Could It Be a Movie

by Christina Hamlett

  Do you want the original author to have a say-so in the finished product? If this is a concern, it needs to be addressed in the agreement. As a creative professional, the last thing you need is to pour all of your energy into a script, only to have the novelist or playwright come back and tell you to rewrite it. While input is always valuable in the adaptation process, it also can be a hindrance if the originators are either too wedded to their own words to allow others to orchestrate substitutions, or if they simply don’t grasp what successful screenplays entail in terms of structure, pacing, and dynamics.

  WHAT TO KEEP, WHAT TO LOSE

  As someone who has done screenplay adaptations of books and stage plays, I can attest to the fact that it’s a lot harder than it looks. The obsession to retain and compress as much of the original source material as possible into a smaller box makes you lose sight of what you’re trying to accomplish; specifically, to relate the story on a different level.

  Just because you have to whittle a 500-page tome down to a 98-page screenplay doesn’t mean that those 402 pages of literary brilliance will never be appreciated. As long as the book itself remains in print, all those fabulous words and extraneous scenes you had to painfully delete for the medium of film will still be available.

  Novels and theater scripts hold opposite challenges when it comes to the adaptation process.

  For novels, it’s obviously a matter of excessive verbiage. Historical narrative, detailed descriptions, bridging passages, character thought-bubbles, anecdotal pauses, retrospective commentary, etc. have to be sacrificed in the interest of keeping momentum and staying focused on the central conflict.

  Non-fiction texts — the fodder of many a documentary — call for their own brand of selective editing. On the one hand, verbatim passages can be pasted into the script because the majority of lines are straight narration, not chatty conversation. On the other hand, the whole thing needs to be stitched together with the appropriate visuals, interviews, and relevance to contemporary viewers. And, because they are spun from a fact-based orientation rather than a fictional one, adaptations of this nature are generally deemed more educational or inspirational than they are entertaining.

  Budgetary considerations factor into the equation, too. While it’s the same cost to print a book page that describes 10,000 Chinese warriors running across The Great Wall as it is to describe a single guy eating dinner in a Chinese restaurant, it’s a lot cheaper to film the latter.

  Although you certainly never want to let pesky details like money put a rein on your muse, if you’re planning to pitch your script to a studio with modest means, you need to develop an eye for what’s a necessity and what’s a frill. This sense of prudence applies to supplemental characters as well, forcing you to downsize the book’s original population to those who have a clear-cut reason for existing in the plot.

  Dialogue in a book-to-film adaptation also needs to be significantly restructured to take into account the fact that conversations written to be read tend to be more formal and articulate than those which are written to be spoken. Book characters, for instance, use less slang, interrupt each other less often, speak in longer sentences, and put together sound combinations that would be awkward if they had to be delivered out loud; i.e., “Sheila sells soft-shelled seashells, doesn’t she?”

  While dialogue is clearly less of a problem with stage-to-film conversions, the onus on the writer is to figure out how to expand the story beyond the borders of the living room, bedroom, or front porch where the theatrical plot transpires. As of this writing, I am involved in such a dilemma with the adaptation of Muriel’s Memoirs, one of my two-act dramas, to a feature-length film. The producer wants to keep the story to the cast of four women and yet move them out into the community, incorporate flashbacks, and go into greater depth on the influences that shaped their respective personalities.

  The larger problem, however, is in figuring out how to introduce “visual stimulation” in a storyline where the characters do more sitting and talking than getting up and running around. To this end, I rely on my library of videos to appreciate how others have handled this question. If indeed adaptation is a route that you want to go in your screenwriting career, familiarizing yourself with what filmmakers consider to be watchable elements is a tremendous aid in deciding what can be eliminated and what needs to be elaborated.

  In the stage version of Steel Magnolias, for example, all of the action takes place in Truvy’s beauty salon. We accept the static nature of the stage set because we’re more interested in getting to know the owner, her assistant, and the four women who frequent her shop. While the film adaptation is still about the bond of friendship that exists among these women, even the talents of an all-star cast could not hold our attention if the camera never moved beyond the sinks and the hairdryers.

  The Lion In Winter is an excellent comparison piece as well, allowing us to move throughout Henry and Eleanor’s castle and even outdoors rather than confining the royal family’s struggle for power to one central room. Historical pieces such as this also invite comparison to their counterparts in print, in which a plethora of dates, places, battles, and so forth are only sparingly referenced in the course of natural dialogue.

  LOST IN TRANSLATION

  No two people are going to read a book, watch a play, or see a movie and get exactly the same thing out of it. Likewise, whatever personal inspiration you derive from a work you want to adapt to a screenplay may not be what the original author intended at all. Criticisms such as, “She just doesn’t get it,” “He completely left out the second sister,” and “Why did they go and change the ending?” are common reactions among consumers who expect adaptations to be carbon copies of the original material. The inability to accept that it’s just one person’s viewpoint inhibits them from appreciating that “different” can sometimes translate to “better.”

  I recall the great lengths to which one of my literature professors would go in analyzing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. She adamantly “tsk-tsked” what was then (1979) an upcoming television mini-series starring Meg Foster.

  “Mr. Hawthorne,” she archly declared, “would roll over in his grave.”

  Goodness knows, of course, what she opined to her students 16 years later when Hawthorne’s heroine was resurrected yet again, this time by an actress who posed au natural on the cover of a national magazine.

  With no way of knowing what Hawthorne’s mindset was when he first wrote it, we obviously have no way of accurately guessing his reaction to any of the adaptations. Was he deeply wedded to the pain and humiliation of the star-crossed lovers? Or did its completion represent nothing more than a chunk of change with which to pay his mortgage on a house with seven gables?

  Keep that in mind as you struggle with the riddle of the “right” way to communicate someone else’s story.

  LEARNING BY EXAMPLE

  The following interview with screenwriter John Collee first appeared in the November/December 2003 issue of Screentalk and is included here with the magazine’s gracious permission. Collee’s insights on developing a single film from an existing book series will be of benefit to anyone intrigued by the adaptation process.

  Master And Commander:

  The Far Side of the World

  I must down to the seas again,

  To the lonely sea and the sky,

  And all I ask is a tall ship

  And a star to steer her by.

  And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song

  And the white sail’s shaking,

  And a gray mist on the sea’s face

  And a gray dawn breaking.

  John Masefield

  Sea Fever (1902)

  In centuries past, the open sea was a welcome refuge for young men seeking adventure, for criminals escaping the gallows, and for bachelors dodging matrimony. In more recent times, its mesmerizing power could be experienced vicariously in swashbuckling films such as Captain Blood, The Black Swan, Captain Horati
o Hornblower and Crimson Pirate.

  Just in time for the 2003 holiday season, novelist Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring series, MASTER AND COMMANDER, set sail on movie screens across the country. Under the direction of Peter Weir and starring Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey, the script was adapted from O’Brian’s 10th book, THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, by screenwriter John Collee.

  Collee, who trained as a doctor in Edinburgh, Scotland, is no stranger to globe-trotting adventures himself, having worked in Africa, the Far East, the former Soviet Union, and the Pacific, often writing about his experiences in a weekly newspaper column which ran for six years in the U.K.’s Observer Newspaper. He took time from his busy schedule to offer insights on the challenges of adapting an 1800s era war story to a movie that could resonate with modern audiences.

  Patrick O’Brian was a prolific writer and Captain Aubrey had no shortage of adventures during the early 19th century. When writing this screenplay, was there some consideration given to the notion that this may be one of several movies based upon the same characters?

  As far as I know, Fox own the rights to all the novels so, as you say, there’s bags of material for a sequel. However, preparing the ground for that was never part of the brief. We set out to write a movie which was satisfying and complete in its own right. It always seemed unlikely to me that we'd be lucky enough to get Peter Weir and Russell Crowe for more than one movie.

  What particular problems are created for you as a screenwriter if, in a sequel or additional movie with the same characters, there are different actors playing the lead roles? For example, it is hard to imagine anyone other than Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones. Ford, however, was one of three actors to play Jack Ryan in adaptations of Tom Clancy’s novels. Does an adaptation of a novel make this less of a problem because, over the years, the readers have developed their own relationship with the character rather than — in the Indian Jones series — people being introduced to a serial character through the medium of film?

  I try not to think of any specific actor in the role I'm writing (or in this case co-writing). You have to take the characters from your imagination or from the novel you're adapting and render them as faithfully as possible. If the characters are well-realized and consistent, I suppose any actors can then take the roles and make them theirs.

  The premise of the O’Brian series revolves around the relationship between Captain Aubrey and his surgeon friend, Stephen Maturin, a Napoleonic-era secret agent. To what do you attribute the popularity and longevity of these books? (Author note: O’Brian died in January 2000 at the age of 85.)

  Finely observed characters. A world you can entirely immerse yourself in, full of strange curiosities. A canvas as big as the world’s oceans but as small and intimate as the enclosed wooden world of a ship. A history lesson with an intriguing, never-ending narrative all its own. Stories which, despite their foreign and exotic settings, confront issues which are contemporary in nature and, indeed, timeless: Is there a "just" war? Is patriotism good or bad? Does power corrupt? When are principles more important than friendship?

  Is there a particular reason why The Far Side of the World was adapted rather than any other in the series as one that would resonate with 21st century audiences?

  All of O'Brian’s plots tend to meander a great deal. As a novelist, he goes where the feeling takes him, which is not a luxury you can afford on film. However, this book is more focused than most: our heroes chase a pirate ship from the Pacific into the Atlantic and the journey with all of its trials tests a lifelong friendship between the ship’s captain, Jack, and her doctor, Stephen. Peter and I took that simple idea and developed our own variation of the plot, jettisoning several elements from what originally existed in The Far Side of the World and replacing them with episodes from some of the other O'Brian novels.

  When doing an adaptation of an historical novel, are you more or less concerned about historical accuracy than you would be if you were writing a stand-alone screenplay set in another era?

  I’m concerned to make it accurate whether it’s my own work or somebody else’s. In other historical adaptations I've taken on, I invariably start by buying a ton of second-hand books on the Internet -- anything that I can read about similar people in a similar time -- which might help me inhabit the world of the story as fully as the novelist did. This is one project where that wasn't necessary. O'Brian had written so much about shipboard life in and around 1812, that all you had to do was read his novels.

  When doing an adaptation such as this, do you find it easier to (1) take outline notes throughout the reading of the original text or (2) read the text, then rely on your memory to conjure forth those scenes that were the most lasting?

  I scribble on books a lot. In a complicated book I'll mark up what’s happening in the margin of each page so I can flip through and find sections I'm looking for. The Season of the Jew, which I adapted recently for Working Title/ Roger Donaldson, was some 600 pages long with a very tortuous plot. I wrote myself an exact synopsis of the book - some 200 sequences, then whittled this down to the 30 of 40 sequences which constituted the film. In linear stories like The Season of the Jew this is fairly simple. In complex, multi-character plots it’s sometimes a useful exercise to write out each character strand separately and then interweave them.

  I know what you mean about reading and then free-associating from memory; it can really help. To go a step further, actually "talking" the story is an invaluable way of sorting out the tangle. When you're telling a tale verbally you automatically condense the boring bits and extend the suspenseful part, depending on the listener’s reaction.

  You can't introduce too many characters too soon or your listener gets muddled, so it forces you to pace the story sensibly and to put in backstory only when it’s necessary. If you're "performing" -- as in a pitch -- the adrenaline rush really stimulates creativity. With Sixteen Pleasures, which I adapted recently from the Robert Hellenga novel for Handprint and Nicole Kidman, I internalized the story, then told it in my own words over and over again to various prospective financiers. The initial 10-minute pitch became a 40-minute pitch, which eventually became the script.

  With Master and Commander, Peter Weir and I used all the above techniques. We read and annotated the central book (The Far Side of the World). We wrote out plot points on cards and shuffled them on a cork board until the story was working. I'd then write out each sequence in my own words and relate it to Peter each morning. As the story progressed, he'd scribble on these sequences, amend and edit, add and discard. Finally we had a 50-page prose document which read as the film and that was what the first draft script was based on.

  When does the dialogue start to kick in?

  I try not to add dialogue till the very end, when I know exactly what each sequence has to achieve. It’s so easy to get locked into neat dialogue that doesn't serve the script.

  What happens when you hit mental speed bumps?

  When a draft isn't working I always go back to synopsis form. Write the story out in prose again, repair the plot, then rewrite the script to that pattern. It’s hopeless to try and fiddle with a 120-page script without reducing it in this way to a manageable narrative.

  Had the author of the Master and Commander series still been alive to consult when you began work on the screenplay, would you have found his active participation in the screenwriting process to be a help or a hindrance?

  As an author I'm all for it because they know so much about the world of the story and the inner lives of their characters. As you know, the best adaptations are often quite dissimilar in structure to the novel but novelists, like screenwriters, are generally fascinated by the mechanism of story and only to happy to unpick and reconfigure their work. I'm sure O'Brien would have been into it. Peter and I often talked of how we wished he was physically present at our meetings. It often seemed that he was there in spirit.

  Given the world events over the past two years, do you think the public will respo
nd to the movie differently now than if you had penned it earlier?

  It’s essentially a pirate movie. You know who the good guys are. People are nostalgic for that kind of moral clarity, especially nowadays. It’s also about people who lived in an era when suffering and death were commonplace. Nineteenth century sailors accepted a level of risk and daily tragedy which most of us would find intolerable. But it was normal to them. Mostly they ignored all the bad stuff that could happen and got on with their lives. That spirit of cheerful perseverance is something we in the West need to re-learn. Now more than ever.