Writer Unboxed

Tis the season, as Richard Matheson says, to be jelly.

Speaking of Matheson, has anybody seen the latest filmed adaptation of I Am Legend? I was so enthused when I saw trailers this summer – not about the film so much; I can’t wait to see Cloverfield, but Matheson’s timeless man-as-monster parable has been beaten so badly by other filmmakers that my expectations are decidedly low.

I was, however, overjoyed that they kept the novel’s original title. Not The Last Man on Earth. Not The Omega Man.

I Am Legend. Could you ask for a better title? From the trailers, it looks like they changed plenty of things about the story. Did they change essential elements? The theme? There’s a certain irony in that title.

While I wonder if it’s still there, I won’t really be too disappointed if it isn’t. Movies are movies, and books are books, and that’s that.

Let me just let that sit for a minute. Pregnant pause, they call it in drama. I hate drama in my real life, but I do love it in my work.

Come on, dude. Is that the subject for today’s post, or what?

Well, it just so happens …

I went at this from one angle already, judging the merits of screenplay as a valid literary form all its own (it got far more respect than I anticipated in the comments). This time, let’s talk about what happens when you take a book and try to turn it into a film.

What you’re doing in essence is translation – taking something that is largely narrative and internal and making it something that is largely demonstrative and external. Some stories make this easy. Some make it hard.

Even for the ones that are “easy,” a funny thing often happens: the writer’s voice is lost.

This has even happened in films in which the novelist also wrote the screenplay. In my experience, the voice is lost more often than it is preserved. William Goldman’s work is a notable exception, but then everything about Goldman’s work is exceptional. If you need a role model for how to work in Hollywood without selling out, he’s your guy. But I’ll gush more about his stuff later.

For now: what exactly is voice, and why is it so difficult to capture in the metamorphosis from one medium to another? Is voice the exact word? The mode of speech? A transient, subconscious energy that can only be transmitted through reading?

Examples of films that have failed to capture the creator’s voice come easily. Elmore Leonard’s Stick, with Burt Reynolds (the more recent Elmore Leonard films have come closer, but still not there by a long shot). Most films made from Stephen King novels, including Maximum Overdrive, adapted by King from his short story “Trucks,” and then directed by him. And still failed to capture the essence of what makes him a bestselling author. Kubrick’s version of The Shining. The filmed versions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Reading those books and seeing the films are entirely different experiences – not that I’m complaining, really. I’m a big fan of the films.

How about Tom Clancy’s novels versus the films? There’s a certain logical argument here; to encompass everything you’d find in a Clancy novel, the movie would be an epic to make the Rings trilogy seem like a thirty-second TV spot in comparison.

Sometimes, on rare occasions, the film does it better than the book. This is of course totally subjective, and I’m not so drunk on my own opinion that I don’t think this will earn me a couple of flames. I think Patriot Games is an example of a better, tighter, more concise story told on film. The novel rambled. I got bored. I loved the movie.

In college, I took a course on literature and film (and actually got three credits for it – boy, did I get over). We watched a lot of films adapted from books, but one stood out – and continues to impress me as an example of what is possible, in terms of literacy of screenplay and faithfulness of adaptation. That film was Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

I still run across people who don’t realize that Apocalypse Now is adapted from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It’s understandable; there are few surface similarities. This is one of the things that most fascinates me about the film: Coppola stripped out the theme of the book, retained a few elements of core imagery (you pretty much have to use a jungle for the story to work), and changed everything else – but those core elements shine out, and Conrad’s voice is loud and clear.

Virtually nothing outward remains of the original novel – a scattering of dialogue, character names, the skeleton of plot. Coppola’s screenplay, written with John Milius, is brilliant, with its own, modernized take on Conrad’s themes. “I wanted a mission,” Captain Willard says in the films monologue. “For my sins, they gave me one. And when it was over … I’d never want another.” There is no line like it in the book, but it rings like Waterford crystal. There are others – dozens of others, and cinematography by turns brutal and beautiful, bizarre, expertly crafted characters – the whole ball of wax.

Underneath the imagery, the story is rock solid. Conrad would have loved it. I know it. It may seem strange to talk about a film like Apocalypse Now around Christmas time, but it’s a landmark work that can be enjoyed any time.

Might not be the best choice on Christmas Day, after all the turkey and trimmings … but that’s up to you.

I got derailed. I do that. Have you noticed I do that?

So what is that intangible thing that makes a great film out of a great book? Is the writer’s ability to understand the purpose of the source material, using that to forge his own creation? In the documentary film Hearts of Darkness, Coppola is shown to have struggled considerably with the writing, even thinking at one point that the film simply wasn’t going to happen.

Is it the struggle? Good films have been with relative ease from books. I’ll pull The Dead Zone from Stephen King’s woodpile – sue me, I’m a fan – as an example of a film director David Cronenberg and writer Jeffrey Boam claim came fairly easily. The film stays far closer to the original source material than Apocalypse Now, but does not capture the voice as faithfully.

It also stars Martin Sheen, now that I think of it. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, anyone?

I haven’t seen I Am Legend yet, so I can’t comment on the adaptation yet. I can say this: movies communicate narrative through visual imagery, while books do their work through words. So it may be a good movie – even a great movie – but it will not give you the splendid, chilling frisson of this brilliant first line:

On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

That, my friends, is how you hook a reader.

Man, I can’t wait to see Cloverfield. I’ve heard it described as Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project. Right up my alley.

Have a great Christmas!

Existential jelly beans by *N-exu-S.

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