Where the Wild Things Went: The Art of Adaptation

"There is no such thing as a new idea." Mark Twain knew it, and Hollywood knows it too. The best you can do is put your own spin on an old tale. Or, you can just realize that you'll never be good enough to think of anything on your own and adapt a piece for the screen.

In all seriousness, there is a true art to adaptation. Taking someone else's work and turning it into a visual and auditory experience is extremely difficult to do successfully. For time's sake, let's talk about books and short stories specifically. There are just as many challenges as there are benefits to adapting a written work into a screenplay. Here are some of the biggest ones:

Challenges:

Condensing/Expanding - So you have a 1000 page novel and somehow you have to turn it into a 120 page screenplay. Or on the contrary, like Spike Jonze, you have a ten sentence children's book and need to pull out a feature length film.

Bye, bye Max...

Where the Wild Things Are, a classic story written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, is a perfect example of expanding a written work into a film. Jonze had to give each of his character's their own depth, and lengthen the plot to keep the audience's interest for a longer period of time. Almost the entire first act of the film wasn't even in the book, but it was well done and implicitly supplied us with information of Max's home life, and the motivation for the rest of the film.

Externalizing the Internal -  Screenplays consist only of action, whereas novels include the interior thoughts of its characters. The job of the screenwriter is to take the emotions and internal motivations of the characters and translate them into something visual. A great example of this is Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman's take of another classic, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The entire novel is told in the first person from the perspective of one the patients, Chief Bromden. Instead of having Bromden narrate the movie, the screenwriters decided to tell it in the third person so that we can see all of the characters' experiences.

It's a third person party!

Benefits:

Insta-Plot - Most of the work is done for you. The plot, the characters, a lot of research and even some of the dialogue. Although the plot and many of the characters may have to be tweaked due to length and elements added to the story, the main concepts are there. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first installment of the Harry Potter film franchise, is known for its loyalty to the novel. 

The Boy Who Adapted

Although there is some criticism that it stuck too closely to the book and didn't offer anything new, it is a good example of staying true to the novel's plot and characters.

Built-In Audience -  Okay, I know I said to stick to novels, but let's consider comic books for a second (that's a book, right?). We've all seen superhero movies. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, the list goes on forever. But these were all adapted from comic books at one point or another. The great thing about producing these films is that you already have a guaranteed number of viewers. Avid comic book readers will pay money to see their favorite heroes come to life on the big screen. This applies to regular books as well. For example, The Hunger Games was extremely successful because of the giant success and following of the novel it was adapted from.

"Shout out to all my fans."

So go out there, find yourself a popular book, and adapt it into a screenplay before anyone else discovers it. Then get yourself to Hollywood and sell it for as much as you can get your hands on. It can't be that hard, right?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

     This movie had a lot of problems getting enough money to film, and for good reason.  If I told you that I wanted to make a feature film about an institutionalized man, only during his time while in the institution, you would think I was the crazy one.  How could this be a good film, there is no action, there are no love interests or bad guys.   The story does not sound like the kind of movie that would be remotely interesting.  Yet the movie is fantastic.  It is amazing to watch this man simply get into the lives of institutionalized people who are in a routine and shake their lives up.  It has great character development and the viewer actually knows each of the characters by the end of the movie.  It all happens in about three locations and most of it is them just sitting in a circle, yet it is engaging, it makes you want to know what is going to happen, and how these very different and very extreme personalities can fit together.  It is fun to see how this story was written and how it was converted from the book, there is a lot to be said for a writer that can externalize so many emotions and ideas that are primarily internal (Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman, screenplay writers).  Its a great movie, bottom line, watch it.