One Moment Please While I Geek Out

by Stephanie

Judge me as you will, but I will make no attempts to hide the fact that I am a Harry Potter fan, and have been since the beginning. The series seems to have been a benchmark for my (relatively speaking) younger years, and I have always been one of those fans who stuck with the books and subsequent franchise throughout its life. In fact, next week I will be going to the theatre (which at $13 a ticket, who does that?) to see the first installment of the final movie. I’m hoping I don’t resort to pushing a small child to get to the good seats, but I won't make any guarantees.

Anyway, with that in mind, I wanted to pass along this clever piece that examines the elements of the series that make for sound tips writers can take away and use to hone their own work. From character development to plotting to points of view, it’s interesting how one pivotal series holds within it so many building blocks to strong writing. I’m sure some won’t feel the same with regard to my admiration for the series, but I think this piece makes a strong argument in favor of Rowling’s talents, as well as driving home the importance of truly enjoying the world you create.

The book stays in the picture

by Lauren

There was some great debate in the comments when I tackled foreign rights, so let's move on to another sub right.  It seems like this is the perfect week to talk about film, since Variety just did a piece on the current state of book-to-film, complete with quotes from Jane!  (I always enjoy the Variety lingo--only in LA would we be referred to as a "Gotham-based" agency.  Clearly Batman was rights director before me. )

So we've already talked about foreign, which takes up the most time and generates the most deals, but film and television is the big one on a per deal basis in terms of money. On the one hand, a big film means big money for the author (though as Jane points out, not as big as it used to be).  That said, the percentage of books that ever reach the screen is tiny. Of those that don't, a slightly larger percentage will have the rights bought but will never be made. Another slightly larger bunch will be optioned--meaning a studio or production company has the right to try to get the funding to outright buy the rights to the material. Options, however, usually lapse before any significant progress is made.

I've heard it said that the ideal situation for the author is for the option producer to get enough traction to keep optioning and eventually buy the rights, but never make the movie.  Though I don't know how many authors would really want to lose the upside—significantly inflated booksales—to get rid of the downside—a corrupted version of the story they wrote making it into the world.

Happy Oscar Nomination Day!

by Chasya

A recent Examiner article links to a note from J.D Salinger elucidating why the author never exploited the valuable film rights to Catcher in the Rye. Among the many reasons, he said: “ for me the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice…” Thinking that Holden could never be accurately represented onscreen, he opted not to have the book adapted.

After this morning’s Oscar announcements, in which four of the ten nominations for best picture are going to films that were adapted from books, I got to wondering. Of the four, I’ve only seen Up in the Air, a book I would say certainly relies heavily on the narrator’s voice. And that movie was pretty great. It’s often said that films taken from books don’t come close to the greatness of the original. I would have to say I disagree. I think that they’re very different vehicles that serve the same purpose–to tell a story.

No matter how that’s done, so long as it’s done well, there needn’t be this sort of black and white debate. Do film adaptations always trump books? Do books always trump the film adaptation? I don’t think we necessarily need to choose.

What are your thoughts?

Children's Books to Movies

by Stacey

Here's a fun link to some ideas for classic children's books that would adapt well for an adult audience. I'm not sure about a movie version of Goodnight Moon (unless it was very short!), but I do think that Good Night, Gorilla would be a really great animated film. Let's hear some of your favorite children's books that you think would make great movies.

The age old debate on adaptation

by Rachel

Lauren touched on the subject of film adaptations in her post-Oscars blog entry, but with The Lovely Bones opening in theatres this weekend, and with films such as Alice In Wonderland and Sherlock Holmes also coming to us on the big screen, I thought I’d throw in my two cents on the ongoing book vs. film adaptation debate.

Today’s NY Times review of The Lovely Bones was mixed. A.O. Scott writes that while Alice Sebold's novel showed audacity and effective art, the film shows less audacity and too much art. The film, he says, “skitters and lurches from set piece to the next” and never achieves the “delicate emotional coherence that would bring the story alive.” He then goes on to say that one of the problems with the film is that there are hard decisions to be made when trying to put Sebold’s work into a motion picture: What should be highlighted? What should be left out?

I’d like to know how filmmakers make such decisions. Obviously you can’t transfer every minute detail from a book to the screen--an audience doesn’t really want to stick around for more than a couple of hours to catch every last event that occurred in a book, but by having to be so selective in film adaptations, are we missing out on details that only reading books can bring us?

The film Adaptation comes to mind when I think about the great book vs. film adaptation debate. What was meant to be a film adaptation of Susan Orlean’s The Orchard Thief, turned into a film about how to adapt a book into a screenplay--better yet, I think the film poses the question of whether or not it’s possible for a book to be adapted for film at all. The movie certainly makes you think whether or not this is possible. Sure, Adaptation is a wonderful film, but it’s a film about a man having writer’s block while trying to adapt the book to the big screen.

So, I wonder, are there some books that just can’t be made into films? Or, do you believe films ‘give life’ to books?