Hollywood
HarperCollins and Focus Features Strike Deal to Turn Books into Movies
October 4, 2007
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by Aaron Hierholzer
Bad news for those of you who lament theater marquees glutted with remakes, sequels, and cinematic versions of preexisting media: On October 19th, the partnership announced nearly two years ago between Random House and Focus Features will come to fruition with the release of Reservation Road. Based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz, Random House is assuredly hoping the film will be an auspicious beginning to a new model that–if successful–guarantees large-scale book sales. Not to be left out, HarperCollins announced a deal of its own this week; the publisher will enter into a similar "strategic partnership" with Sharp Independent, giving the New York studio access to material in HarperCollins' heavyweight-laden roster.
From a marketing standpoint: genius.
A trade paperback edition of Reservation Road will coincide with the film's release date later this month, and a mass market paperback is also newly available. There’s no question that the increased visibility afforded to Schwartz’s work by the big screen will help move books. And for better or worse, the Hollywood touch appeals to many browsers who want Cusack on their High Fidelity, Witherspoon on their Vanity Fair. Although the trade paperback of Reservation Road is mercifully restrained, the mass market paperback’s cover gives the lead actors from the film that big-dramatic-face treatment employed by so many DVD covers.
One of the obstacles to the arrangement is that an experienced literary agent often holds film rights and sells them off separately, which may exclude some of Random House’s backlist, according to Stephen Zeitchik of Variety. There is also the issue of creative control: In the deal struck between Focus and Random House, the two entities would collaborate on the film from start to finish, jointly obtaining rights, overseeing production, selecting the director, and handling marketing and publicity, which may render the movies Random House Films produces an over-cooked broth. And where does the author fit in to all this? "[I]f writers are selling their work to be made into a film, they must be willing to relinquish artistic control of every aspect of their work," said Julian Friedman of Blake Friedman Literary and Script agents in a talk at the London Book Fair last year.
There’s also no way to tell how the agreement will affect acquisition of new titles by Random House—will a new component of manuscript evaluation be megaplex viability? Will the very personal act of writing a novel be compromised by the ultracollaborative movie-making process? Fortunately, Random House exercised good taste in choosing a partner for this venture; Focus Features has an impressive literary track record that includes film versions of The Pianist, The Constant Gardener, and Brokeback Mountain. Here’s hoping for continued output of creative, thoughtful adaptations. If handled well, this situation could provide helpful business symbiosis for both industries as well as quality artistic output.
As Variety's Stephen Zeitchik also points out, books and film have long coexisted within the same conglomerate, but never before have in-house deals of this scope been struck. And if you'll excuse a dated buzzword, the synergy doesn’t end with movies of Random House books; the publisher would also get dibs on novelizations of original screenplays.
Upcoming projects from Random House Films include Dean Koontz's The Husband, Yasmina Khadra's The Attack, and Bob Drogin's Curveball.
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The Unfilmables: Why Some Books Don't Make Good Movies
February 21, 2007
by Jenny Elder
With the impending creation of a film version of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the debate about “unfilmable” books rises again. Unfilmability is the reason a certain number of highly regarded and popular books never make it to the big screen—whether because their content is considered too violent to be filmed (as in the case of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho), or because the literary voice can’t be translated to a visual medium (as with Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle). But some filmmakers see these difficult cases as a challenge to put paper to celluloid.
Even the late great Stanley Kubrick considered a film version of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume (newly released under director Tom Tykwer) an impossible project. And this is the guy who took on Clockwork Orange. Strictly as a film, Perfume has received critical acclaim, but reviewers still complain that the movie falls short of the book in terms of capturing the world of scent: instead of evoking odors through description, it “tried to convey smell through close-up shots of the protagonist's nose—of which there were no less than 27.”
Rand fans are afraid a similar fate will befall their beloved Atlas Shrugged, a thinly veiled manifesto for her political ideology. In fact, despite the increased readership and hefty rights payments to the author a film version can bring, many fans hold that certain books were meant to remain untouched.
Take, for instance, the perennial favorite Catcher in the Rye. Filmmakers have been trying to get their hands on this bestseller for years to no avail. Salinger himself stands in their way, refusing to sell the rights. A Hollywood version of a literary classic often brings along plot changes, simplification, screenwriters’ poetic licenses, and dilution of the stuff that made the work great. It’s like trying to watch Michael Jordan play baseball: it’s just not what he does best.
There is room for hopeful or adventurous directors in the realm of the unfilmable, though. Consider Michael Winterbottom, who directed the film Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, which is a film within a film about a book. The film tracks the efforts of actors and directors to shoot a film called (what else?) Tristram Shandy, a novel long considered unfilmable because of the ridiculous number of tangents the narrator himself takes. However, the film ingeniously captures the sentiments of the novel as scenes are shot, discarded, shot again, and discarded again, as production crews get distracted by their own lives. Eventually the filmmakers decide that the film is too difficult to shoot, and scrap the entire project. Winterbottom understood the inherent problems in developing a difficult book, and chose instead to take a new tack, perfectly capturing the true sentiment of the novel without mucking up the storyline. It’s a creative approach that works for those who’ve read the book, and those who haven’t.
TIP: If you’re an author and you don’t pride yourself on your unfilmability, check out these suggestions by leading screenplay writer Michael Hauge for developing and pitching your story to studio bigwigs.
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