Book vs. Film... The Fault in Our Stars

A few months back I did a post that was about the Willem Dafoeing of one of my favorite books of all time, The Fault in Our Stars. Now, this was back in September, well before the movie premiered and the only thing we had were rumors and some filming reports. The good old days. I talked about how desperately I wanted the movie to be good, to recapture the feeling I had when I read the book, but I was still wide-eyed and full of hope, like I am now that Star Wars, Episode VII is going to be excellent despite all evidence to the contrary. 

Well, I’ve actually seen the movie. 

I really wasn’t disappointed. In fact, this was one of the rare movies that made me fall in love with the book all over again. 

Watching a movie or TV show based on a book is always a tricky prospect. Firstly, the book is always better. A book is sort of infinite in a way, without much limiting it beyond the ability to keep the reader interested and material for the book to cover. Some books can do that quickly, like The Ocean at the End of the Lane or Shopgirl which covers a lot of emotion and plot in a relatively short period of time. Some books can keep going, like the Historian, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, or The last Harry Potter book, which I’m relatively sure is actually finishing up sometime in the next two years. 

With a movie, that’s harder. For every Lincoln, which enthralls us every minute it’s on the screen, there’s Sandra Bullock yelling in your ear so much that even George Clooney can’t stand being attached to her for very long. (He got to leave the movie early. The rest of us not so much.) You can’t spend as much time in a character’s head because we need action and plot moving forward and things happening. Except, arguably, for Fight Club. Since most of the inner monologue is the main character going crazy on the outside. Oh, yeah, spoilers for a movie that’s been out for a very long time and you should have seen already if you haven’t. And read. 

There’s also the fact that when you have a book that’s told in the first person perspective, like The Fault in Our Stars, there are two ways of handling it. You can do a voice over, which, if used incorrectly, can weigh down the story, or you ignore it completely and completely change the entire meaning of the movie. (I’m looking at YOU, Hunger Games.)

I’m happy to say that The Fault in Our Stars handles everything extremely well. I mean almost too well. To the point that while the book will always have a special place with me, the movie will have a special place too. 

It’s an odd feeling. I wasn’t planning on loving the movie quite as much as I did. Not that I walked into expecting to hate it. No, I’ll save that for Leprechaun: Origins as part of Bad Shakespeare’s Summer movie coverage. (and the final: Let’s dump a movie on Labor Day movie.)

It was never going to be an easy sell. You sort of had the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Guy) in August Waters, who was there to shake the sad, depressed, waiting-to-die Hazel out of her funk. He was a little more grounded than your typical MPDG(uy), further stealing the term coined by Nathan Rabin a few years ago. (It was to describe Natalie Portman in Garden State. The magical girl sent in to save the depressed guy.) You ale have dying teenagers, which is never an easy sell, because, well, we typically go to movies to get some kind of lift, not watch the chick from Divergent get berated by the Green Goblin just before she goes to make out with a guy in the Anne Frank House. 

I have to say, Willem Dafoe really sells his part, and is pretty spectacular in the way he manages to make an unsympathetic character - a drunk, lonely writer who yells at two dying teenagers and tell them that he refuses to help them even if they are dying - a pretty cool character. He’s never apologetic, but exudes someone who desperately wants to spill everything on his mind but can’t communicate it.

That’s not to say the other actors don’t do well, particularly Shailene Woodley, who, as I mentioned earlier, had to do a lot of the heavy lifting as a result of the fact that Hazel is the main character, and the entire book takes place through her eyes. I just needed to point out Willem Dafoe, because I most interested how they were going to bring his character to life.

When I walk into a movie or a television show that has been adapted from a book, I really try to treat it like it’s separate from the source material. At the end of the day, it is different. Even though it’s based on a book, someone took that source material and had to re-write it into a new medium. And, as a book isn’t a play isn’t a movie isn’t a musical isn’t an interpretive dance… (I could go on but I’m assuming you get the point) it’s a separate thing. That’s why the great Game of Thrones debates of late have been disturbing me… too much gloating over knowing what’s going to happen by some of the readers, up until something unexpected happens that surprises everyone, then complaining that something was changed. A Song of Fire and Ice is like a billion pages long. There will be some differences between the book and the show. But for some readers, it seems it’s almost impossible to just enjoy the TV show, you have to jump into the dense tome to fully gain their trust. 

That’s another post, probably best saved for when I get up to the Red Wedding.

My point is I walked in expecting to enjoy it like any other movie, and treat it like that. I underestimated how much the book meant to me, and I found myself comparing and actually enjoying the movie just as much. I’m glad I was able to experience both. I’m glad the filmmakers didn’t shy away from some of the scenes that I’m sure a lot people would prefer being cut. (I do wish they hadn’t cut my favorite line from the book, though. It summed up everything perfectly… including me.)

Regardless, if you haven’t read the book already then you should. If you have, then go see the movie. If you’ve done both, then I recommend doing both twice. 

Book vs. Film... But What if the Book is Really, Really Special To You?

Recently I heard all about how Spiderman taunter/John Carter alien helper Willem Dafoe had been cast as Peter Van Houten in the film version of The Fault in Our Stars. (Henceforth known as TFiOS, because that’s how the cool kids shorten it, and it’s a long thing to type.) My first reaction was: “Cool, because he’s probably the embodiment of that character in the book.” My second reaction was: “Wait, they’re making a TFiOS movie?” (Also, at that point I called it The Fault in Our Stars because I didn’t know about the cool shortening acronym yet.)

For those of you who don’t know what TFiOS is about, beyond the fact that the title comes from the great line from Julius Caesar, “The Fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, for we are underlings.” TFiOS has nothing to do with that. It has to do with John Green’s 2012 young adult novel that’s probably one of the best pieces of literature that I’ve ever read in my entire life. It’s about a young girl name Hazel who meets a boy named Augustus in a cancer survivor group. (Oh. She has cancer. Was that important? That’s probably important.) They grow closer, eventually traveling to Amsterdam to meet Peter Van Houten, the writer of An Imperial Affliction, the reclusive writer of a book that Hazel is obsessed with. (The reasons are pretty clear in the book.) Not going to go much further, because you should go in knowing just about that before you read the whole book, which again, it one of my favorite books.

Here’s the part where I’m going to get on my soapbox for second: people want this book banned because of the adult themes and a few scattered profanities that teenagers will never hear except for books and movies. I’d take these concerns more seriously if not for the other casting scoop that the members of Augustus and Hazel’s cancer group is being played by real teenage cancer survivors. I’m dropping the mic on this one, finishing the post, and telling everyone they should read this book.

A bit with my history of TFiOS... I was taking a class from an extremely excellent professor who is now my academic advisor so I’m going to keep putting “extremely excellent” in front of references to him for a bit. (Also: He was extremely excellent.) It was a class in how to teach young adult literature, and we were asked to pick our own books for a project, so I picked this one based on the fact that it was the first review that I’d just read on the A.V. Club website that was for a young adult novel that they actually seemed to like (they don’t like a lot of stuff) and that it was new and readily available for me to get. Then I sat down to read it at my school’s library. Somehow, three hours passed by, I was finishing the book and sobbing like Leonardo Dicaprio on Oscar Night. (The ending is sad. I’m not spoiling anything by saying this once you read the words “teenagers” and “cancer.”)

Now, ever since I took a graduate level Shakespeare class, I read slow, because I was taught close reading and making connections that I didn’t make before. Yet when I read this one, I had to... devour it. I had to get the information in my brain as quickly as possible for fear that I’d lose something in the process. So I sat down and read the entire thing in one, glorious three our sitting. I loved it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

The big question that we are going to use to wrap up Casting Call Week here at Bad Shakespeare is the question of whether or not a TFiOS should be made, and what it means to see our art moved to the big screen.

I’ve talked already about how I went to see the wonderfully wonderful Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (twice) this past summer and while it was 3 a.m. I did quite enjoy my first taste of the Life of Pi.  I also saw Beautiful Creatures (which was a little less wonderfully wonderful), and I’m quite looking forward to Ender’s Game, the Book Thief, and Romeo and Juliet. (Which is based on a play.. but meh, this is my blog I get to make the rules. I can even make up my own words. Smooglybard. What are you going to do about it?)

I’m not sure how I feel about a TFiOS movie, because selfishly... it’s my book. Yes, John Green wrote it, and he didn’t write it for me, and the fact it spent so much time on best sellers list meant that other people read it. But I had just a strong emotional connection to the book. I connected to it on so many different levels it’s hard to explain. I grew to really care about those characters during my three hours with them the first time. I’m afraid that seeing a movie, seeing someone else’s interpretation of the material is going to affect me in some way. It’s a strange fear to have, really, but that’s what happens when you fall so perfectly in love with a book. And that’s what I did there.

Something similar, of course happened with one of my first loves, Empire Falls. I remember they made a movie out of it, cast pretty much people I didn’t think would be good for the part (and for the most part they worked out) but it didn’t capture the “gee wilikers” or smooglybardness that caused me to fall in love with the book to begin with. It didn’t affect my feeling for the book, but it made me a little saddened about the movie. Plus, now I can’t read the book without seeing Helen Hunt’s face. (Although they got one piece of casting so brilliantly perfect with Philip Seymour Hoffman.) 

Even with Mortal Instruments, (the movie was better than people are saying. You need to see it so we can get part two made) I didn’t have as much invested with the characters. Oh, I cared (and still do, since I’m not done with the series yet) about the Jace, his (spoiler: not sister) Clary, whiny Vampire Simon, and hot Isabelle... but I wasn’t as invested in the characters as I was with Augustus and Hazel. Mortal Instruments practically screams, “movie time!” which isn’t bad, that’s an asset. It’s a supernatural action movie: Let’s see the action. Let’s see the demons. TFiOS doesn’t have as much of that.

In any event, that’s just a thought of one fan. I’ll go see the movie (tissues in hand, and without my usual movie buddy, as we learned we can’t see sad movies together after the Toy Story 3 Incident) and I’ll probably read the book again before the movie. And hopefully, Willem Dafoe will leave the Green Goblin mask at home. You know, unless he wants to add a little levity to the proceedings. 

      PS - I found out this movie was being made via the casting of Willem Dafoe, so I centered most of my post around that. I should point out that Divergent diverger and ex-Mary Jane Watson Shailene Woodley is Hazel and some guy I've never heard of is Augustus. I think she'll do well, see my previous note about not knowing who that one guy is.

Book vs. Film part 2: Mortal Instruments

Earlier this summer, I discussed book vs. film in a rousing post that dissected all the ways that World War Z the movie intersected with World War Z the book, and came to the conclusion that the movie managed to keep all of the excitement and promise of the title, then stripped away all of the things like the “plot” and “characters” and “point of” . But I argued that they could be enjoyed as separate entities, with the movie being one thing, and the book being something entirely different, both enjoyable. And indeed, I enjoyed them.

Recently, an awesome friend of mine awesomely got me involved in the Young Adult series, Mortal Instruments. I always had a passing interest in reading this book, but I always seemed to get involved with something else at the time. Then my friend said basically, “read it now” so I did. Also the movie was coming out, and I’d never read a book so close to a movie before, and I wanted to experience it. Normally by the time the movie comes out, you forget about the book, or at least those little things, like for instance changing it so instead of being a Romero-style slow moving zombie invasion that is told through multiple perspectives, it becomes a Brad Pitt saving the world summer action movie vehicle. So I read the book. And I loved it.

The plot: a young girl named Clary learns that her mother was a demon hunter, and as a result she’s a demon hunter, so she can see the secret world underneath our world. She teams up with Jace Wayland and Alec and Isabelle Lightwood to find the Mortal Cup and prevent this one really evil dude from finding it first. 

Quick note: there’s a twist at the end of the first book that makes a lot of the promo art for this movie extremely disturbing. Thankfully, just keep reading.

Anyway, so how did Mortal Instruments the movie stack up against Mortal Instruments the book? Very well. They keep all of the major beats from the book, cut some of the fat out (like any good adaptation should) and moves along some of the plot points that are present in later books. (like ruining the icky-twist, and one rather cheesy moment where one of the main characters, Simon, suddenly doesn’t need to use his glasses and has two tiny bite marks after his trip to a Vampire Hotel. Seriously?)

I enjoyed both, but that does complicate things. I already made the argument for both WWZ’s that they should be enjoyed on on their own, but here I am enjoying one movie because the book was explored so well. Am I negating my own argument? Should you just stop reading this blog now and pick it up again when I go back to discussing Breaking Bad?

No. You’re jumping to conclusions. But I’m proud of this week’s Breaking Bad Shakespeare Friday. Shameless Plug!

MI the Book was a great read. It got deeper into the story of Angels, Demon Hunters, Vampires, and one particularly fun moment that would have been cheesy had it been on the screen. I enjoyed the way the movie took these elements and condensed them down into a deeper moment. It did something rare, it managed to condense the book into a two hour form, something that too many writers today didn’t get. Either they change everything completely, or break it up to try to fit in every last plot point (and get your money. You pay for two tickets for this one book adaptation!) 

But again, it’s something that should be enjoyed on it’s own. It’s something that should be explored on it’s own. Overall the book is fantastic, and so is the movie. It’s great seeing these characters in your imagination on the screen, again, condensed down. I loved the way this was done... but again explored on their own as different things. But this movie is shows what an adaptation of a book should be. 

The Book is Better Unless it Stars Brad Pitt

Last Thursday I went to go see Brad Pitt save everyone from zombies with his sheer Brad-Pittness in an adaptation of the classic book World War Z. Now, I was warned walking in that this was not my father’s World War Z. Which was interesting, since the book came out in 2006. So while I credit my dad with introducing me to a ton of books, mostly Stephen King, this wasn’t one of them. I think I introduced him to it. 

Moving on.

In any event, this took the central idea of the book... zombies... and the title... World War Z... then threw out the plot, structure, characters, and zombie type. Instead of slow moving Romero-type zombies, here we got fast moving, Rage-like zombies. For those not familiar with the zombie literature and fiction, there are two types of zombies: those that are undead and move slowly, like in a George Romero film or in The Walking Dead, or fast moving zombies that are people infected with a plague such as in 28 Days Later or some of your more recent adaptations. The debate over which one is “right” has been going on for years and caused fan divides not seen since the early, dark days of Babylon 5 vs. Deep Space Nine, or Star Trek vs. Star Wars back before J.J. Abrahms was able to unite us all in harmony.

I’m a big fan of World War Z, the book, not because it was recommended to me by all my purist, intelligent, Romero-Style Zombie loving friends. The structure was interesting, and rather than focusing on a single outbreak and a single group of survivors holed up in a prison, shopping mall, or whatever, it took the idea that after the war Mel Brooks’ son (No, seriously) would travel around the world chronicling the zombie invasion, and how it ended up changing the world. It was a novel approach, different ideas were introduced, some good (Zombies froze in the winter), some bad (bombs were useless against zombie because I guess the undead have super-brains that can’t be damaged. I guess Max Brooks never took a moment to look up what a Traumatic Brain Injury was.) 

World War Z, the book, would have made a horrible, horrible movie. 

Think of it this way: Take everything you love about your favorite movie. Now take that away, and instead of, say, John McClane pulling a gun off his back, shooting at Hans Gruber then throwing him out the window, you got to hear a historian describe it, and maybe some “home-made” footage or something that was meant to be a reenactment. That’s a lot of what World War Z the book movie would have been, a lot of historians talking about the zombies, maybe a few scenes with zombies, but the people talking to either 1) made it out alive because they were talking to you or 2) weren’t really part of the story until afterwards when they got their Zombie Science Degrees from Brad Pitt University.

Works great as a book, in book form. But as a movie, a lot of people would be sitting there, waiting for the zombies to just attack already, and stop the zany music. Plus the time a book takes to develop into a great story would be cut down to two hours, it would just feel like four because we’d cut to a talking head every time a good zombie attack would start.

The movie itself was pretty decent. While I joke about the plot and stuff, it did manage to keep the “Zombie invasion on a global scale” part pretty accurate, and it wasn’t like Brad Pitt was running around trying to save the day just in his hometown or the hometown he was visiting and reuniting with his long lost love while fighting zombies. (Movie idea: Brad Pitt is stuck in a town and has to reunite with his high school girlfriend while fighting zombies.) He really was travelling the world to see how different people were fighting the upcoming zombie attacks. Also, it didn’t try to be cool like some movies and dance around the fact that these were zombies. The word “Zombie” is spoken about 20 minutes in.

While I’ve spent most of my time on World War Z, this is a larger literary problem: Book vs Film. I’d rank that one up there even greater than the Babylon 5 vs. Deep Space Nine debate. (That debate boils down to this: Sorry us Niners got to watch a show with decent special effects, and don’t have to tell people to power through a crappy first season, Babylon 5 people.) The thing is, books and movies are very different mediums. Yeah, they can share a lot, but the second you take that book out of a readers hands, you start to lose something that can’t be up on the screen. Or if you’ve read the movie first, you start to put something on paper that is directly influenced by the movie.

Let’s take one of my favorite books, Empire Falls by Richard Russo. (I’ve been at this for a year and a half and I haven’t mentioned Empire Falls. That’s not good.) A few years back, HBO made Empire Falls into a movie. I was skeptical but I thought, “hey... I’ll watch it.” Then I remember the first bit of casting news were Ed Harris and Helen Hunt. They were so far beyond the characters in my head that I almost abandoned the prospect. Then they got to another one, Philip Seymour Hoffman for the town’s mysterious rich guy who built a house, fought a dead moose, and had an affair with Ed Harris’ mother. (Spoilers for an old book that was turned into a movie almost 8 years ago.) Then I got to thinking... that was perfect. If I was making a movie of the book, that’s the character I saw in my head! Now, the rest of the movie is debatable, but that one little win allowed me to watch it in an interesting and different fashion. It didn’t take away from the book for me, but this one casting thing caused a connection that allowed me to associate the two, but treat them as different entities. 

Let’s take another famous adaptation: The Hunger Games. A large driving force of Hunger Games: The Novel is the fact that most of it happens with Katiniss’ internal monologue going on in her head. The movie loses all of that. Now, I enjoyed Hunger Games: The movie, for different reasons, mostly the interesting debate of how a novel that is largely a critique on exploiting children by putting them in violent situations is made into a movie that exploits children by putting them into violent situations. But that’s another post. The bottom line is I’m able to separate the two, and enjoy the two for what they are. I think that’s important when reading any book vs. film adaption. 

I could go on. The debate rages on and has raged on probably since the first time an ancient Greek scroll was adapted for the big stage with a chorus. (I believe it was the Adventures of the Man who would Not Die Hard, and featured the classic story of a man stuck on Mt. Olympus during a theft gone wrong.) I’m not going to solve it here. But with The Great Gatsby and World War Z already passed, and the next Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, and Divergent headed to the screen soon, I have a feeling that the debate will continue for quite some time.

It's a Nice Day for a Red Wedding...

               

                          (spoiler alert: don't let the fact that this guy is featured on all the ads fool you.)

 

               Last week, the TV series Game of Thrones, killed off several of it’s regular characters in an extremely bloody wedding reception. This surprised people who didn’t follow the book series it was based on, A Song of Ice and Fire. (Or who quickly forgot the first season, which killed off the guy who was on every single poster promoting the show, thus proving that there may be some death in this epic about wars, dragons, and dwarves with killer wit.) However, what followed was the great reader vs. watcher war of 2013, whereupon readers were happy because they knew it was going to happen, some of the people watching the show were going to swear it off forever because of the shocking deaths (they kill a puppy in the third episode. I'm not so sure "brutal" describes it), and some people tried to lord their knowledge of the books over those that just watched the show.

                Meanwhile, I remembered back to a simpler time when watching TV Shows like this or reading books like this got you wedgied. Being a nerd used to be hard.

                What bothered me was the debate afterward. (You’d think it would be the people dying at a wedding reception. Hmm.) Yes, people are mad when their favorite character is killed off… I may worship Joss Whedon but I’ll never really forgive him for what he did with Tara in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer… but there was almost a condescending air from some of the long-time readers that were waiting for this moment to come.

                Caveat: not EVERYONE. Some of my favorite people are Song of Ice and Fire fans first, Game of Thrones fans second. You are all awesome people, and if I could give you all a hug right now I certainly would. I even plan on reading the books, so this isn’t directed at you awesome people who have helped me get into it. It’s about the really strange reaction long time readers had to those people who were discovering the “Red Wedding” for the first time. It was just hard to watch, to be honest with you. Not the many people dying, the book fans attacking the television only fans.

                Look, it’s a big scene. And it’s surprising. But i wouldn’t have seen it coming. Actually I was kind of glad I didn’t, TV-Wise. And I sort of treat the two like they’re separate entities. The book will always be better than a movie (or epic TV show.)

                A lot of this debate made me think back to The Hunger Games. I had read the books, and I was looking forward to the movie. And as a movie, it’s pretty good. A decent adaptation,  the actors all played their parts well… but it lacked some of the emotional punch. The Hunger Games is very much Katniss’ story. By putting it up on the screen, and taking us out of her head (not sure a voice over would do us any good) an element of the book was forever removed. That, too, caused controversy because of the casting of Rue, then by those that weren’t prepared for her death.

                Maybe all I’m discovering here is just that people like to complain….

                 “The Red Wedding” is a huge game changer in the book and in the TV Show. And it’s a big shock, whether you’re watching the show, or whether you’re reading the books. One isn’t better than the other. No, you shouldn’t swear off the show because it kills off several of it’s characters (Damn you, Joss Whedon) nor were you put into some secret club because you read the book. If anything, the book club should be LESS secret, and you should be getting people to read the books you love more and more. Reading is something that needs to be shared, something that needs to be cultivated and loved. Not something that should be lorded over people who didn’t read the book, and then decided they didn’t like an outcome.

                Of course, I could go on. This is a fascinating area, book vs. film/tv, particularly as some of these adaptations become more popular, and as the readers have to see more of what they love about the books being adapted to a wider audience. it's an interesting balance.  But it's important to remember that you don't need to read a book to enjoy a movie, and vice versa. Also, reading one doesn't suddenly make you a better person. This goes way back to the idea of defining literature by whether or not it's in a an old book, or if it's on a TV Show. One isn't instantly better than the other because it came first.