Discussing books on movies … almost as good as watching them, and without the sticky floors!
In my previous three columns, I took a look at the phenomena of adapting movies into novels. Since two weeks have since gone by without any other original ideas on my part, I figured it would be appropriate to look at the other, more conventional form of adaptation: turning books into movies.
It’s a notoriously difficult process, largely because literature and cinema are two completely different mediums (I know, I was shocked, too). Books are told with words, which are crafty little creatures that allow their masters to explore the world with insight and introspection, while movies are told with images that are frequently filled with such pleasing sights as Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd, but that have difficulty going beyond their surface pleasures.
However, despite these inherent differences, a glorious multitude of filmmakers has looked to the world of literature for inspiration. And though one easily can think of many examples where they have succeeded in their translations, it’s much easier to be snarky and sarcastic about those who instead failed miserably.
Oftentimes, these failures are the result of nothing more than artistic incompetence, but in the cases of the adaptations I’ll cover in my next few columns, the movies that resulted were doomed to be disasters before a single frame of film was shot. In each of these instances, a brave – perhaps even arrogant – filmmaker took it upon himself to adapt a work that seemingly defied adaptation and who surprised no one when they eventually fucked the whole thing up.
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS by Kurt Vonnegut
About the Book: Among the folks who are big enough nerds to be capable of actually having an opinion about Mr. Vonnegut’s bibliography, his seventh novel BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS is considered widely to be either his greatest achievement or the book that marked his eventual decline toward works of self-indulgent misanthropy. Personally, I don’t think these two judgments are mutually exclusive and would argue that they are both equally valid.
As a book, BREAKFAST is remarkably cynical and self-indulgent – to the degree that the author makes himself a character in the text and also feels compelled to supply a self-scribbled illustration of his own asshole – but in a way that is so utterly unique and Vonnegut-ian that it is easy to consider it his most singular and iconic work. In a touch that was postmodern before anyone really knew what postmodernism was, Vonnegut inserted such previously established characters as Kilgore Trout and Eliot Rosewater into the book to tell a story that had far more to do with the author coming to grips with his own descent into middle age and the physical disintegration of his father than its nominal plot about the mental breakdown of a car salesman named Dwayne Hoover.
To this day, there are few literary passages that I find as affecting as BREAKFAST’s last few pages, which feature Trout – Vonnegut’s fictional representation of his father – screaming at his creator to use his godlike powers to make him young again, while Vonnegut drives away and ends the book with a tearful self-portrait.
Why the Book Defies Adaptation: The problem anyone would face when adapting BREAKFAST into a screenplay is that, as mentioned, the book isn’t so much about its characters or plot, but rather the man who created them. It’s a literary conceit that is exceedingly difficult – but not impossible – to translate onscreen, but you ignore it at your peril. Without it, you’re stuck with an essentially plotless film devoid of any sympathetic characters, which isn’t exactly a recipe for either box office or artistic success.
About the Movie Adaptation: Speaking of plotless films devoid of any sympathetic characters … in his 1999 adaptation of the book, writer and director Alan Rudolph (ROADIE, CHOOSE ME) managed to perform a kind of anti-miracle in which he succeeded in making the exactly wrong creative choice at vitually every opportunity. Not only did he ignore the book’s thematic subtext in favor of a literal telling of the plot, but he then decided to rewrite key details of the plot to give the work a sentimental ending that is the complete antithesis of the book’s emotionally devastating conclusion.
It’s not uncommon for a filmmaker to lighten up a spiritually heavy work by inventing a more upbeat ending, but when you consider that Rudolph clearly had no desire to make a commercial film, his changes only make you wonder what it was that made him want to adapt the book in the first place.
It must be said that Rudolph did a good job casting the film, and his actors – especially Bruce Willis as Hoover – tried to do their best with the material they were given, but they are stuck inside a film that clearly has no idea what it is about or why it even exists. The result is a cinematic experience that forever will be engaged in a fierce battle to the death cagematch-style with the 1982 Jerry Lewis vehicle SLAPSTICK (OF ANOTHER KIND) for the title of Worst Vonnegut Adaptation of All Time.
We Suggest: That you pick up a copy of BACK TO SCHOOL to witness Vonnegut’s greatest cinematic achievement. Oh, and MOTHER NIGHT was pretty sweet, too.
THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES by Tom Wolfe
About the Book: Having previously earned his reputation as one of the pre-eminent documenters of his generation with such non-fiction classics like THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST and THE RIGHT STUFF – the latter arguably being one of the greatest books of the last half of the 20th century – Tom Wolfe turned his attention to the world of fiction with 1987’s THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. Due to the same sense of detail and dramatic immediacy that made his journalistic works so compelling, the book was a runaway bestseller and the defining portrait of late-’80s urban America. Given its popularity, it was inevitable that Hollywood would take notice and equally inevitable that the resulting movie would be a disaster.
Why the Book Defies Adaptation: Truthfully, it doesn’t. It is entirely possible to make a very good film out of Wolfe’s novel, assuming you are willing to lose a shitload of money in the process. In order to do BONFIRE justice, a studio would have to be willing to spend a fortune on a film whose corrosive cynicism and extremely dim view of humanity effectively would limit its appeal to pretentious losers and other unappealing malcontents. Not surprisingly, the studio that eventually made the film chose to go in a different direction, but still somehow managed to lose a shitload of money anyway.
About the Movie Adaptation: In the parlance of the movie industry, the 1990 film version of BONFIRE is a feathered fish: It neither swims nor flies, and as a result, simply sits there inert and lifeless, despite all of the money spent to get it up there on the screen. While it tells the same story as Wolfe’s novel, it does so without any enthusiasm or commitment, like a lemon tart servicing her wealthy new husband out of obligation rather than desire.
Director Brian DePalma attempts to disguise his obvious disinterest in the plot with his usual array of camera tricks and set pieces, but even they lack conviction when compared to similar sequences in his other films. Perhaps more than any other film from the ’90s, BONFIRE is the classic example of how attempting to broaden a work’s limited appeal so that it can be enjoyed by everyone usually results in a bland construction that ultimately appeals to no one.
We Suggest: That you read this uniformly excellent review of Julie Salamon’s excellent book about the making of an exceeding unexcellent film.
I have to admit that this column turned out to be a lot more serious than I had hoped. It’s actually kind of hard to be glib and sarcastic when you find you have a point to make and actually have a clue as to what you’re talking about. Hopefully, I will be able to rectify this next week when I discuss the book and movie versions of THE JOY OF SEX and EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. –Allan Mott
Buy it at Amazon.
Discuss it in our forums.
