|
Chapter 2
Prof. Ks Five-Step Adaptation Process
You've come across something that would make a great movie.
Whether it's a series of letters in your attic, an article
in your hometown newspaper, a story in an old book you picked
up at a garage sale or some scrawlings on a used piece of
toilet paper you found in the bathroom, you are convinced
this concept, this story you've discovered will provide
the perfect source material for a Hollywood blockbuster.
You don't need a release or option, since the source material
you've stumbled upon is public domain, or better yet, you've
already gone out and done the work to secure the rights.
(If not, please see Chapter 3 on Legal Issues.)
Either way, you are now ready to go to script, but where
the heck do you begin? How do you transform a three-page
article into a 110-page script? Or if you are adapting a
five-hundred-page classic Russian novel and transporting
it to modern American soil, the question still begs to be
answered, how do I compress 500 pages in to a 120 page screenplay?
Please, tell me, where the heck do I begin? Don't fret,
my friend. If you only remember one thing from reading this
entire study on the art and craft of adaptations, make sure
it is this. You really don't owe anything to the original
source material. Yes, it might have been their story once,
but the point is, it's your story now.
The credits will read, Screenplay by YOU based upon a story
by some lesser dead figure like Shakespeare. The key thing
here is the three letter word, "YOU." No matter
whom the story used to belong to, it's now yours. You will
be judged by how you choose to tell your tale and no matter
how good their original story was, it's your ass on the
line now. You will get credit for making it sing with clarity
and purpose or for bastardizing and soiling it beyond repair.
After watching the wonderful adaptation of the first book
of The Lord of the Rings, I visited the john on the way
out of the theater. Since it was a three-hour long film,
as soon as the movie was over, almost the entire male population
that saw The Lord of the Rings was in the john with me.
And that was when I overheard a young man in the urinal
stall next to me turn to his buddy and say, "Yo,
dude, wasn't that awesome? It was totally like the novel."
I do think The Lord of the Rings was an awesome adaptation;
however, I don't feel that way as a result of it being totally
like the novel. It was awesome because even though it shared
many similarities to the novel, moreso, it seemed to capture
the essence, the spirit, the soul of the novel. That, then,
is what I believe the key to successful adaptations really
is. Not to do a verbatim and faithful transcription, which
is in many ways impossible, anyway, but to capture the truth
of the original work and convey that on screen. In other
words, the key point here to remember is that you are now
free to create a new story inspired by the source material.
Think of yourself as a Supreme Court Justice searching for
the spirit of the law, instead of abiding by the letter
of the law. You can combine characters, eliminate whole
sections, add scenes, change times, dates, places, whatever
needs to be done to make the script work.
That then is Rule Number #1. YOU OWE NOTHING TO THE ORIGINAL
TEXT!
You needed the original text to get started and to inspire
you, but now that you are moving into the world of scripts
and Hollywood storytelling, new rules apply. And the only
real bottom line is this:
Rule Number #2. IF IT MAKES FOR A GOOD STORY, IT STAYS,
IF NOT, IT MUST BE TRASHED!
Yes, I know much there might be a scene, detail or character
that you don't want to part with, but if they aren't completely
necessary to push the story forward, they must go. The only
rules that apply here are the rules of Hollywood storytelling.
And Hollywood storytelling is based upon this simple premise:
AN ENGAGING CHARACTER OVERCOMES TREMENDOUS OBSTACLES TO
REACH A DESIRABLE GOAL!
That is it. Beauty of language, scintillating cerebral
concepts, political or social issues are all well and good,
but nine times out of ten, they are mere window-dressing.
They do not help your writing; in fact, they get in the
way of the story and they should be expunged. All fat must
be sheared away. Screenwriting is a highly disciplined form
of storytelling, one that comes closer to poetry writing
than to many forms of prose.
Screenwriting is, in fact, probably the best discipline
to teach you the rules and structure of storytelling and
thus, inherently valuable to any writer. Whether your script
sells or not, I can guarantee you that you will learn a
tremendous amount about your story in the process of re-structuring
it to fit the screen. Every time I have taken one of my
stage-plays and transformed them into a screenplay, I have
inevitably gone back afterwards and rewritten the stage-play
as a result of seeing the essential story elements that
were missing in the original. These story moments only came
into being and to my attention as a result of the rigorous
re-structuring that I had to engage in to make my story
work as a screenplay.
Take the Nestea plunge of screenwriting. Remember, as a
screenwriter, you are not constrained and limited, you are
free to create and explore. And yes, of course, if you are
doing a historical piece about the assassination of Abe
Lincoln, you can't have Honest Abe live through that fateful
night he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. No matter how liberating
the act of adaptation should be, in the case of historical
and biographical efforts about known people and events,
you do have the onus to maintain a certain degree of accuracy.
Yet, there is even a good deal of leeway here too. For,
no one knows exactly what was said or felt by the major
players during, before and after these grand historical
events. Your job is to understand these situations, based
upon your research and the historical facts that exist and
then fabricate your version. And if you do it well, no one
can prove that the main players in the story didn't utter
those very words and that things, in fact, didn't occur
according to your version.
The main point here is simply this, in the context of an
adaptation, you are free and in fact, you have the burden
to make the story better. It must be clearer, move faster
and be funnier than the source material. It must be more
action-packed, thrilling and sexier than the original. Good
adaptations can never include all elements of the source
material and so, the art of adaptation becomes one of distillation
and I'm not talking sour mash whiskey, here. The gifted
adaptor knows his or her limitations and can find the theme,
the crux, the heart and soul of the piece he or she is confronted
with. That is their task and their burden. The fact is that
even though elements are left out, the audience feels as
if the story itself remains intact and in the best case
scenarios, the story has, in fact, been improved.
|
|
