Adaptation - Art Form Or Pure Fluke?
Hollywood’s never been slow to option the big books of the day. But why don’t best-sellers always make for blockbusters? And does fidelity to the text always guarantee a great film?
When he picked up his honorary Oscar in 1999, In The Heat Of The Night director Norman Jewison begged Hollywood to find more original stories to tell. Naturally Hollywood paid no attention and continued to do what it’d been doing for ages - namely, claiming to be an ideas-based industry while basing most of its films on whatever happened to be on the New York Times best-sellers list.
The big studios have been in the novel-adapting industry almost as long as they’ve been in the film-making industry. Since they’re both plot-powered forms, it’s not that surprising that such a parasitic relationship has developed. Consider the subtleties of a favourite novel, however, and it’s amazing to think anyone would dream of turning so complex and fulfilling a work into something as obvious as a Hollywood film.
Of course, the studios are well equipped to overcome the obstacles in the adaptation process. Take George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau - that which is good about the film has next to nothing to do with the source story.
Philip K Dick’s stories are brilliantly brain-frying affairs that don’t lend themselves to adaptation. Take, for example his best known work Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - that it’s a bizarre story about people buying artificial animals as a sign of status will no doubt come as a shock to fans of Ridley Scott’s reimagining, the awesome yet unrelated Blade Runner.
Likewise, when Paul Verhoeven deigned to transfer Dick’s We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale, he stripped the story of everything — even its title — and built the Arnold Schwarzenegger juggernaut Total Recall upon its bare bones.
Not that Hollywood is always unsubtle. On the contrary, some adaptations are incredibly faithful to the original text. This was the case with Watchmen, Zach Snyder’s epic take on Alan Moore’s era-defining graphic novel. Truth be told, it was actually a little bit too faithful.
Asked why he thought the book was unadaptable, Terry Gilliam — a huge fan of Moore’s tome — said that it was such a dense story, it'd be better suited to episodic TV. But no doubt feeling bulletproof on the back of 300’s success, Snyder set out to cram 424 pages of graphic novel into three hours and wound up with a picture equal parts beautiful and boring.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t - no, it’s not easy, this adaptation business. What works for one is a recipe for disaster for another. Take Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go which was adapted by Alex Garland. A hit novelist before he turned to screenwriting, Garland took the brave step of inviting author Kazuo Ishiguro on set.
“My writer friends thought I must be suicidal,” says the man behind the The Beach. “But I thought it would really help the film, and it did. Not that I wasn’t worrying what he thought of my writing every moment he was there!”
As you have to admire Garland’s gambit, so you must also congratulate those writers who realise the limitations of the book they’re hired to rework. The transformation of Robert Ludlum’s lumbering novels into the lean and exciting Jason Bourne series is a fine example of adaptation at its most brutal.
No, turning best-sellers into blockbusters is a far from certain art. Indeed, such is the process’ potential to create havoc, maybe it’s time the business found some of those original stories Mr Jewison talked about in 1999.