have to confess that, other than Clueless, I've seen
none of the Jane Austen adaptations. I thought the movie version
of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was kind of
crappy. All the Joyce Carol Oates adaptations sucked. I do
have a great fondness for Luis Buñuel's version of
Wuthering Heights, but it has almost less to do with
the movie than the eponymous Kate Bush song.)
It's
not so much that some books are unfilmable; it's more that
anything can be ruined in the wrong hands. Books and movies
are different media with different strengths and limitations,
and it takes an insightful and brave screenwriter and director
to understand an author's vision and intent and to bring it
to the screen in a fresh, exciting way. Brokeback Mountain
especially emphasizes the differences between film and print.
Most people wouldn't think you could stretch a short story
to a two hour film, but add a director known for his visually
stunning films, and it works. Conversely, take giant, complex
tomes like Stephen King's Cujo and Pet Sematary,
and in the wrong hands you get laughable B-movies (for the
record, there are many things I love about the film Pet
Sematary, like actor Ed Gwynne, the closing credits theme
by the Ramones, and the lovely zombie cat Churchill).
Scriptwriters
and filmmakers often get opportunities to explore the nature
of storytelling when adapting nonfiction books. Queen Bees
and Wannabes, the inspiration for Mean Girls, was
a self-help book for parents of teenage girls. Tina Fey took
a non-narrative, nonfiction book and restructured it into
a narrative, making a Heathers for Generation Y. Fey
was not the first to turn a self-help book into comedy—Woody
Allen did the same with Everything You Ever Wanted to Know
About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) .
 Filmmakers
also get to explore the intricacies of plot and pacing when
adapting experimental novels. Terry Gilliam took Hunter S.
Thompson's trans-genre gonzo journalistic fiction book Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas and made an amazing surrealistic
trip through protagonist Raoul Duke's demented mental landscape.
Blade Runner, taken from the Philip K. Dick novel Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, explores the same ethical
and moral dilemmas in the same universe as the PKD novel,
but it's not a replica of the book, which drives many PKD
fans batty. Novels that seem plotless—I've heard some
accuse Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men of
this—often have plot brought to the forefront in the
movie versions. In all of these cases, the movie versions
are not cover versions of the books they adapt. They're more
like remixes that take the basic tracks of the book and rearrange
them into something different.
Take
a look at what writer Charlie Kaufman did with Susan Orlean's
The Orchid Thief in Adaptation, directed by
Spike Jonze. Kaufman took the basic subtext of the book—obsession,
the seduction of beauty, and the anxiety of self-awareness—and
wrote a script about that, using the "plot" of The Orchid
Thief in a surreal, dream-like fashion. Throughout the
movie, Kaufman makes several references to the Holy Grail,
referring to both a filmable screenplay and the elusive Ghost
Orchid being sought in the book. Adaptation is as much
about the process of adapting a book as it is about The
Orchid Thief. In a way, this is what every good screenwriter
and director is doing when they bring a book to the screen
(although usually the results are less strange and solipsistic).
Although
it's a little hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes,
reading is a much more active experience than watching a movie.
The mind is engaged while reading—visualizing scenes
and characters, imagining sounds and smells. The best books
are interactive experiences, inaudible conversations between
the author and the reader. A film often presents viewers with
everything they need—it's more like attending a lecture.
Additionally, many contemporary films bombard audiences with
explosive images and ear-numbing sounds, making thought all
but impossible.
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Malcolm
McDowell as Alex in A Clockwork Orange.
Photo property of Warner Bros. Pictures |
But films
can be as thought-provoking as books, and in some cases the
cinematic versions can affect viewers aurally and visually.
Books that are notoriously hard to read because of language
or dialect, like Trainspotting, go down much easier
cinematically. Violent books like A Clockwork Orange
have more of a chance to make a visceral impact on a viewer
than on a reader; humans tend to have strong reactions to
visual violence. A good soundtrack can subtly manipulate the
movie-goer in a way that can never be done in a book. No matter
how grungy the jacket of a book is, it's never going to affect
a reader like the grinding industrial music of the opening
credits of Fight Club. The viewers are cued that they
are about to see a gritty, abrasive, exciting film. And even
though I read A Clockwork Orange before I saw the movie,
whenever I think of the book, I always see that shot of Alex
that starts as a close-up and pans out, with the swell of
synthesized Beethoven playing over it.
In many
cases, our anger at the adaptation of favorite books will
be tempered by time. These days, we all think of Vivien Leigh
being Scarlett O'Hara, Judy Garland being Dorothy, and Marlon
Brando being Vito Corleone, but can you imagine the outrage
some readers of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard
of Oz felt? Dorothy looks too old! Vivien Leigh is British!
Those readers probably felt the way I did when I heard Bill
Murray would be voicing Garfield.
Are there
books from movies? Besides those weird novelizations that
were popular when I was a kid, very few. Notably, there is
a book version of The Falls, an experimental film by Peter
Greenaway. But Dave Eggers has a book coming out mid-2009
based on a movie that is based on a book. Plus, the release
of the film version of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild
Things Are, scripted by Eggers and directed by Spike Jonze,
will coincide with a book for adults inspired by the children's
classic, tentatively called The Wild Things. I can't
wait for the outrage about Max not being in his wolf suit
anymore.
(March,
2008)
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