Adapting Your Book Into A Movie Script
Adapting Your Book Into A Movie Script
Are you interested in adapting a book into a movie script?
In over 40 years as a film producer, director, and studio executive, I produced the Academy Award® winning What Dreams May Come (starring Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Somewhere in Time (Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour), both of which were adapted from novels.
Writing a book and writing a movie script have completely different and often conflicting content and form requirements.
For instance, a book can include pages and pages about what a character is thinking or feeling. In a movie, however, all that information needs to come out visually or in dialogue. In a film, it’s “show me”, not “tell me.”
Using Somewhere in Time as an example, let’s look at a few of the unique challenges we faced in adapting that novel into a film, starting with the title itself.
The novel was called “Bid Time Return”. We all felt that we needed a more romantic and evocative title and also one that could not be misconstrued as “Bedtime Return”.
One day in 1978, I was listening to the radio and heard the Barry Manilow song “Somewhere in the Night” and all of a sudden “Somewhere in Time” came into my head and heart. When I shared it with everyone involved, we knew we had our title.
In the novel, the Richard Collier character that Christopher Reeve plays has a terminal brain tumor and eventually succumbs to it. For all kinds of reasons, we did not want our main character to have a terminal illness from the beginning of the film, and we definitely didn’t want the handsome, healthy-looking guy that just played Superman to look or feel ill until his shocking moment of separation from Elise (Jane Seymour) that occurs very near the end of the film.
As we saw the film as a deeply emotional and romantic love story that truly could happen, we decided to take the risk of having Chris’ character eventually succumb to a broken heart, not a brain tumor. Although we knew that some would scoff that at that concept, we also knew that we were making a film for hopeful romantics, not cynics.
The novel is narrated by the brother of the main character but narrations get wearisome in a film and the brother’s narration also leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the experience itself ever happened or if it was just Richard’s illness that caused him to believe he had actually met Elise.
While that possibility worked for the novel, we wanted to make it very clear to our film audience that the entire experience happened exactly the way it is depicted on screen.
Why?
There’s a metaphoric expression in the film industry that goes “it’s hard to make someone laugh, so never tell a joke unless you personally laughed when you heard it.”
Put another way: if you don’t believe it yourself, don’t do it.
Those of us who made Somewhere in Time believe deeply in its romantic tale of eternal love so we were not going to hide that belief by hedging our bets, so to speak. We believed that the whole adventure of the film is indeed possible so we were not going to be timid in the way we told the story.
As another example of the challenges of adapting a book into a film, the novel was set at the Hotel del Coronado in the San Diego area but that beautiful resort’s surroundings were way too modern for us to be able to juxtapose them with the 1912 scenes in which so much of the film takes place.
We then did a nationwide search for some place to shoot the film and discovered the incredible Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. Motorized vehicles are prohibited on Mackinac Island, so the town and the island’s incredible beauty are timeless. For example, no cars meant no parking meters for the 1912 scenes and walking inside and outside the hotel (which was built in the 1880s) in period clothing looks completely natural and appropriate.
Looking back now, the film could not have hit anywhere near the same emotional chord it did with audiences if we had set it in any other location.
If you are interested in having a discussion about adapting a book into a film, please read the details of my mentoring program that is offered exclusively through the Brookstone Creative Group at http://www.brookstonecreativegroup.com/film-mentoring-program/
I look forward to hearing from you!
