From the novel to the screen: three directors talk about the perils and pleasures of film adaptation

TAKE ONE, June-Sept, 2003 by Cynthia Amsden

In light of Spike Jonze's Adaptation, it would be absurd to actually quote from Robert McKee's treatise, "Story," on the process of adapting a screenplay from a book. So, let's get the temptation out of the way: "The conceit of adaptation is that the hard work of story can be avoided by optioning a literary work and simply shifting it into a screenplay. This is almost never the case."

Now that the devil McKee has been exorcised, the increasing trend of adapting screenplays from books in Canadian filmmaking follows closely on the heels of that other prevalent trend: blending the job of writer and director, although not necessarily in a cause-and-effect manner. Three filmmakers--first-time feature director, Jacob Tierney; veteran director, but first-time writing an adaptation, Kari Skogland; and the prolific award-winning Sturla Gunnarsson--are much more than a conceit.

Not all adaptations are created equal and the elements involved create unique intellectual challenges. Is the author alive for reference or dead with just his or her reputation looming over the screenwriter's shoulder? Is the intimidation factor higher if the subject of the adaptation material is fact or fiction? One factor does appear to apply in all cases, and that is the sense of responsibility to the original material. This concept--which vacillates back and forth between being an honour and a burden--never goes away for a minute. Once into it, adaptation is a process that forms like a construct in the screenwriter's head--the original picture, the roughed-out paradigm, the transfer, the glitches, the guilt, and the end result.

Jacob Tierney, coming into his directorial debut from a career as an actor, is the writer/director of the recently completed Twist, which he adapted from Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist. It's a stone--cold classic. Dickens is long gone, and the work has been performed in musical form in most high schools across the continent. So where's the edge? Tierney twisted the Twist, updating his pickpockets to male prostitutes, setting the story in this century and arranging for the character of Bill Sykes to keep the boys in line by using sweet Nancy to distribute the heroin to feed their addictions. Minor adjustments.

Tierney worked from a cultural Zeitgeist inspiration of the novel respecting the monumentality of it, but he still felt the freedom to flip the story upside down and make Dodger--in his version, Dodge--the lead. "I did it by using a very basic outline, and by that I mean the musical," explains Tierney. "Structurally it was much more concise, more to the point. What I wanted to do was take the things that everyone remembers about Oliver Twist because it's so entrenched in our common memory." Tierney treated this "common memory" like a pop-culture mythology and reformatted it to "a real, very dirty, very messy view of life. I went back to the text every once in a while, largely taking characters out of original context and thinking about the way they weren't talked about, what wasn't discussed in the book. I changed protagonists, and instead of telling it from Oliver's point of view, I tell it from Dodger's."

Admittedly, Tierney took Dickens where he might have gone had he lived in 2003. But Oliver Twist was written in 1837 and could only go as far as it did in dealing with the life of the lower classes, which was still outrageous and confrontational enough for its time. "I didn't stick very strictly to the text and the dialogue. It ain't Dickens. No 'Please Sir, may I have some more.' I wouldn't use that line in this version unless we were doing a very black comedy."

Director Kari Skogland has just completed writing her new screenplay for Alliance Adantis, which is an adaptation of Margaret Laurence's Canadian classic The Stone Angel. This adaptation will be a first for Skogland, who recently directed Liberty Stands Still, starring Wesley Snipes, Linda Fiorentino and Oliver Platt, based on her own screenplay. The Stone Angel has been Skogland's long-time passion, which is the gracious way of saying she has been carrying the book with her since the age of 12. "Reading this was the first time I awakened to the idea of aging and what it meant. The idea that a life had been led and a brain had been cooking inside a person was a very defining experience for me."

The adaptation process took Skogland six months to complete. The Stone Angel is a compelling journey seen through the eyes of a woman nearing the end of her life. At 90, Hagar Shipley speaks of the perils of growing old and reflects with bitterness, humour and a painful awareness of her frailties on the life she has led. For Skogland, the challenge was two part. First, to take what is effectively a voice--over narrative and make it visually arresting for a film, and secondly to deal with a story written in the 1960s, which has flashbacks, and make it vital enough for an audience in 2003.

"The toughest thing is serving the author," she says, "as well as what you believe to be the intent of the book, and serving drama. This story is a dialogue in Hagar's head. I found my stride quickly because I tend to prefer characters to 'do' rather than 'say.' Via the characters and their interaction, we get what was going on in her head. The time element was something else. It's essential to keep the time shifts, because this is a woman coming to grips with her mortality. It's also a book that has been studied and interpreted by everybody. I have always wanted to adapt this book and funnily enough, I was not intimidated until Alliance said 'yes.' I'm taking on a literary genius, and she's not around to pick her brain."