Adaptation

Adaptation is a film I wish I hadn't seen. I wish it didn't have such a powerful hold on me. Writing this film I didn't want it to turn into Birdman or Adaptation and I feel like I made a horrible amalgam of them both.

Adaptation is written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze, who has made another one of my all-time favorite films Her. The film focuses on the character of Charlie Kauffman, as played by Nicholas Cage at one of his best, and his struggles adapting a real-life book called The Orchid Thief by real-life person, Susan Orlean. 

Orlean is played by the wonderful Meryl Streep, who brings a strong sense of authority to the character. Orlean's book is about John Laroche, played by Chris Cooper, who is a man obsessed with hunting ghost orchids which is an illegal practice in Florida. However these characters are never stagnate. They constantly shift and contort in personality as Charlie Kauffman, the person and the character, attempt to define them in their work.

The plot of the movie was supposed to be about Laroche. But the movie is about Charlie Kauffman the writer struggling with writers block. He is trying to create the perfect story out of a book about an orchid thief. Where the movie succeeds is how Kauffman manages to manipulate expectations. Kauffman's character has a twin brother, also played by Cage. Donnie Kauffman acts as an outside world. A world only concerned with plot and action and making money. But it is Donnie who is succesful, Donnie who gets the girl, Donnie who finishes and sells his screenplay. 


And this is what the movie becomes. It becomes driven by plot and by unrealistic romance and conflict. But it is the preceding hour, of personal conflict and creative frustration, that makes this result appealing. Kauffman creates a complex story of his own inabilities that is both frustrating and rewarding. He's made the movie after all.

I tried not making Adaptation. But revision after revision as my movie about anxiety started making me more anxious the film became a sort of knock off of this unstructured but emotionally appealing movie. I'd encourage people to watch Adaptation, a movie about how Charlie Kauffman doesn't like his own work. 

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?

Arcade Fire's Live Music Video

While I was relaxing during my down time between classes, I stumbled upon news from the YouTube Music Awards. I had heard ads about this event, but I never got around to watching it. I discovered, to my surprise, that Arcade Fire had recorded a live music video of their new song "Afterlife". This music video was directed by Spike Jonze, director of films like "Being John Malcovich", "Adaptation.", and "Where the Wild Things Are". 

This music video was a low-budget production that happened right on stage as the band was performing. The video stars Greta Gerwig who plays a woman who has just dealt with a bad breakup. It involves her running through a forest on stage doing a choreographed dance and in the end dancing with a bunch of younger girls. This sounds pretty lame when I describe it so check out the video for more. 

Even though the dancing comes off as mildly cheesy, the video in whole just puts a smile on your face. You are taken into this world within the contents of the video framing, leaving the viewer almost completely unaware of the stage and audience that is just a few feet away. This video is a totally new concept for how music awards can run. A production is made on stage and it is live. It is high-stakes, but it could be the opportunity to create something really special.