My very first screenplay was written in 2005. Restorer is a science-fiction action movie that took place in a role-playing universe I'd developed over the previous five years called Restoration. Looking back, there are a number of things I can do to make that script more cinematic and less frenetic. Hardly surprising. I was a pretty frenetic guy.
Even then, I knew to focus on the cinematic opportunities Restoration offers... While I'm not sure if it's to the script's misfortune or ingenuity, Restorer also embraces a handful of Restoration's less cinematic qualities. Botton line: Restorer and Restoration take place in the same world, and that world connects them. Maybe that's a key to the adaptation process.
Yesterday afternoon, I finished my second rough mapmaking foray through the process of adaptation. When I started the process of building support for Sam Bailey, I talked to fellow producer and actor Gerard about how the same kind of awareness-building can work for Heartsgaard. Know what? It can't. Sam Bailey has an easy hook for marketing, because it's lead character is such an odd figure of mystery. Conrad Elisson is practically transparent.
We knew that transparency was our way in - we just didn't know how. Finally, as we were driving around together chatting each other up, it occurred to me that the characters of Heartsgaard would have an easy time living on the stage. If we wrote a stage production and launched it successfully, we could use that show as a launchpad for public awareness. Because the characters were so theatrical, it seemed as if Heartsgaard on stage would mirror the film pretty closely. Our adaptation process seemed pretty straightforward.
Having just finished the first draft of the play, I can tell you the two are almost nothing alike. Turns out, transparency in film and transparency on the stage are two very different things. At first glance, I managed to create a funny, visceral framework to hang the show on. I've also created a very different narrative than the one in the screenplay. Maybe the story on film would work on stage - I'm not sure. What I'm putting on stage could never exist on film. Of that, I am certain.
Recently, I wound up in a conversation with someone involved in Watchmen on the subject of the Squid. For those that haven't seen the movie or read the book, the climax of the comic involves a giant space squid that is, for coherency reasons, absent from the film. In a graphic novel, seeing a giant space squid suddenly enter the story from left field stops you in your tracks. You wind up staring at the splash page, trying to sort out what just happened. It's brilliant. Trouble is, a movie doesn't just stop so you can stare at it dumbfounded. Movies keep going. Hence, no squid.
Omitting the squid generated some controversy in the fan community. My aforementioned Watchmen friend started our little exchange by calling me a squiddite. Having just finished this new piece of work, I'm seeing myself as far from pro-Squid.
In fact, I'm wondering if I've adapted Heartsgaard at all. Yes, I dealt with the same basic story, but it's presented in a totally different context. Yes, Heartsgaard the play exists in the same world as Heartsgaard the film. Really, it brings the audience into that world, instead of just letting them watch it.
To be fair, I need to mention the work of Nina Sallinen. In writing this show, I took a huge amount of inspiration and raided the post-modern toolbox from her brilliant play, Poor, Poor Lear. There's a review in the 8 Sided archives, at http://tenny.8sidedfilms.com/2009/02/23/poor-poor-lear.aspx.
I've found myself in the same conundrum Charlie Kaufman outlined in the screenplay for Adaptation, which is a film I heartily recommend. Looking at the superhero movies that have been coming out, it seems like they haven't been trying to recreate the stories from the comics so much as draw from them, and audiences appear to be satisfied. At the same time, adapting a novel creates the expectation of certain beats, certain story points... I suppose those points are consistent from my movie to my play, but they seem unreconizable to me.
Watchmen could eliminate the Squid, but they had to honor why the Squid was there. I haven't done that here. My squids are there for new reasons. Still, those reasons are consistent with the characters I created in the film. Rather than unmaking each other, the film and the play of Heartsgaard add to one another, and continue each other's stories in kind of a strange thematic ouroboros.
When I think about it, there have been some films that take their source material to thematically new frontiers. Solaris, I hear - although I haven't read the book. The Departed, for sure. At the same time, I don't think I'm creating a play that's better than Heartsgaard the movie. This is just something really, really different.
Because I wrote the movie, and because I'm doing this with the film's producer, I clearly have the authority to make these kinds of creative leaps. If Heartsgaard were someone else's story, would this be a betrayal of the original creator's intent and trust - or a mature approach to giving their story full-blooded life in a new and different medium?
Or maybe both?
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