The Art of Adaptation Page 8

  CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE

  “Why do it?” is the most important question a producer can ask before attempting a remake. A remake needs to have contemporary significance. There needs to be some new resonance, some new meaning that the film brings to contemporary audiences. If we just wanted to see the same old story, we could rent the original. A lack of contemporary relevance has been the downfall of many remakes. King Kong, Always, and Stella all failed partly because of their inability to contemporarize the originals.

  The original of Stella Dallas resonated within the context of the 1930’s. In this story, we see a lower-class woman married to a rich man, but unable to adjust her common behavior to the refinement of the upper class. Finally she leaves him. Later she arranges for her much loved daughter to live with the father, outwardly rejecting the daughter in order to give her more opportunities.

  In the period of the 1930’s the movie worked. At that time divorce was a stigma, and class was an issue. In a limited social context, the sacrifice of the mother was understandable. It made sense.

  In a more contemporary social setting, however, the upper-class characters who can’t accept the common and flamboyant Stella seem snobbish and shallow. The daughter’s wishes are not taken into consideration. At the end of the film, the mother’s sacrifice seems unnecessary, unwise. Both the mother and the child lose, and seemingly for no good reason.

  At the height of the women’s movement, an updated King Kong cast Jessica Lange as a breathless, blond bimbo starlet. Cousins was made at a time when traditional values were coming back to the forefront; it’s about two cousins, both married, who become platonically and then sexually involved and leave their spouses. Today when there’s little reason for men and women to stay in bad marriages, Cousins showed two people in repressive situations who would rather cheat on their spouses than resolve their problems—even if through divorce.

  The 1978 film Heaven Can Wait did, on the other hand, successfully update the 1941 Here Comes Mr. Jordan by drawing on a number of popular contemporary social issues and movements: the antinuclear and environmental movements, the physical fitness craze, and the human-potential movement. The film introduced a problem with a polluting factory, it showed its main character working hard at getting his body in shape for the Superbowl, and there were strong themes of identity (who am I?), of social values (what are important contributions to society?) and enduring love.

  CONTEXT

  A successful remake updates the context. This is not as much of a problem with a period piece; many films set in the historical past such as Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, and some of the Frankenstein films, have worked well. But when a film is contemporarized, the context of the story changes. Sometimes it just doesn’t work, no matter who does the remake.

  The story of A Man Called Joe took place among the risky and dangerous atmosphere of World War II. In this story Pete (Spencer Tracy) is killed in a bombing raid but is told he needs to return to earth as the guardian angel for a new pilot, Ted. Much to Pete’s chagrin, Ted becomes the love interest of his own girlfriend. Pete struggles with jealousy, and finally learns to let her go so she can get over her grief and get on with her life.

  In the 1989 film Always, the context is the world of firefighting pilots in the western United States instead of the war. There are still dangers. The men still fly airplanes. Their work still demands courage. But many of the risks that seemed courageous and necessary in A Man Called Joe (flying too low in order to make a successful bomb run, for instance), seem foolhardy in Always (running out of fuel on a firefighting job or taking needless risks in what sometimes seems like false heroics). In the original, the risky secret reconnaissance missions that demanded the skill of the few crack pilots worked well. In the remake, a similar situation in a different context looks like bad management. The fires rage, but only one pilot is prepared to do his job.

  In many foreign films, the context is not clear. Some begin in the middle of a story. Cousin, Cousine begins with a wedding. We don’t know whose wedding. We don’t know the names or relationships of most of the people. For some time we don’t know who the main characters are. Cousins tried to solve some of these problems by clearly introducing the main characters at the beginning and giving us more information about the wedding. But it still didn’t clearly define its context. We didn’t know for some time that Maria was married to Tom, a womanizer, or that Larry was unhappy in his marriage to Tish. Without this information, the problem, the context, and the situation were not understandable.

  THE STORY LINE

  Like most adaptations, the most workable film remakes have strong story lines rather than an episodic structure. This partially explains the success of Three Men and a Baby (from Three Men and a Cradle) and the failure of Cousins or The Man Who Loved Women, or even Stella. Two thousand years ago Aristotle wrote, “Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot episodic in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence.” A strong story line raises the level of audience involvement. But many foreign films are character- or theme-driven rather than plot-driven. Remakes based on an episodic film have rarely done well with American audiences.

  Occasionally a remake has all the elements that should make it workable. In the case of the remake of Narrow Margin, good story decisions were carried through for two-thirds of the script, and then the story structure dissipated. It ultimately became an unsatisfying film. I had looked forward to this remake, since I particularly enjoy a good suspense thriller, and I’m a fan of both Gene Hackman and Anne Archer. I figured I couldn’t go wrong.

  The story has all the potential of a good film. The brief summary in Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies and Video Guide of the 1952 film describes it as “a hard-boiled cop, transporting a gangster’s widow against his will to the trial in which she’ll testify, must dodge hit-men aboard their train who are trying to silence her.” He goes on to describe the 1952 film as “fast-paced, well-acted, impressively shot in a claustrophobic setting.”

  On the particular day I saw the film, the theatre was filled. The audience’s enjoyment was palpable for much of the film. The creative changes from the original to the remake seemed workable. The woman (Anne Archer) is no longer a gangster’s widow, but a woman who has been on a blind date with a man who got killed. She witnessed the murder. Believing that no one knows she was in the room (including the murderers), she leaves town for her brother’s cabin in northern Canada. The D.A. (Gene Hackman) discovers she was in the room, tracks her down, and then the chase starts, the two escaping on a train with the hit-men on their heels. The remake has a tight and interesting setup and potentially interesting development between these two people. There are delightful scenes on the train between the D.A. and a small boy who keeps thinking he is a train robber. For two-thirds of the film the audience was having a wonderful time. But by the end of the film, the audience gave a collective sigh of disappointment. The film had degenerated into cliché “chase on top of the train” scenes. The action became incredible as the D.A.(a man whose job is mainly a thinking, legal job) managed to kill off all the hit-men. Here was a film that should have worked. But it lost its structure and its story in the last third of the film—and never lived up to its implicit dramatic potential.

  THE VALUE SYSTEM

  Especially in adaptations of foreign films there needs to be some recognition that different cultures have different value systems. In spite of our sophistication, there is still a puritanical streak in the American consciousness. We tend to be more conservative, more repressive, and even today tend to be particularly uncomfortable with sexuality outside the monogamous, heterosexual norm. Whereas foreign films might deal with adultery or homosexuality without making any value judgments, these are not acceptable life-styles to many Americans.

  When Americans focus on a triangle, the mistress (or the man) usually must pay a price or a lesson must be learned (as in Fatal Attraction). In American films, f
amily values and monogamy usually emerge as the prevalent values. This is not necessarily true in other cultures. Many remakes, particularly of French films, put an emphasis on adulterous relationships and womanizing. Films such as Cousins, The Man Who Loved Women, and Reflections of a Murder treat mistresses and/or multiple sexual relationships almost as a natural part of one’s family.

  If the values don’t translate from one culture to another, Americans will have trouble identifying with the life-styles or morality of a film.

  BE CREATIVE

  As in any type of adaptation, staying too close to the original film’s story may actually work against the spirit of the story. While researching this chapter I watched innumerable remakes and was surprised at how closely they followed the original in the structure, the story line, and even very small character details. For instance, in Always, Pete (Richard Dreyfuss) pulled at his eyebrows in the same way Spencer Tracy did in the earlier version. In King Kong, the natives of the island wore the same costumes and took part in the same kind of ritual as in the earlier version, in spite of the considerable amount of additional knowledge we now have of primitive cultures.

  The best remakes were those where the writer was not afraid to change the original. Many of the remakes strengthened the story line. Even in some of the unsuccessful remakes, the film worked best when story lines and character subplots were strengthened. In Cousins, subplots were strengthened. In Always, the updated Ted was a more developed character than the original Ted. There were a number of charming details added to the characters of Pete and Dorinda that made them at least as likable as the originals.

  In other remakes, such as King Kong, certain stylistic choices were interesting and potentially workable. Not until about halfway through the film did I realize that it was supposed to be funny. The ad on the back of the videotape confirmed that the film was meant to be camp. This might have worked if it had been properly set up and carried through. But the director and the actors didn’t seem to understand the style. Aside from Jessica Lange, who was consistently playing her character as camp, most of the actors were very serious. Jeff Bridges played a straightforward hero. Charles Grodin played an obsessive scientist without a trace of humor. The opening scenes were played as a dark action-adventure. Without a clear camp style, much of the beginning of the film seemed merely stupid, silly, incredible. Yet as the movie proceeded, some of the lines were amusing. Dwan (Jessica Lange) calls King Kong a “chauvinist pig ape.” Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) says, “Who the hell do you think went through there—some guy in an ape suit?”

  Even if the style had worked, the film would still have lacked contemporary relevance. But imagine a production of King Kong now—with our current concerns about ecology and the extinction of rare species. If the camp style were used, imagine Madonna as the starlet who “won’t take nothing from nobody,” probably not even from a gorilla.

  Adapting film into film takes as much thought as any other adaptation. If you are going to adapt a film you need to confront the same problems. Analyzing, evaluating, and solving those problems are the subjects of Part Two of this book.

  CASE STUDY:

  Fatal Attraction

  The biggest box office hits that have been film remakes have been Heaven Can Wait, Three Men and a Baby, and Fatal Attraction, adapted by James Deardon. Since I believe student films may be an important future source of remakes, I called James Deardon in London, and we talked about the process of adapting his short film into the feature film Fatal Attraction.

  “Fatal Attraction began in 1979 as a forty-five-minute film called Diversions. I produced, directed, and wrote it for GTO films as a short second feature, which was shown with the main feature. England was doing these kinds of films at this time as a way of encouraging young filmmakers. I made it on thirty-five millimeter, with a budget of fifty thousand dollars. Before this, I had made two previous short films—one was eight minutes long, the other was twenty minutes long.

  “Sherry Lansing and Henry Jaffe had seen the film, and talked about doing a feature film with me. We threw a few ideas around, but we kept returning to this film, feeling that there was a feature-length film here.

  “The short film covers the first weekend, and ends on the Monday after their affair. He stays the night, goes home, tries to cover his tracks, his wife returns from the country, and then the phone starts ringing. Just when you thought it was a great weekend, it becomes a nightmare. The short film was virtually the first act of the longer film. We compressed it to thirty minutes, since a forty-five-minute first act would be too long for a feature film. We had to add the party at the beginning, since in the short film they had already known each other.

  “The basic mechanism of the plot was there in the short film. She keeps coming back and doesn’t let him go. That was the motor of the short film and that became the motor of the feature.

  “I had actually conceived the story as a long film. At the back of my mind, I had a number of ideas for extending it. I thought they might have met again at the beginning of the second act, perhaps five years later. He’s divorced, whereas she’s survived. Maybe she would have been much more in control.

  “I could have taken the premise of a triangle and stretched it over ninety or one hundred minutes. I might have left out the cutting of her wrist at the end of the first act, and I could have played out the relationship over a much longer amount of time, focusing on an affair which could have culminated in all the kinds of pressures she would have brought to bear over a longer period of time.

  “But since all this happened in the short film, and it worked, we made the short film the basic building block of the feature. Instead of stretching the short film, we said, ‘Let’s take this short film and make it into the first act.’ That’s why the film had a lot of energy. The irony is, we took the forty-five-minute film, added scenes, then condensed it into thirty minutes, so it became very dense. The film tended to grab you by the lapels in the first ten minutes and not let you go. The more traditional approach is to extend the story rather than condense it.

  “We kept the story going by escalating her responses. It got outrageous, but I think it sort of holds together. It was an organic process to keep pushing the story—the kidnapping of Ellen, the killing of the rabbit.

  “In the draft of the feature film, Dan actually goes to Alex’s house to kill her. He makes elaborate preparations so they won’t suspect him, but when he gets there, he can’t bring himself to do it. He leaves, she commits suicide [which brings out the Madame Butterfly motif] and he gets blamed for it. It was a more subtle ending. After the film was tested with audiences, the ending got changed to the more fast-paced, commercial ending.

  “In the short film, Dan was more the instigator. He had a little black book where he kept the names of other women, even though he was married. For the movie, he becomes a sympathetic character who is more revved up by her lunacy. He’s less predatory, more vulnerable in the longer film. For a commercial film, you have to like your leading character and it has to have a happy ending. We had to make it more accessible to a wider public.”

  PART TWO

  CREATING THE SECOND ORIGINAL

  5

  FINDING THE STORY

  Film and television are story mediums. Adapting is a process of identifying and focusing the story line within the novel, play, or true-life story. But this is no easy matter, since the story line is often hidden among character details, thematic statements, information and descriptions.

  What is a good dramatic story? What elements are necessary to create a workable screenplay? What are you looking for when you’re trying to extract a dramatic story line from all the other elements?

  A good film story has direction. It moves toward a climax, with most scenes advancing the action. This movement keeps the audience involved as it anticipates what will happen next.

  A good film story also has dimensionality. While the story is moving you, it is also revealing characters and developing the
mes. In my classes I draw the relationship between direction and dimensionality like this:

  Sometimes these two elements are out of balance. Many foreign films concentrate on dimensionality but lack direction. Although they are often critically acclaimed for their insights, rarely are they commercially successful on the international market.

  American films, however, often lack dimensionality. They become overloaded with action that overpowers their theme. Even action films need some dimensionality to work. They still need to be about something. They still need original characters to captivate and appeal to us.

  A good story balances these two elements. In this chapter we’ll look at only the action elements. The following three chapters will focus on bringing dimensionality to the action.

  THE ELEMENTS OF A GOOD STORY

  A story is a series of events or incidents that have a beginning, middle, and end. Aristotle said that a story is “one action.” This means the events are related to each other. The writer selects and arranges a series of these incidents so they build with increasing intensity or suspense toward an exciting or dramatic resolution. By the end of the story, the events need to “add up,” “make sense,” and give the audience a feeling that it has arrived somewhere and completed the story’s journey.

  When adapting, the writer looks for the beginnings, middles, and ends within the original source material, and selects the events that create a strong, dramatic story line. Some story lines, however, are more workable than others. Therefore, the adaptor’s work is fourfold: to identify, to evaluate, and, if necessary, to add to or to create story lines.