Raindrops on Roses (Part Ten) -- Adaptation.

(trailer)

One of the biggest criticisms I’ve seen of Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is how much disconnect there is between Watchmen’s meditative breakdown of each character’s philosophies and longing for a past that was just as broken as their present against Snyder’s melodramatic, hyperviolent style of filmmaking. Here’s a quote from one review I found:

“As a comic book, Watchmen is an extraordinary thing. As a movie, it's just another movie, awash with sound and fury.”
-Nick Dent, writing for Time Out Sydney

I mention this not because I’m going to toss my own opinion in on either the comic or the movie, but to talk about the difficulty of even trying to change a story’s medium. For example, what happens when you’re a screenwriter, fresh off the success of a surreal script about being inside John Malkovich’s head, and your next project is a script based off of a New Yorker writer’s encounters with an eccentric botanist with a flair for loophole exploitation? Seems simple enough. But Charlie Kaufman’s a writer with principles! He doesn’t want any of those Hollywood cliches infecting his art, he wants to write about the universe and everything in it, condensing it all into a story about flowers.

More specifically, he wants to write about orchids. The book is called The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, after all. But as Charlie experiences bout after bout of writer’s block, he discovers that The Orchid Thief is less of a story about orchids and more of a peek into someone’s life, somebody who has a clear passion that the author lacks. And the most important thing about these sorts of peeks is that they don’t follow a clear structure. They just end when the book does.

Let’s take all of this and wrap it into a single question: Books and films are wholly different mediums, so when presented with the impossible challenge of translating the two, like, how do you even do that?

There are people who say that you don’t. That you shouldn’t. That there are very thick walls between books, films, games, comics, etcetera that should never be broken, and they get upset when someone dares try. The Shining (film), for example turned Jack Torrance from a recovering alcoholic trying to make right with his family to, well, Jack Nicholson in every role he’s ever played (dude has serious eyebrows is all I’m saying). Even Stephen King at one point disowned the film (“It’s the only adaptation of one of my novels I remember hating”).

On the other hand, adaptation is practically its own industry. Once a thing is made, culture twists around it (see “No Accounting for Taste”), tacking on its own details and insights, replacing or editing out details to better suit its audience’s tastes (removing Tom Bombadil from the Lord of the Rings movies, for example). Even from pre-written word times, people have wanted to retell stories.

Charlie Kaufman’s solution for adapting the meditative Orchid Thief was to insert himself into the book’s narrative. By creating a fictional world only slightly unlike our own (one big difference is that Charlie has a twin brother in this universe), he gives himself ownership. Diversions from the narrative the book presents are allowed because he, as the sole author of this universe, permits it.

But remember, back in real life he’s still adapting someone else’s work. So these additions still deal with the same themes the book presents, that being the difference between a passion and an obsession. So let’s break it down:

• (The fictional) Charlie Kaufman is trying to get his own insecurities and his grand ambitions to meet halfway, trying to be true to himself but also continue to find work. For example, he believes himself superior to standard storytelling techniques, but still attends a Robert Mckee seminar about those techniques, and when he’s criticised for making a mess of his script, he immediately sets about trying to make things right.
• Donald Kaufman’s introduction is him finding a new money making venture (“This isn’t another one of my get-rich-quick schemes.”) in screenwriting, where he creates a film seemingly counter to every screenwriting value Charlie holds, but throughout the film he’s constantly seeking his brother’s approval. Notice that Charlie is the only person Donald returns to with his screenplay. Some might say that’s because they live together, but I say they live together so that (real-life) Charlie could have Donald constantly return to his brother.
• And (the fictional) Susan Orlean finds herself regretting her own life where she has everything she could ever want, so when she meets (the fictional) John Laroche, who himself has gone through so many obsessions, finally landing on botany and closing legal loopholes associated with them, Susan jumps at the chance.

Adaptation. is one part a retelling of the events surrounding Fakahatchee State Preserve in 1994, one part an observation of the facades we put up to hide from our own insecurities, and one part answer to the impossible differences between mediums.

What it’s not is a story about flowers.

-F

Next time: Zombies! Parenthood! Button-Mashing!