Paul Quarrington on Adaptation - Part 2

Thoughts on the process of adapting books to screen
By Paul Quarrington

Movies are not as big as books.

The general public, I think, has a vague and imaginary scale that measures narrative weight, and they seem to equate a book with a feature length film. But the movie is much, much smaller. My novel “Whale Music” is a small book—two hundred and some odd pages—but even it was way too big for a feature film.

As various directors worked on it, as I re-wrote according to discussions, disparate aspects would come to the fore. I wrote the first draft myself, and concentrated on the humorous aspects of the story. (I included characters like the dog and Babboo Nash Fazoo, for example.) Then Atom Egoyan and I worked together. Being Atom Egoyan, he was most interested in the familial stuff (and Desmond’s parents were on-screen characters.) Then Richard Lewis took over the helm, and the parents were deep-sixed to make more room for the love story between Claire and Desmond.

So perhaps the most important aspect of adaptation is for the filmmaker to identify which specific aspects of the printed material speak to him/her. By selecting those to which he or she connects emotionally and primally, the filmmaker is ensuring that the final product will by at least in part a personal expression. Sometimes the filmmaker is forced to highlight aspects where there is no personal connection, sometimes the filmmaker bends things to make them fit, tries to force a square peg into a round hole. The filmmaker must possess a very intimate and profound knowledge of the source material. There must be a very immediate and visceral connection, Otherwise, I assert, the project is doomed to failure.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed!