I am finally getting better from my cold, it was rough but I made it (weeeee!)
I decided not to promise anything anymore – like writing every day.
I’ll try to do it 3 to 4 times a week, because of all the work I have, which is mostly computer related; my eyes hurt, my back and other parts of my body hurt, too, so I try to make time in between all the stuff I have to do, to actually get up and stretch.
I had an epiphany recently, so I’ll talk about it today.
A couple of weeks ago, a movie called “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” was released and fans are crazy mad that the movie can’t compare to the books whatsoever. Coincidentally, I also ran into an article last week about a number of authors who were unhappy with the movie adaptations of their books.
Some of the most famous examples of that are Stephen King’s dissatisfaction with Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of “The Shining”, Anthony Burgess’ disappointment over, again, Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” and P.L. Travers’ hate towards the animated penguins in “Mary Poppins”.
There is a lesson to be learned here – Stanley Kubrick did whatever the eff he wanted and, more importantly, one’s vision will always clash with another’s.
I’d be terrified to give my story to someone and let them turn it into their own. But that’s what Walt Disney did with “Mary Poppins” and what Kubrick did with both “The Shining” and “A Clockwork Orange” – Kubrick’s genius is highly valued and exemplified, but honestly, honestly, honestly… I disagree with his adaptations, too. I love Stanley Kubrick, and his cooperation with Peter Sellers has brought up some of my favorite movies ever (“Dr. Strangelove” at the very top) but he did have his own vision that clashed with the messages of the novels.
I read both “The Shining” and “A Clockwork Orange”; I will defend Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” until my dying breath. I read this book in its extended form three times. It was a piece that came to me at a great time of my life, when I could clearly understand Alex and the society he lived in, when I sensed everything he said between the lines and the message he wanted to send. The movie couldn’t tell you those things because there was no monologue in the form of a voice-over to truly give it justice, and there was the old ‘ultraviolence’ more than anything else… It was very shallow compared to the book.
I won’t say more about this. It’s not what I want to speak of, but using these two books, I wanna tell everyone – don’t compare the book and the movie. Never ever.
Comparing a book to its movie adaptation is like saying red is pink.
A lot of you may disagree with me, and I understand that IT IS important to compare them because the movie was based on the book and so the story should be the same, the plot, the characters, the details… George R.R. Martin let those ‘meanies’ called writers and producers at HBO change his 56321 page books into their own televised versions of things because the books are different than the TV series. There are things that need to be understood about turning a novel into a screen product, and the first one, the main one and the one we all love to hate is – handsome people, with on-screen charisma and hopefully some talent, will be cast more often than the not so handsome ones; there’s a boatload of examples in “Game of Thrones”.
A movie can tell you visually what a book tells you with words, but only written word can be straightforward about what someone is feeling internally – “She was sad because the last days of her life were upon her and she felt like she hasn’t lived it through just yet; she wondered what was missing so terribly from her existence that she had to do before her dying breath, that would make her feel like she’s lived a full and happy life?”
I just made this up but it’s an example that works in this context – on screen, this lady could well be looking in the distance and through a window, but without a fitting screenplay or story around it, without a worthy actor to convey this, you will not know that this is what the lady is truly thinking. This needs to be revealed through further actions in the screen adaptation of the movie, such as this woman doing her best to try new things out until one fits her perfectly.
Then, there’s the aspect of the director and the actor. The actor reads from the screenplay, which was written according to the book but was changed for the purpose of the screen story and the entire form of a screenplay; the director then wants this character to look more beautiful and maybe with longer hair, all for their own vision, and for that vision to work the actor needs to be a sounding name for the sake of the producers and the audiences; the novel’s author will shake their head in disbelief as the woman is now different from the one in their novel, not even dying nor contemplating, but doing things because she wants to try it all.
See, the two versions end up as very different. A filmmaker thinks like a filmmaker, which means a screenplay needs to be engaging, first; second, the cast must be appealing so that the estimated budget for the filming can ultimately be returned and the movie could possibly gain some profit; if the movie doesn’t promise profit, it will not gain producers. Without producers, the budget is virtually non-existent and without a budget, filming can be postponed until the end of days.
With the example of Stanley Kubrick and “The Shining”, Stephen King’s idea was that Jack Torrance was not evil nor predestined to become evil prior to entering the haunted hotel; it was the hotel that drove him mad. Jack Nicholson looked crazy in the first minute of the film, Kubrick said okay, and then “The Shining” was just a movie about this guy on the verge who simply went crazy because his wife was annoying and it was freezing and there was no one in the hotel but a wrinkly lady in the bathtub and whatnot. The movie is pretty good, but it’s not the book, if I were to go ahead and do what I say we shouldn’t, which is compare them to each other.
The novel “The Shining” is more chilling, more terrifying and gives insight to the deepest corners of both Jack’s mind and the hotel’s history and vivid characters haunting it.
Considering all the aspects I listed above, Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick were good enough faces to get produced; whether Kubrick cared about money or not is a whole different story – he had a vision he wasn’t willing to let go.
A director should be admired because of that, like Kubrick generally is. That’s actually great since he was a spectacular visionary.
But King is a masterful visionary, too; his insight into a character can’t be transferred into any sort of movie, TV series or the like (unless there’s a voice-over and a massive budget and a returning series and someone willing to go as crazy as his characters do).
Whenever you get the urge to see a screen adaptation of a novel, try to completely detach yourself from the prior knowledge. That is difficult, I know, but see the movie with fresh eyes. And then decide which one you enjoyed more; many will say: “The book was better” and I’d encourage you to explain further, but I can anticipate what you might tell me.
Still, the color pink is a lighter shade of the color red, so you can choose which one is which in the movie-book situation.
‘Til next time
Anja
The Roll of a Lifetime 