A long time ago,
in a galaxy far, far away… A young student at the University of Lund, Sweden,
was browsing for course literature - history of ideas, if you must know - when
he kind of maybe perhaps possibly just by chance stumbled into the film section
of the academic bookstore.
The book that
caught his eye was a paperback by a chap called Syd Field and the title was
“Screenplay”. In my defence, I did buy the study literature as well, but to be
honest I didn’t really read it. What I read was Field’s how-to-write a
screenplay guide, laid out in easy beats. I was hooked. It didn’t take long
before Field’s “The screenwriter’s workbook” and “Selling a screenplay: The
Screenwriter’s guide to Hollywood” (seductive title, that) and Linda Seger’s
“The Art of Adaptation” began easing out the works of Heidegger, Spinoza and
Arndt on my bookshelf. Academic studies went to shit, nights were spent reading
about how to tell a story for the screen.
Film had always
been there via my father who was a professor in sciences but a true romantic
and arts lover, who took us kids to exhibitions of Monet (okay shit), Operas
(Carmen being my fav) and Kurosawa films (yay!). It was The Seven Samurai that
had me at hello - where I lost it at the movies, as it were. I saw it in a dingy
“arthouse” (read: shithouse) cinema in Copenhagen in or about circa 1982. It
was - of course - all in Japanese, and the subtitles in Danish; a language I
did not well master in those days. But looking back now, I realize I got the
whole damn story blow by blow. Because it’s so extremely well-acted and told
dramatically in a visual way that you cannot but get the gist of the story.
Inspired by
Seger’s book about adaptation, I set to work adapting my favourite novel of the
time (and to this day, on my top five list) Martin Amis’ “Money - a suicide
note”. I had already read it twice in Swedish, and then thrice in English. Now
I set about the task of notating - with three different coloured marker pens -
the pieces that I wanted to visually tell in a screenplay: the descriptive
parts, the dialogue parts and the - I-don’t-know-what-parts. This was 25 years
ago. I just remember marking up the novel with three different coloured
markers. It’s still standing here beside me on the bookshelf. I’ve read it at least
three times since.
Short of the
long: I ended up with a big fat pile of pages; I believe something like 350
pages thick, with what amounted to a chronological telling of events and
dialogue lifted pretty much verbatim from the novel (choice cuts, naturally)
and then adding a few words here and there at the beginning and the end. I was
way too much in awe of Mr. Amis’ text at the time (still am) to dare really
work it, knead it, challenge it.
However, I was
on my path to becoming a screenwriter - or so I thought. In the end, all those
readings and re-readings and late nights hacking away at a prehistoric laptop
where I had to do all the darn formatting myself (as opposed to today when
MovieMagicScreenwriter formats it as I go along) kind of maybe pretty much paid
off.
When applying
for the Danish Film School, I used the script (amongst other texts) to fake
myself into their prestigious screenwriting programme, then headed by the
inestimable Mogens Rukov of later fame.
So adaptation is
where I began, but that’s not the topic of this particular sermon. I’d like to
try and share with you some of my experiences of screenwriting, which is a very
collaborative process, and in the end, the true art of adapting.
See, all stories
start in some odd place of your brain. A fragment, an image, a smell;
whatchamacallit - something, somewhere tickles your story-telling nerve and
sets in process a story told by you and no one else could tell that particular
story. That’s the beauty of it: if you latch on to a story of your own design,
it’s yours and yours alone.
Until the moment
you share it with someone else. From that moment on, you go down a beautiful,
lovely, inspiring and horrendous nightmarish path to hell. Because from then
on, your story is not your own - you share it, with producers, directors, money
men, TV-station bosses, wives, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, town car drivers
and their brood.
As the
“originator” (as Richard Price once beautifully termed it) you are, to some
extent the king of control, the master of your domain. That is until you show
your text to someone else in the TV/film business.
Now, there are,
to my mind, two things about this: one good, one bad. One inspiring, one tough.
The first one (let’s start with the good news) is that someone, some place out
there, likes your text. Yay! The second one is, this person (company, agent,
person of interest, devil spawn, gremlin)
will after that first back-slapping session of camaraderie, closeness,
friendship and brotherhood - say something along the lines of: HOWEVER.
When the
sentence begins with HOWEVER, or BUT, or something similar - you know this is
when the dance begins in earnest. This is merde creek sans les paddles.
This is where
the art of adaptation begins. Not adaptation from one media to the other - but
the art of adapting to other people. You have proven yourself a pages person, now you have to jump in
and become a people person.
There really
aren’t many how-to books about this part of the process. (If there were, they’d
be called something like “Run to the hills” if that title wasn’t already taken
by Iron Maiden.) Because now, after having dreamt your beautiful little dream
and typed it out, printed it and shared it with the world at large - now comes
an army of very well informed, very wise, very full of talk and very powerful
people that want to tell you just exactly is WRONG with your text. To name but
a few, there’ll be the director and his agent, the directors’ girlfriend or
boyfriend (most often both), your agent, the producer, his pooch and the team
of story editors he’s brought along, the DP and his little kingdom of serfs.
You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the town car driver starts commenting on
the latest draft.
When you step
out of same said car, take the elevator up to hell and enter an “informal
meeting” you realize - much to your disbelief - that there are product
placement people, franchise agents, TV-station underbosses, wives, girlfriends,
boyfriends, story editors, storyliners, in-house scriptwriters and men in dark
shades and black suits standing against the wall with their hands clasped in
front of them and you really don’t want to know who they are. Seriously.
This is when you
know you’re about to be right royally done over. Because these people, or the
people they are associated with (don’t ask) have bought your text. So now
you’re just a little pilot fish hanging on the great white that was formerly
known as your screenplay. And you’re not going to be able to hang on for long.
This bastard -
this thing of your creation - has suddenly attained a life of its own. It’s
ALIVE! And it’s out to kill you.
*
Yeah okay so I
got a bit carried away there. I’ve experienced the above, but I’ve also
experienced great rides of inspiring collaboration and fun adapting. Some of
them have developed into life-long friendships.
It’s a struggle bringing stories to the screen, but you have to trust
your collaborators, their enthusiasm, their drive and their passion. I once
wrote down three basic collaborative rules (and strange enough - they have now
become framed at Norwegian state TV).
They are, as
follows:
1. Every morning, come with a story to the
table. It doesn’t have to be funny, or good, or dramatic or whatever. Just
come with a story. A little anecdote; an observation. Story-telling is a muscle
that needs exercise. Train that muscle. Come with a positive to the table every
day.
2. Never say no. This is harder than it
sounds. It means: if you’re listening to someone else saying something really
off or silly or down right stupid: your gut reaction will be to say: No. Stop
it. That’s just not funny, smart, sad, good, (take your pick). BUT - here comes
the but - but instead say, ‘Hrm. Interesting. But what if…” The what if is key here. Because what you’re
doing is not putting up a big red light of non-communication: you’re actually
keeping the ball in play. “Hrm, cool. But what if…” and you keep the
conversation, the process of developing, in motion.
3. Never shut your mouth. This is an old
one, but it can’t be stressed enough. Think out loud. Embarrass yourself,
embarrass people around you, quack away. For short: don’t be afraid. It’s all
about keeping the creative juices flowing, of laughing, of crying, of telling
and thinking of what matters the most to you in your life - the most painful
and the most humorous, preferably mixed up in one great joke (see nr 1).
So, yeah. The
art of adapting is not really taught at film schools or in books. You have to
jump in there and swim. Some people are better at this than others. I think, in
the end, we all take a toll. Because you go in there and smile and you’re wide
open and you want to be liked, you want your text to swim, to get along with the
others - and you go home drained and tired and there’s Jack on the kitchen sink
and such.
You come home
and you have a buzz because people like your text and they want to pay you
money for it, but then you’re alone and spent and there’s a notebook full of
panicky scribbles written whilst keeping a calm face on the 32nd floor with
those goombas lined up along the wall (jeepers creepers who are these guys!?) and there’s pills and
there’s Jack and good night and good luck.
The art of
adapting is a great challenge, if you have the mettle. I dream of a world where
I am a novelist and only have to interact with a sexy agent or a lovely editor
about two times a year over lunch. This, however, is just a fantasy. I actually
love the grind: the immense seclusion and insane interaction of screenwriting.
Beats working.
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