Complications Ensue: The Crafty Game, TV, and Screenwriting Blog

Sunday, March 08, 2009 Faithless Adaptations Are the Best about Hitch's habit of adapting trashy novels instead of great, literary ones. The idea is that great novels depend on their language, while trash novels depend on their plot. Since the language isn't going to make it into the movie, the idea is, great novels don't adapt as well as bad ones.



I don't think it's that simple. I think the danger with great novels is that you'll try to adapt them faithfully. The only novels safe to adapt "faithfully" are those which are pretty much already written with a movie in mind -- anything by John Grisham or Tom Clancy, say. If you try to adapt even a page-turner like WAR AND PEACE faithfully, you'll get lost in the subplots. But you can make a pretty good movie out of it if you don't care what readers of the book think.



When you're adapting THE BIRDS, though, you're not going to worry about jettisoning scenes that don't help the movie.



The Hitch technique for adapting a novel is to read the book once, and then not look at it again. Whatever you remember is the movie. If there's something you don't remember, it isn't memorable enough for the movie. I've adapted books that way and it works pretty well. I usually go back and skim the novel after I've written a draft, to see if there's anything I really ought to have remembered, but there usually isn't.



I think it might have been Neil Gaiman who pointed out that you can't "ruin" a book by unfaithfully adapting it to the screen. The book is still there. But a movie has to be its own thing. Hopefully you can retain the tone and the theme, but ultimately your responsibility is to make a good movie, not a faithful one. Kevin Miller (XI) speculates about Hitch's habit of adapting trashy novels instead of great, literary ones. The idea is that great novels depend on their language, while trash novels depend on their plot. Since the language isn't going to make it into the movie, the idea is, great novels don't adapt as well as bad ones.I don't think it's that simple. I think the danger with great novels is that you'll try to adapt them faithfully. The only novels safe to adapt "faithfully" are those which are pretty much already written with a movie in mind -- anything by John Grisham or Tom Clancy, say. If you try to adapt even a page-turner like WAR AND PEACE faithfully, you'll get lost in the subplots. But you can make a pretty good movie out of it if you don't care what readers of the book think.When you're adapting THE BIRDS, though, you're not going to worry about jettisoning scenes that don't help the movie.The Hitch technique for adapting a novel is to read the book once, and then not look at it again. Whatever you remember is the movie. If there's something you don't remember, it isn't memorable enough for the movie. I've adapted books that way and it works pretty well. I usually go back and skim the novel after I've written a draft, to see if there's anything I really ought to have remembered, but there usually isn't.I think it might have been Neil Gaiman who pointed out that you can't "ruin" a book by unfaithfully adapting it to the screen. The book is still there. But a movie has to be its own thing. Hopefully you can retain the tone and the theme, but ultimately your responsibility is to make a good movie, not a faithful one. Labels: adaptation 19 Comments: Back to Complications Ensue main blog page.





