Adaptation has become a taboo word that incites anger in many people, especially book lovers who find their favorite books being adapted to the screen. When we see a book being adapted to the screen, we scoff and insist that the book is always better than the movie. It appears that nowadays we see more and more movies being made which were adapted from a book. Original screenplays seem to be a rarity. While interning at Beaufort Books I even sometimes overhear talks of some books being optioned for a film. There are usually clauses in a contract when signing a book about things like adaptations. It makes me wonder if the film industry is scared of original screenplays. It also makes me think that they are lazy because they will just pick a book and use that story. They like the security of this pre-sold audience.
Then I think of some wildly original films that were adapted from books. Some of these adaptations only use the bare bones of the books story and the screenwriter/director interoperates it in a new creative ways. Like Stephen King’s The Shinning which Stanley Kubrick adapted to the screen in the 1980’s. Or even Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (Apocalypse Now).
I am torn. When I see yet another favorite book of mine be adapted, by people like James Franco who keeps adapting Faulkner for some reason, I get unreasonably angry. Then some of my favorite movies whether I’ve even known it or not have been adaptations from books. Should I hate adaptations or love them? I am an advocate for original screenplays because there are original stories out there worth telling. And at the same time I enjoy when I see a screenwriter/director put their own twist on a story that has already been told in book form. We shouldn’t condemn adaptations. When it comes to adaptations and storytelling in general, we should be a proponent of originality and creativity. I feel those are the two main reasons why people roll their eyes at adaptations because a lot of them don’t have those two important tenets.
-Matt, intern Beaufort Books