The Art of Adaptation

by Linda Seger

  HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO FILM?

  Some styles are much more difficult to translate into film than others. Certain choices of style and tone turn audiences off, often because they are too esoteric, too difficult to understand.

  I saw Bonfire of the Vanities with a friend who had not read the book and who did not like the film because it was “so overblown, so full of itself.”

  Here my friend was giving me both a style and a tone critique. The story line of Bonfire of the Vanities is really about an incident that does get overblown, and in that sense some aspects of the broad acting style fit the book quite well. But my friend was also adding a comment about the attitude of the actors, the makers of the film, and the audience. She sensed that the film took itself too seriously and that the filmmakers expected the audience, too, to take it seriously in spite of the broad, almost comic, acting style. And this was something that neither she nor other audience members could do.

  It is not unusual for nonrealistic films to have problems gaining audiences. Certain styles may do well in books or in plays but fail in film. Black comedy has always been a difficult style to adapt. The film of Beth Henley’s black comedy Crimes of the Heart was difficult for audiences to accept. They had trouble “getting with the style.” In the story, one of the characters tries to kill herself by sticking her head in the oven, but she can’t get the match lit. Later she tries to hang herself from the chandelier, but it falls down, and she proceeds to walk around dragging the chandelier by a rope behind her. If you are “with the style,” you would find this funny, which it’s meant to be. But it’s an unusual kind of humor. It works partly as a play because theatre is a more esoteric medium than film. It generally draws literate people who have been exposed to a variety of styles. But it also works because in the theatre, the audience and actors can communicate with each other. If the audience isn’t getting it, actors can shade a line slightly differently to cue the audience to laugh. They can pause, or gesture, or change a rhythm to let the audience know, “This is funny.”

  When I was teaching with writer Frank Pierson in Australia several years ago, he told me he thought one of the problems with Prizzi’s Honor was the inability of the audience to understand the black comedy style. He believed this happened partly because the volume of the first three scenes was too low, and the audiences did not get it. It was meant to be funny when the young boy is given a set of brass knuckles for his twelfth birthday, but it was done with a soft, serious tone, which didn’t properly cue the audience.

  When nonrealistic styles fail, the films often are severely criticized specifically for their style and tone. In The New York Times, film critic Vincent Canby summed up the feelings of a number of critics of Bonfire of the Vanities when he wrote, “The Bonfire of the Vanities is a historical novel about a time and place in which everything and everybody had a price … This ecumenical approach is what gives Bonfire its tone. By being consistent, the novel transcends its own cynicism to become healthily skeptical. This is just what Brian de Palma’s gross, unfunny movie adaptation does not do.” He added, “The value (and fun) of Tom Wolfe’s long, Dickensian-detailed, tirelessly satirical novel is in its democratic approach to ridicule. All men are born trashy. Those few who aren’t have trashiness thrust upon them.”

  In a review in The Washington Post, Rita Kemply wrote, “In softening Tom Wolfe’s scathing satire, the director has become one with the buffoons Wolfe scored in his best-seller.”

  Although Bonfire is an example of a nonrealistic style that didn’t do well at the box office, Batman, Roger Rabbit, and Dick Tracy are examples of nonrealistic styles—cartoon styles—that did. All three were nominated for an Academy Award for Art Direction, a cinematic element that sets the style, mood, and tone. All were in the broad cartoon style that draws on acting, color, and action. There’s nothing subtle about this style—it’s broad, containing well-defined outlines of characters, without much attention paid to emotional depth. And it’s a style from the mass media of comedy, books, and cartoons, so it’s usually accessible to all audiences. Cartoon style is not as concerned about a character’s inner life as it is about the details of colors and textures, what kind of clothes characters wear, and how they move.

  Each one of these films creates a different mood, even though the general style is the same. Batman is dark and somber, a story of high stakes and tragic actions. It takes itself quite seriously. Personally, I was caught up in Bruce Wayne’s life, particularly with the tragedy of his parents’ death, and the high personal stakes.

  Dick Tracy is more lighthearted, broader in its comic values. It has a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward itself. How seriously can you take Breathless Mahoney when she sings, “Sooner or Later I Always Get My Man”?

  Roger Rabbit, like Dick Tracy, is light. It’s still tongue-in-cheek, with an attitude that delights in its characters. Its affection toward its characters is combined with an underlying serious theme, actually one about racism. Eddie’s attitude toward the Toons is similar to our racist attitudes toward those who are unlike ourselves, whether of a different race, religion, color, or of a different animated world.

  Both Batman and Bonfire of the Vanities also take their themes seriously, perhaps more seriously than is necessary. When this happens, audiences sometimes react by distancing themselves, saying, “I don’t buy it. It isn’t worth such concern.”

  In Roger Rabbit, however, the movie does take its theme as seriously as it deserves to be taken. What the film is saying is important. It’s said with charm and lightness, but the movie never compromises its underlying theme.

  When analyzing tone, we can refer to the writer’s and director’s attitude toward the material, the characters’ attitude toward themselves and each other, and the audience’s attitude toward the film. The tone and mood of the writer and filmmaker are conveyed to the audience through visuals and dialogue in order to create the desired emotional response.

  For a film to be effective, filmmakers need to get the audience into the spirit of the piece, to create a relationship so the audience is drawn in and is able to experience the same mood and tone and feeling within themselves that the filmmaker is creating in the film.

  This tone is related to the shading. We often talk about “hitting the right note,” or “getting the shading just right.” In music, we might refer to a saxophone player darkening some sections, adding a raspy texture, or lightening a section. When looking at Batman, Dick Tracy, and Roger Rabbit, ask yourself, “Are there places where the shading starts to go off-center?”

  In Dick Tracy, the style is clear. There are many small details that add up—the yellow raincoat, primary colors and clearly defined silhouettes, the way Dick moves, the broad outlines of the buildings, the cartoon makeup of most of the characters (although many people commented on missing the “jut-jawed” silhouette that was such a large part of Dick Tracy’s character in the comics). The mood is light and fun and entertaining.

  The tone is clear. The filmmakers didn’t take either the characters or the situation too seriously, and the audience wasn’t expected to either.

  But I did have trouble with the shading of the relationships, particularly between Dick Tracy and Tess. This may have been a problem of the script, the casting, or the acting. For whatever reason, the relationship between Tess and Dick seemed to hit some wrong notes.

  I sensed that Warren Beatty wanted to shade this relationship into a bit more of a realistic, romantic one, perhaps a relationship that would carry much of the emotional tone of the film. But the color and texture of romance seemed to be missing. We might say it was shaded a bit too gray, when it needed to be lighter, rosier.

  We can identify when the mood and shading are off if the film is not receiving the desired emotional response. I believe I was meant to care about this couple, but I didn’t. I found Tess boring, uncolorful, uninteresting. The shading seemed more balanced in the relationship between Dick Tracy and the boy. I expect it was meant to add a humanizing
touch to the story—and it did. The boy was still playing within the broad cartoon style but was adding nuances of warmth and sweetness. The boy’s shading seemed just right, whereas the Dick and Tess relationship seemed to be playing with the wrong note, the wrong shading, the wrong color.

  Small changes in shading and nuance can effect the way the audience responds to a film. Sometimes a writer or director might need to take out a hint of sarcasm to sweeten the scene, or put in a hint of sarcasm to shade in another meaning to the line. Perhaps the music needs to be slightly different—lighter or more melodic—in order to set the right feeling for a scene. Maybe an acting style needs to be changed slightly, adding more emotional nuance to a scene so the audience feels more for a character. It might mean more tears, or fewer, revealing more, or less, vulnerability in a character.

  Many of these elements are determined by the director, who can use lighting, images, long shots and close-ups, scene composition, and placement of the camera in relationship to the background to make the style more intimate, or more distancing. But there is still much that a writer can and must do to balance these elements.

  BALANCING STYLE ELEMENTS

  As we’ve seen, style is one of the most difficult elements to translate. It’s no wonder that some of the big failures have been films that chose a nonrealistic style and that films that have done well have usually been realistic.

  The most obvious alternative is to do only films that are realistic. It’s a safe choice, but it’s too easy an answer. It does nothing to expand the art of filmmaking, and it does nothing to introduce audiences to more original and unique styles.

  So don’t be deterred from trying if you find a story you want to adapt that’s written in a nonrealistic style. Just realize that it will take more thought, more consideration, more careful choices to make the film work and that you do run a higher risk of failure.

  If you decide to do such an adaptation, first ask yourself how accessible the style of the original work is. Styles that are part of the mass media—cartoon, farce, humor—are usually accessible to almost everyone. The more subtle and esoteric styles, such as black comedy, absurdist, expressionistic, satiric, or ironic, will need to be handled much more carefully.

  WHAT’S THE STYLE OF YOUR SOURCE MATERIAL

  In most true-life stories you’ll be working with a realistic style. But many novels and plays are successful because of their more unusual styles. Finding cinematic language for what might be a literary or theatrical style can present great difficulties to the scriptwriter.

  To begin with, you’ll want to be aware of how the style is expressed through the elements used in your source material. If you’re working from a novel, look at the words that the writer uses in both the dialogue and the narrative. The novel’s style is set up through length of sentences, word usage, repetition, the use of symbolism and images, rhythm, and descriptions.

  Is the writer using long, flowery sentences or short, spare ones? What kind of vocabulary choices has the writer made? Is the language formal or personal? What is the attitude of the narrator toward him- or herself? Toward the reader? Toward other characters in the story? Is it cynical, amused, angry, satiric, compassionate?

  If you’re working from a play, you will also be looking at the theatre space. How is the space used? Is it a one-set play? Is it fluid space, with the action moving from one side of the stage to another to suggest changes of location? Are scenes short or long?

  Is the theatre space abstract or symbolic? Does the style come from a box representing a carriage or three bars representing a prison? Does the play try not to be realistic in order to communicate its theme?

  When reading the source material, you’re looking for clues that will help you make decisions about how to translate the style into the vocabulary of film. Look at the following passages from Out of Africa and Shane. Both begin with a description of a place, and someone looking at a certain location. But notice how differences in their language and style point to different cinematic styles:

  I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.

  He rode into our valley in the summer of ’89. I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father’s old chuck-wagon. I was on the upper rail of our small corral, soaking in the late afternoon sun, when I saw him far down the road where it swung into the valley from the open plain beyond.

  Read these descriptions aloud to hear and feel the difference in language. Although both use some long sentences, there’s a formality to Karen Blixen’s language. She uses words that relax us (“limpid,” “restful”) and words that suggest formal conversation.

  Karen Blixen is focusing on scope. Her Africa is a big land. She is able to “see” a hundred miles into the distance.

  In Shane, the language is more informal (“a kid,” “buckboard,” “swung”). The focus is smaller, more intimate. The viewpoint shows smaller spaces (“upper rail of our small corral”). Although the description suggests a larger land (“the valley” and “the open plain”), we are seeing the land from the character’s viewpoint, looking at some small point on the horizon.

  What cinematic language is implied by these two descriptions?

  Cinematic language includes the dialogue choices of the screenwriters. We would expect that the adaptor of Shane would use shorter sentences, more informal language, dialogue that is spare and direct and includes vulgar words or slang. The scriptwriter of Out of Africa, on the other hand, would avoid those choices.

  The cinematic language of the director includes the choice of camera angles (long shots or close-ups), pacing (fast or slow, determined by length of scenes), as well as camera movement (fluid, panning a scene, or cutting back and forth rapidly within a scene). The director can also work with lighting and color (dark, light, primary color; soft, muted color; artificial lights and colors such as fluorescent lights, or outdoor, natural color and lighting).

  The Out of Africa description implies a camera looking into the distance, showing us the scope of the land (remember the wonderful flying scene?). We might expect a number of shots that pan the landscape. And we might expect shots that focus on the scope from Karen’s point of view to communicate her love of this big land.

  The description in Shane implies more focus on the small details—a buckboard, a rail, a cabin—and more close-up shots and focus on the characters. Out of Africa is about the land, the plantation, the wide spaces. Shane is about a small family on a small plot of land, trying to claim their rights to their home.

  SET UP THE STYLE IMMEDIATELY

  Whatever style you choose, you will need to pay very careful attention to how it is set up. The first three minutes of this kind of movie become extremely important. If the audience isn’t with you within three minutes, they probably are not going to be with you at all. That means that if you’re going to do black comedy, you can’t wait for your black comedy moments fifteen minutes into the movie, because the audience won’t know what style they’re in. It means taking them by the hand in the first minute or two of the film, letting them know right up-front: yes, this is black comedy, and you’re supposed to find it funny.

  When I directed comedy in college, one of my professors, Dr. Wayne Rood, used to ask me where my laughs were. He said if I didn’t know, the audience wouldn’t know. He recommended that I set up at least three laughs in the first few minutes of a play, figuring that the audience might not get the first one, or the second one, but by the third they would clearly receive the cue to laugh.

  If you were to apply this principle to other styles, you would look for those moments at the beginning of the film that set the style. If you have a horror-comedy, look for the horror elements and the comic elements within the first few pages. If possible
, combine them.

  I once worked on a horror script that began with someone’s head being cut off. It continued in this grisly fashion, and then it veered toward comedy with the result that the audience would not clearly know that this was a combination style. The writer and I spent a rather humorously morbid time talking about how you make a chopped—off head funny. We talked about ideas like having a headband wrapped around the head that says THINK PEACE, or a feather in the cap, or a funny earring, perhaps a dancing woman or a puppet on a string that, as the head rolls, moves back and forth.

  Although this first cue would be funny, some people might not know how to accept it, since it would not be your usual funny joke. So we talked about a second cue and a third.

  Sometimes with difficult styles the credit sequence can be of great help in setting it up. Perhaps you remember the credit sequence in A Room with a View, one of the most beautiful and classy credit sequences I’ve seen. The placards of credits were done in Italian calligraphy, with opera playing in the background. This set up a tone of classicism to the story, an indication of a slower pace. Then, as the film opened, there followed a series of clues that let you know the style also included tongue-in-cheek humor. These first few moments are both subtle and amusing. Miss Bartlett opens up the shutters in an Italian pensione and gives a deep sigh, saying, “Oh dear, we don’t have a view.” The subtext here is “This is terrible—there is nothing in the world worse than having a room without a view. Look at this, Lucy. Isn’t this perfectly dreadful!”