The Chasm
The euphoria attended to having your book made into a film starts with an option. Film maker’s purchase the right to make a film based on your book. As an author, you get paid. How good is that? Really good if it happens. For most of us, it doesn’t. For the fortunate few, reality comes later.
A few years after that first convention a non-fiction book titled Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides won a Spur Award. The book, something like five hundred pages, recounts the life and times of Kit Carson. It is an excellent book. I read it. Kirk Ellis optioned it. Very exciting. I asked him how you make a film out of a book of that length. His answer surprised me. “You don’t” he said. You make a film out of one chapter; or some other combination of highly condensed excerpts. You mean they are going to cut up My Book? Yes they are. Well, maybe they are. It’s ‘maybe’ because, come to find out, only about one option in twenty actually get made into film. Ask Hampton Sides.
For purposes of these pages, let’s assume our book is one of those that actually gets made. Next come the abstractions. The abstractions are best understood in terms of examples. Let’s use True Grit. The book was written by Charles Portis. It crossed the chasm to film twice. The original, directed by Henry Hathaway, starred John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell. The remake, produced by the Cohen brothers with Steven Spielberg starred Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. We could actually do a post series on remakes. In some cases they work and in others they don’t. Maybe we’ll do that series one of these days.
True Grit makes the best illustration I can come up with for the abstractions you get crossing the chasm. As a rule, if I read the book I don’t see the movie and vice versa. In the True Grit case, I’d seen both movies. For purposes of this comparison, I broke the rule and read the book. The experience was enlightening. The abstractions are easy to spot because all three interpretations have one thing in common. They all used author Charles Portis’ excellent dialogue. That makes a great jumping off point for next week.
Next Week: Creative Abstractions
Return to Facebook to Comment
Ride easy,
Paul
A few years after that first convention a non-fiction book titled Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides won a Spur Award. The book, something like five hundred pages, recounts the life and times of Kit Carson. It is an excellent book. I read it. Kirk Ellis optioned it. Very exciting. I asked him how you make a film out of a book of that length. His answer surprised me. “You don’t” he said. You make a film out of one chapter; or some other combination of highly condensed excerpts. You mean they are going to cut up My Book? Yes they are. Well, maybe they are. It’s ‘maybe’ because, come to find out, only about one option in twenty actually get made into film. Ask Hampton Sides.
For purposes of these pages, let’s assume our book is one of those that actually gets made. Next come the abstractions. The abstractions are best understood in terms of examples. Let’s use True Grit. The book was written by Charles Portis. It crossed the chasm to film twice. The original, directed by Henry Hathaway, starred John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell. The remake, produced by the Cohen brothers with Steven Spielberg starred Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. We could actually do a post series on remakes. In some cases they work and in others they don’t. Maybe we’ll do that series one of these days.
True Grit makes the best illustration I can come up with for the abstractions you get crossing the chasm. As a rule, if I read the book I don’t see the movie and vice versa. In the True Grit case, I’d seen both movies. For purposes of this comparison, I broke the rule and read the book. The experience was enlightening. The abstractions are easy to spot because all three interpretations have one thing in common. They all used author Charles Portis’ excellent dialogue. That makes a great jumping off point for next week.
Next Week: Creative Abstractions
Return to Facebook to Comment
Ride easy,
Paul
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