After the recent mixed reviews for Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of Hunter S Thompson’s Rum Diary, the question of how to handle a successful book to film adaption is raised again. It’s a tricky undertaking. They are essentially different mediums, intended for telling stories in completely different ways: one, using words to paint pictures, the other, using pictures to tell stories. Huw Thomas and Helia Phoenix crack heads in an attempt to come up with a formula for the perfect development from words-to-pictures

On the recent mixed reviews and temperate box office traffic for The Rum Diary, it brings up the question of how you can approach a literary adaptation project. The first consideration of course is whether or not a film stands as a piece of art of its own accord, without any knowledge of the book it was adapted from, or the ideologies of the author. When making a film, you have the ego of a director to contend with, not to mention the personal interests of any of the stars. Remember how Johnny Depp was a longtime friend and admirer of Hunter S Thompson? Yes? No? Well, he was.

So while your film will probably attract some die-hard lit fans (who will also probably be its biggest critics), it’s also going to have to stand on its own and attract viewers purely through its own merits.

This has brought us to thinking about this in a more general light: what are some of the key themes necessary for a successful book to screen adaptation?

Stay true to your roots…

Although this is seemingly in complete opposition to the idea of the film existing as a piece of art on its own, keeping with the ideology of the author is actually an important part of adapting a book for the big screen.

There have been numerous occasions when authors have cut off ties with an adaptation due to perceived warping of its message. Alan Moore has built up a long-standing antipathy with the Hollywood movie machine as a result of the way it continually takes his nuanced and intelligent comic books and turns them into big dumb explosion-fests. Also, while Nic Roeg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches was fairly faithful in many respects, the decision to retool the book’s bleakly moving conclusion – which dealt honestly with issues of mortality – into a far more conventional happy ending was met with dismay by the famously curmudgeonly author.

In the case of The Rum Diary, it says true to the message at the heart of all of Thompson’s work – exposing the corruption of “the man” and uncovering the sordid nature of the American dream. Soused non-writer Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) journeys to a failing English language newspaper in American-occupied 1950s Puerto Rico. The newspaper is on its last legs, staffed by a collection of misfits who choose a steady diet of rum to help them survive the heat and the constant riots against the American occupation that take place outside the newspaper’s office.

Kemp is a writer searching for a voice, which he eventually finds, after a series of run-ins with angry locals, negotiating offers from smarmy American PR exec Sal Henderson (played Aaron Eckhart’s epic chin) to write killer copy for a brochure to encourage rich Americans to buy up land in the unspoiled paradise, simultaneously leaving the local residents homeless and scavenging. This trade-off runs to the core of everything that Thompson ever wrote – that the idea of the American dream is based on greedy capitalism that survives through the exploitation of others.

But don’t stay too true…

The first Harry Potter film was an incredibly literal take on the source material, to the extent that the whole experience seemed kind of pointless. Of course, it made a bajillion dollars, so it’s possible that we don’t know what we’re talking talking about. In some cases, a willingness to approach things in a radically different way is absolutely essential.

Anyone who has read Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho would agree that a direct translation would have been both unfilmable and unwatchable. Mary Harron’s decision to dial back the splatter and focus instead on Patrick Bateman’s fragmented psyche resulted in a blackly comic movie that captured the spirit of the novel without making viewers vomit up their popcorn.

Sometimes an original text can provide little more than a jumping off point for the film version. Sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick’s work has inspired a range of very different movies, from the chilly, Vangelis-augmented Blade Runner to the explosive Total Recall, still the high-water mark for filmic representations of tri-boobed space-hookers. In both cases, the adaptations of Dick’s stories Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and We Can Remember it For You Wholesale bear little resemblance to what ended up on the screen, but were nonetheless extremely successful in their own right. Did we mention the tri-boobed space-hooker?

Though some criticism of The Rum Diary has come from it straying too far from the original book, this seems futile criticism. Parts of the book, for example, are much better realised through the medium of film than they were in the book. The concept of the luxury hotel, for example, is an urgent and visceral theme when you see the flesh of the tropical paradise that is to be butchered by American greed.

Make sure you cut the cr*p

This is vital. Successful adaptations are normally a triumph of editing. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies may all weigh in at a buttock-numbing three-plus hours, but compared to the books they are the very model of economic storytelling. JRR Tolkien was many things, but succint wasn’t one of them. The novels are packed with lengthy digressions that have only a nominal connection with the actual narrative. Cutting out the interminable Tom Bombadil section and bits about what happens to the hobbit’s horses when they get chased off might have irritated a few six-sided-dice-wielding uber-nerds, but it at least meant that the audience didn’t die of boredom/old age before the credits rolled.

But don’t cut too much

Sometimes adaptations can cut, willy nilly, from the original material, leaving out important points of the original story. A fairly recent film adaptation that oversimplified literary content (one suspects) to ensure more universal appeal was Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

The original tween fiction, written by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, focused on the story of two teenagers who met and got together over a long night of gig going, and covered all manner of complicated relationship negotiation (friendship, straight, gay, and bisexual). Norah – the female lead – was stubborn and spunky in the book, but her onscreen counterpart (played by Kat Dennings) had less spunk and less security, leaving cinema goers with a weakened female protagonist who betrayed the usual boring sexist stereotype characteristics: she’s insecure about her prettier friends, seeks reassurance about her looks, blah blah blah. Film-Norah’s personal triumph onscreen is having an orgasm (ably assisted by Michael Cera’s magic fingers) and dumping her douchebag boyfriend. (Feminism rarely translates to the big screen, in case you were wondering).

The ‘villain’ of the story – Nick’s ex-girlfriend, Triss – was reduced from an interesting, three-dimensional character in the book (who actually gets a little girl-on-girl action in a bathroom with Norah) to a flat, two-dimensional bitch type with no interest in boys other than feeding her ego. (The lesbian scene doesn’t get a look in either, in case you’re interested.) The book did a fine job of portraying these less conventional female roles … but apparently Hollywood is less bothered about promoting strong and complex female characters. Bah.

A less cogent example of cutting too much from a literary source comes from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Because so few animals remain on Earth, owning one is a sign of prestige due to their expense. Because of this, many inhabitants of Earth choose cheaper, synthetic alternatives. It’s a key point that runs through the book, but is only really mentioned in Blade Runner when Deckard finds Zhora performing at a strip club with her synthetic snake. “Think I’d be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake?” she asks him. This is the only allusion to the theme, which also raises the important question of what it means to consciousness and what it means “to be” – to be animal – versus to be human – versus to be android. Despite that omission, Blade Runner still makes for enjoyable viewing, whether you get the extra layer about consciousness, or not.

Who’s who…

There’s also the issue of casting. It’s incredibly difficult to please audiences who may have built up a detailed mental picture of what characters look and sound like. This is less of a problem for comic-book adaptations as there are clear visual cues – even though anybody who has witnessed Keanu Reeves playing John Constantine may disagree – but it can be much harder when adapting novels as the filmmakers are competeing against millions of personal versions of a character.

One of the reasons the Austen (etc) adaptations are always so well received is because of the choice of hero – it means that heaving bosoms across the land can heave a little higher, combining the sigh factor of a modern day dish with the mental picture they have created of the dashing hero. As an example, try Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (cue squeals of joy from around the world as he emerges from the lake dripping wet with white shirt clinging desperately to his weedy frame. Rrrrowr).

Returning to the Rum Diary, many purists would probably argue that, however awesome he is, Johnny Depp is a little too venerable to be playing the 20-something Paul Kemp. However, in this case, it works. This is partly because of Depp’s previous experience portraying one of Hunter S. Thompson’s literary alter-egos. But the age difference also adds another layer to the desperation of a writer needing to find his voice.

The angst and turmoil of Kemp in the book is the visceral passion of youth – where it’s almost second nature to rebel and fight the power (you have more energy, and less to lose). But transpose that desire to find your voice, the disaffection for state controls and the gradual realisation that the people in charge are corrupt beyond redemption to someone in their mid-forties (with less energy and without the prospect of an endless ‘rest of their life’ ahead of them) – and suddenly, you have a more poignant story and a stronger protagonist.

So there you have it. A step by step guide to producing the perfect literary adaptation by two people with zero experience of so doing. Please feel free to let us know how right/wrong we managed to get it. As a small bonus feature, here are a few of the best and worst examples of cinematic library raiding.

Yay!

Fight Club (1999)
David Fincher directly lifts much of the dialogue straight from Chuck Palahnuik’s novel, before adorning it with the his hyper-kinetic visual flair. Also features one of the best uses of music in film, as skyscrapers collapse to The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’.

High Fidelity (2000)
Proof that making changes isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Despite transplanting the action from London to Chicago, the film perfectly captures the book’s central theme of obsessive man-children slowly learning how to live in the real world. It is also a fascinating relic of an era when John Cusack and Jack Black were in good movies.

The Shining (1980)
That Stephen King famously produced his own – infinitely shitter – version because of his dislike for Kubrick’s adaptation makes you seriously question the writer’s judgement. A nerve-shredding exercise in creeping dread and the main reason that we now think adorable female twins are completely terrifying.

Boo!

Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
Takes Swift’s 18th century satirical masterpiece and turns it into a Jack Black-driven vehicle for jokes about piss and thinly veiled adverts for Guitar Hero. Way to go Hollywood!

Constantine (2005)
OK so it’s a comic book adaptation, but one so egregious that it’s worth mentioning here. Casting Keanu Reeves as the cynical, blond-haired, Liverpudlian, chain-smoking occult detective John Constantine was a slap in the face to both fans of the book and basic logic.Woah!

I, Robot (2004)
Isaac Asimov’s original is a genre-defining piece of sci-fi that has served as a blueprint for much of what has followed it. Alex Proyas’ movie adaptation was an opportunity to make things blow up near Will Smith.

by Huw Thomas and Helia Phoenix