Last time we visited, we discussed some of the nuts and bolts of adaptions. At its simplest, an adaption is the use of some other source work (your own or someone else’s) to develop a short, or feature-length, script. We also found out that to adapt someone else’s work, the screenwriter must have permission from the original author, or a work that is now in public domain, or a team of very skilled lawyers. Read more here. Adaptions have been both amazing and terrible. This time we discuss what makes a successful, or horrific, adaption.
As I found out when trying to adapt my own work, adapting a full novel (65k-90k + words) into a 2 hour screenplay (30k-35k words) can be excruciating. What do you leave? What do you cut? It’s an absolutely painful process. Short stories or “novellas” (7500 to 20000 words) seem to be the best suited for adapting to A screenplay. Not to say that novels haven’t been successfully adapted. But let’s looks at some examples.
My sons and I love action films- smart, energetic, well-written action films. Guns of Navarone by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean is one such example. At just under 90,000 words, the brilliant novel seems too long to adapt to the screen effectively. But the screenwriters did an expert job. The movie version weighs in at nearly 2 hours and 30 minutes, but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s a terse, enjoyable action ride from start to finish. It’s never flat, never dull and the film captures all the salient points of the book, without bogging down the movie going experience. Expertly done. 5/5.
Robert Ludlum created an equally enjoyable read with his Bourne Identity novel. And it could have been as good as MacLean’s adaption to film. But whomever wrote Bourne Identity jacked that story so bad, it was nearly unrecognizable as Ludlum’s work. Oh sure you had Jason Bourne, trying to run from stuff and find out who he was, but that’s all. The film version of the story included Marie as nothin more than eye candy, and the counter plot with Carlos the Jackal (a real life assassin btw) was distilled to one, inconsequential, short scene. An awful misfire. Now, I realize that there are many who would roast me over an open fire when suggesting that Bourne Identity was a horrible failure. But I am talking about in the context of preserving the brilliance of the source material. One of my sons suggested the very same thing (that I was wrong, not the roasting part) and I challenged him to read the book. He returned with the following analysis: Dad, that film sucks. 0/5.
William Goldman had the benefit of writing both the screenplay and the novel when adapting the Princess Bride. I have read the book and must confess that the movie is one step above the printed version. I assumed that he wote the script first and adapted that into the novel, but the novel was written 15 years earlier. When he wrote the screenplay, he added texture, and trimmed fat, and actually improved the original source material. He says he gets more mail/comments/feedback from that one work than all of his others combined (and he did the semi-historical adaption of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for film). The Princess Bride is a spectacular film. Well done Bill. 5/5.
I loved the original novella by Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon. Keyes was later asked to expand his piece into a full-length novel, and he wrecked it. He added a bunch of unnecessary (IMHO) subtle, and not so subtle Freudian and Kinsean sexual subtext, and turned the novel in a direction that was not only a violation of the original direction of the book, but was at the same time, extremely unflattering. When the work was made into the feature film, Charly, it seemed the writers borrowed much of the undertone from the expanded novel, turning the story into a 60’s pop culture image fest- not at all what Keyes intended in his original novella. The original work was a spectacular rollercoaster ride of a developmentally disabled man, cured by an experimental surgery, having to cope with the fact that he was growing exponentially smarter than the people that operated on him, with his intelligence far outpacing his maturity. A brilliant, painful story of the struggle of a man (every man) which was ruined by trite treatment. 1/5.
I hate a love/hate relationship with European authors. I love Jane Austen, some of Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Orwell, Arthur Conan Doyle, C.S. Lewis, and Robert Louis Stevenson. I loathe the works of Shakespeare. I do not care for Tolkien (having forced myself to read the Hobbit and the Rings trilogy), and for a while, thought that Poe was British because of my complete contempt for his work. My apologies Brits.
That being said, you have to know what your audience wants. It sounds like a stupid statement (if I knew that, I would write nothing but blockbusters and be successful the rest of my life), but there are some people that do not get even what is obvious. Why should you have to tell someone that people who like
Austen, generally do not like zombies, and vice versa? But some goofball spent 28 million to figure out what I could have told him for free: the number of people who like zombies and Autsen, and are willing to pay to see them combined, is very, very small. The movie made 16 million and I was surprised at that number.
Reality check: movies aren’t successful financially unless the make 2-3 times the cost of the film. Why?
The theaters take the first cut, then the distributors, then the investors, and so on. The producers hardly see a dime unless the film makes at least twice what is cost. So the failure of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a titanic miscalculation. Maybe it wasn’t calculated at all. Check my script cue. I have 4 or 5 or even six films that could have been made for that budget, and they all would have made money (because I don’t write crap). Even if we just did my 2 PK Dick adaptions, we could have done them both for 24 million, and done them well. Am I jealous? No. I’m just saying that because someyhing seems trendy, or is in public domain, or is a “great idea” (in the world of scripts, ideas are worthless btw) that doesn’t mean it should be made. I feel bad for the investors who were snookered by a flashy sales pitch (hey Jane Austen is popular right now and so are zombies! This will be a multi-million dollar success!), it makes it harder to find investors for legitimate projects, written by screenwriters that care about their craft.
Since we are talking adaption, who would have ever thought we could finally get comic book movies right? I, being a total geek, am completely giddy over the number of good comic book movies now available. Oh yes, the original Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) were glimpses of what astounding success comic book movies could be, but conversely, many of them are just abysmal. DC can’t get a movie right unless it has Bat in the title (and even Dawn of Justice sucked). Marvel has also had its share of stinkers. It says something when the most appropriate adaption of the Fantastic 4 doesn’t even have the Fantastic 4 in it (Incredibles, 2004). Spiderman looks promising. Finally. And Netflix has put up some astoundingly good series in Daredevil, Luke Cage and the Punisher. So we, the comic book geeks, say thanks.
More successful adaptions to film? The Maltese Falcon (1941), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1972), Stand by Me (1986), Magnificent 7 (1960, from the 7 Samurai by Kurosawa), Fistful of Dollars (1964, from Yojimbo by Kurosawa), from my PK Dick list: Blade Runner (1982), Next (2007), the Adjustment Bureau (2011) and finally, any of the Marvel movies that have Captain in the title.
Failures? The Scarlet Letter (1995), The Grinch (2000), (reportedly) The Great Gatsby (2013), from my PK Dick list: Minority Report (2002), Total Recall (1990), Screamers (1995, which is a tragedy because I love Peter Weller and I loved Second Variety, the short story from which Screamers came), any of the Marvel movies that have X-Men in the title. These lists are by no means exhaustive. Feel free to leave your own favorite success or failure in the comments. We may even to be able to debate if they should make a film adaption of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, but I think you know better.
Again, thanks for your time,
Deen Gill
Comments
Regarding sea movies, I never read Peter Benchley's Jaws, nor did I see the movie, so I can't speak to that. I have never seen a successful screen adaption of Moby Dick (was hoping for the best from Gregory Peck as Ahab, but no). I read Captains Courageous (Rudyard Kipling) and loved the film adaption (1937). Love Hemmingway and was hoping for a spectacular effort from Spencer Tracy in The Old Man and The Sea, but again, No.
It's all double-dutch to me really. I've never had an interest in reading fictional literature. Only fiction book I've read as an adult, and I was a young adult at the time, was Jurassic Park. I certainly noted how the novel differed to the movie despite it being written as a movie first - weird.
So now you have sparked a completely different column. Can a screenwriter be effective and successful without being well read in classic literature? A conversation/interview between you and I. Let me know if you are up for it. :)
I'm up for it if you are, Deen.
Awesome read - thanks Deen.
One of the most prolific fails (and continue to be a fail) is every version of Tarzan ever made. I've read the novel four times (if you haven't read it, you need to) and it still blows me away that a halfway decent film has yet to be produced.
In addition to the Magnificent 7 (1960) being a success, the 2016 version is an epic fail. What crap. I don't understand 'Hollywood's inability to produce a good western anymore.
Wow John! 2 solid points. Tarzan is bad. Not as bad as the worst, which I have decided is 1980 Popeye. And Magnificent 7 was awful for the remake.
BTW - I just posted 'An Ideal Truth', an adaptation of Kurosawa's 'Rashomon' set in 1862 Arizona. It's short but would film quite a bit longer.
So did you secure rights to adapt it, or is it public domain, or will you have the producers worry about permission?
From my 'search' and the information I've gathered, it is public domain. If it ever goes beyond my hands, I'll let the producers worry about permissions.
Question: In my adaptation, I use characters created by Sergio Leone and 'sample' quotes from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly'. Another legal fiasco if not public domain? Should never be an issue if money never changes hands, eh?
If money never changes hands, no issue. However, it has been my experience that if a project has any connection to another work and permission has not been obtained, or it is not in public domain, then that is an automatic rejection. Case en point: I have a parody of that famous comic book detective from the 30s and 40s ( https://www.scriptrevolution.com/scripts/trace-dickey-and-the-golden-schnoz-caper .) It is clearly a parody and allowable under "fair use" but I had a producer tell me he wouldnt even look at it because of what he perceived were liability issues (I discovered that he was incorrect and the piece is a stand alone work and not a violation of copyright laws), but you never want to give them another reason to say "no" if your intent is a sale.
It must be really difficult to adapt your own novel into a script. Especially it is a longer story. But if the novel is not very movie-like from the beginning, it ought to be even more troublesome. I think of Twilight for instance, where they sit and talk a lot in the novel which is perfectly fine in a book but not so often in a film.
While there are some novels that should never be made into film, most are adaptable. People are always talking about film being such a visual medium (which it is) but I think that realization goes too far and we lose good dialogue, plotting and characterization (see Bourne Identity). If we always focus on the visual slam bang of movies, films like 12 Angry Men, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Big Sleep and the Breakfast Club would never get made. That would be a tragedy.
I definitely agree. The image has to be interesting, but things do not need to move so fast as it often does these days. Still, there is just so many things you can do to keep our interest with a couple by a table if all you have is dialog. There is so much more you can do which may show sides of a character not explicit in the book. But, if I remember correctly it is mentioned in the article.