When you adapt a book into a movie, a lot of times the book is better. See: Breakfast of Champions, Dune, and any adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

BARF

It makes sense – even a short book is a lot of material to convert to a 2-hour film.

But occasionally, the movie is way better than the book. I’m talking Die Hard. I’m talking Jurassic Park. I’m talking Fight Club.

Take that, books!

The movies are just undeniably better. Even Chuck Palahnuik thought so:

Now that I see the movie, especially when I sat down with Jim Uhls and record a commentary track for the DVD, I was sort of embarrassed of the book, because the movie had streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective and made connections that I had never thought to make.

So today I want to write about a book that I don’t necessarily fucking love on its own, but that I fucking love because it inspired one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.

I saw Under the Skin at the Telluride Film Festival in September of last year. In my mind, it is, without question, the best film of 2014. Not the best film so far of 2014. The best film of the entire year. I don’t care what comes out for the next 9 months – Under the Skin is better. Here, watch the trailer:

It’s amazing. So when I got the book for my birthday, I was stoked. And then I read it, and I was like:

It’s not that it’s a BAD book, it’s just that the movie was so incredible that I expected the book to be a goddamn revelation, you know? The book isn’t bad; it’s just so, SO different from the movie (and it’s worth noting that people who wrote reviews of the book years ago, without seeing the movie first, loved it). So I want to take a look at what’s happening in the book that made such a different yet incredible movie, and I think the way to do that is by making a comparison that a lot of people are going to make when they talk about Under the Skin.

Did you watch the trailer? If not, there was a quote in it that said “We may finally have an heir to Kubrick.” I think we definitely do. Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of this novel is on par with all of Kubrick’s.

I went to the Kubrick exhibit at LACMA a year ago and there was this great quote from Kubrick that I can’t find now no matter what I Google, but he was saying that he would only do adaptations and wouldn’t ever write an original screenplay. An original screenplay was too much; you have to think of a message and convey it. With an adaptation, you already have the message. Your job as a filmmaker is to figure out the best way to get it to the audience.

For Kubrick, and for Glazer, this means distilling a book down to the basics. Who are the important characters and why am I drawn to them? What tone do I want to set? How did I feel when I was reading it? That’s the blueprint the book lays down; that’s what the book is about.

What the book is about is important, because bad adaptations of movies think the book is about the plot. That’s why no one can ever get The Great Gatsby right – everyone makes a movie that just follows the plot of the book. But if you ask someone what something is ABOUT, then you don’t just list the things that happen in the book. If you asked me what The Great Gatsby was about, I wouldn’t say “Well there’s this guy Nick who moves into a house and he makes friends with this guy Gatsby who is in love with a married woman so he throws parties and one night the girl Daisy is at the party and they see each other etc.” I would say “It’s about a man chasing a dream he can’t have,” (amongst other things). The plot isn’t what the book is about.

So a filmmaker’s chief job isn’t to be beholden to the plot of the book. It’s to figure out what the book is about and what is the best way to convey that to the audience. If the best way to do that changes some pretty significant details from the novel, then that’s what needs to happen.

No one understood that better than Stanley Kubrick (I’m using Kubrick because I don’t want to give away any Under the Skin spoilers. I promise, I’ll get back to Under the Skin in a second, just bear with me). Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining was different enough from the plot of the book that Stephen King has repeatedly shat all over the movie.

But I think Kubrick did it the right way. He stripped out the stuff that you didn’t need and you were left with this eerie, weird movie that built something and emoted something and was similar to, but not the same as the book. The book already exists; you don’t need to make another one, exactly the same, in movie form. Diane Johnson, who wrote the screenplay for Kubrick, had this to say about the process of adapting the book:

The procedure that Kubrick advised – and which I’ve followed ever since – is to get that order of the scenes right. Decide on the 120 most essential scenes and then work with the structure until you get it right, bearing in mind the themes, and the need for characterization and all the things that you should bear in mind. [Full interview]

You have to pick the scenes that are essential to the movie and just use those. To get the order of the scenes right so that it forms an actual movie that means something instead of just doing exactly what’s prescribed in the book, sometimes you supplement with stuff that isn’t in the book. Understand?

So. Back to Under The Skin. Glazer picked the stuff that’s important, the stuff that makes the book resonate with readers. He left stuff out of the movie that doesn’t matter – the interactions with other aliens; the political situation of Isserley’s home planet, the visit from someone from Isserley’s home planet, the overt factory farming commentary, the fights and tantrums that Isserley throws when she’s around her fellow aliens. None of that is what the book is about, so Glazer didn’t put it in the movie.

Without any movie spoilers, these are the things that Under the Skin is about:

Otherness.

Being very, very alone.

The weird separation between your mental self and your physical self.

Power and compassion.

Power and sexuality.

What it means to be human.

And that is why I fucking love Under the Skin.

Isserley always drove straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up. She was looking for big muscles: a hunk on legs. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her. At first glance, though, it could be surprisingly difficult to tell the difference. You’d think a lone hitcher on a country road would stand out a mile, like a distant monument or a grain silo; you’d think you would be able to appraise him calmly as you drove, undress him and turn him over in your mind well in advance. But Isserley had found it didn’t happen that way. … Driving past, she’d stare straight at him, to verify her first impressions, making totally sure she wasn’t pumping him up in her imagination. If he really did make the grade, she stopped the car and took him. Under the Skin, page 1

Under the Skin comes out April 4th.

Follow me on Twitter