Pet Sematary

Book: One of Stephen King's most popular novels, Pet Sematary came out in 1983. It relates the story of doctor Louis Creed and his family that faces a young son's death - a son Louis later revives at an ancient Indian burial ground.

Movie: Also titled Pet Sematary, and came out in 1989. Stephen King wrote the screenplay himself; the director of the movie was Mary Lambert. Starring Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby.

Plot differences: The basic plot is the exact same as in the book. However, minor differences include the omission of Norma Crandall and her death, which is replaced with the suicide of babysitter Missy Dandrige, and more appearances by the ghost of Victor Pascow.

Character differences: Norma Crandall, Jud's wife, is completely omitted from the movie. Steve Masterton, a friend of Louis', has a reduced role. Missy Dandrige, who is only mentioned in passing in the novel, has a wider role and a completely different, hypochondriac personality.

Author opinion: Stephen King was probably happy with this, since he wrote it himself. He was tired of seeing his films adapted by others, and wanted to have a say in the matter.

My opinion:
Stephen King cannot write movie scripts, end of story. I haven't seen one TV movie, miniseries or feature film written by King that was any good. He's good at writing horror novels; Pet Sematary is one of his best books, and the concept of an unnatural child coming back from the dead is carried out well in the novel. However, he completely butchers his own concept in the movie.

Firstly, the dead speak in the novel. They say horrifying things about living people, telling them their sins and the bad things others think of them. Gage, the dead little boy, tells Jud Crandall that his wife cheated on him and laughed at him with all of his friends. This is unnatural and disgusting coming from a child, and it makes Gage scary. But what does he do in the movie? He talks in a childish voice, asks people to come play with him, grimaces with a knife in his hand. Zelda and Victor Pascow are at least scary in the movie, but Gage is just childish.

From the Wikipedia entry:

In addition, the movie glosses over the concept of the Wendigo in the forest, and completely skips over the implication that there is a singular, specific intelligence which guides the resurrected creatures and speaks through them.

Now, the idea of a specific intelligence behind the evil is much scarier than what happens in the movie. Jud Crandall relates the story of young Billy, who was resurrected by his father, but like Gage, he is much scarier in the book than in the movie. In the book, he speaks terrible things to people and knows all about them. In the movie, he shouts, "Love death! Hate living!" Ehh?

Secondly, the omission of Norma Crandall is very weird. Her death in the book gives a feel of natural death, dying from old age, as opposed to Gage's unexpected and terrifying death. King doesn't seem to realize that this is necessary to ground the story somewhat in the reality of death.

Thirdly, the dialogue is so cheesy. It's very difficult to buy a horror movie where the dialogue constantly takes your focus away from "oo, creepy" and back to "hee, kitschy". The scenes in the book have been transformed into unbelievably corny movie moments. The beginning is a good example. I'm going to quote my own recap of the movie:

Ellie runs off somewhere, and Rachel and Louis walk up to the house. "So...?" says Louis cornily, expecting a positive response, even if Louis in the book felt nervous and anxious about Rachel's response. I think Dale Midkiff is trying to portray "nervous and anxious", but comes up with "hey, look what I got you, don't you just love it?" Ridiculous soap opera music swells up as Rachel declares, "It's gorgeous!!" with the overdramatic tone usually reserved for messages like "I'm pregnant!" They hug and Louis laughs.

I assure you I'm not exaggerating here. It really is that bad. In the book, Louis is so tired of his family that he's contemplating just taking off without them and driving into the sunset all by himself. But in the movie, it's all "Look what I got you honey". I don't know why King chose to write the movie like this, but it's very difficult to buy.

The fourth glaring problem has nothing to do with King or his script. The acting is just really bad. Dale Midkiff is horrible as Louis Creed, a role that would demand some depth from an actor. You need to embrace not only joy and "family man" qualities, but also grief, fear, and being more or less possessed by an evil force that wants you to revive your loved ones. Dale Midkiff gives us *blank stare* through most of it. That doesn't cut it. Fred Gwynne is good as Jud Crandall, but everyone else pretty much hams their way through it. There's the scene of Gage's death, which should be tragic - but what does Dale Midkiff do? He shouts "NNOOOOOOOOO!!!" in the corniest, longest possible way. And they show still pictures during it. Of Gage as a baby. What the fuck was that? Was it Stephen King or Mary Lambert that decided this was a good idea? It totally ruins the tragedy of the moment. The subsequent grief is fast-forwarded over, it seems, and we jump straight to the horror part. That also takes away some of the power of the story.

I did find the film scary at times. The horror scenes mostly still work, and Zelda is really terrifying, as she should be. However, with some of the deeper levels of the book taken away, some of the horror is also lost. The film is helplessly 80's, helplessly time-stamped and kitschy, and very difficult to take seriously. Which is a shame, because I do think it's a good book. Sadly, there was also a low-quality sequel with different characters, directed by Mary Lambert, but this time written by Richard Outten. I haven't seen the sequel, but it has a 3.9 rating on imdb.com (the first movie has 6.1), which says a lot.

I'm intrigued about the new version someone's making for next year. The details are in imdb pro, which I'm not willing to pay for, but it's there for those of you with a membership. Let's hope they got it right this time!

The Sound of Music

Book: The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, an autobiography written by Maria von Trapp, came out in 1949 in the US. It was a best-seller, translated into several languages. The book relates the story of the family, from the time Maria was called into the von Trapp family to the time after Georg von Trapp died. The Nazi invasion of Austria and the difficult adjustment to the American culture are depicted in detail. The book is very religious and reflects Maria's Catholic faith.

Movie: The Sound of Music (1965) is one of the most successful musicals of all time. It is actually based on Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse's musical, and Maria von Trapp's book was uncredited. Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay for the movie, and it was directed by Robert Wise. It starred Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as Georg von Trapp. The book also spawned two successful German/Austrian films, Die Trapp-Familie (1956) and Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika (1958). However, I'm not going to discuss those, as I haven't seen them.

Plot differences: The beginning is the same. That's about it. The plot of the book, based on the true story, is really too long to outline briefly, but here are the key differences:
* In the book, Maria comes to the house to teach a sick child called Maria. The other children don't need a governess because they go to school outside the house. In the movie, she's the governess of all of the children.
* In the book, the Nazis take over Austria eleven years after Maria and Georg are married. In the film, the Nazi rule has come while they were on their honeymoon.
* Their singing career began some years before the Nazis came; in the movie, their first performance is connected to their escape from the Nazis.
* There was no "Liesl falls in love with the postman" story in the book.
* In the book, they escape to the US on a singing tour, and stay there. In the movie, they escape in a car and then walk over the Alps to safety.

Character differences: Captain's friend, the freeloader, was not in the book. He never existed, and it seems like he's there to bring comic relief to the movie. The role of the Baroness was expanded and changed to some extent. The Captain's fiancee never visited the house, and their breakup wasn't as obvious as it is in the movie.

The children's real names were Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, and Martina.
The children's names in the movie were Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl. I don't get it. Not one name was the same. Are consonant+ L names supposedly more Austrian than their original names? Why was Rupert changed into Liesl? Why would someone give their children names as similar as Liesl and Louisa? Arrghh. Also, not to nitpick but their mother had died seven years earlier - and Gretl was five. Maria and Georg's children Rosmarie, Eleonor and Johannes are not in the movie.

Author opinion: Maria von Trapp was happy with the movie, saying the most important difference was that they changed the children's names. Eldest son Rupert von Trapp, however, was bitter about the fact that they replaced him with a girl. Later on, Maria complained about her meager royalties from the movie.

My opinion:
The book and the movie are two completely different things. You can't really even compare them in this case. The movie is a classic; it's a completely made up story, and as such, it works rather well. It's a charming fairytale for children and adults alike, naïve and innocent compared to modern films, and it's difficult to judge by today's standards. Some things, like the children's names, grate. I'm not too happy with the whole "hiding in the abbey from the Nazis" plot either, as it's nowhere near the real events. I mean, Maria and Georg von Trapp were married in 1927, and the Nazis came in 1938. But then, how could they have made a movie with such a long timeline that would somehow incorporate the fact that the von Trapps had to learn to speak English when they moved to America, even if they spoke English throughout the film, and so forth?

The love story between "Liesl" and the postman was completely unnecessary and kind of suggests that it's "young love" the audience wants, not a love story between a middle-aged widower and a youngish nun. It's kind of odd that they added that. Also, during Sixteen Going on Seventeen, it's pretty obvious that the actress was 21. The other children get a very small role in the movie, particularly Marta and Gretl. They're not so much depicted as individuals as a group of generic children, happily singing and jumping behind Maria and doing whatever she wants. We're just supposed to buy that everyone liked Maria from the start and that there were no problems in adjusting to the new mother. I know that this is normal for a family musical of the era, but it still seems naïve for a modern viewer.

The book is way too religious for a Hollywood movie, of course. It's way too religious for a secular reader, even. Maria von Trapp had her own idea of religion, of how to raise children, and so forth. She had pretty strict values and the book is rather "educational" in a way that Hollywood couldn't possibly have incorporated. It might interest some readers to know that the children didn't really like her all that much (at least at first), that her own daughter ran away from home at age sixteen, and that she bugged the film studio with her wishes and commands. She doesn't sound like such a great person from that description. But the book is written from her own perspective, and she keeps stressing how close they were as a family and how all families should be just like them. It's difficult to know what the truth was. Julie Andrews is charming in the role, in any case.

Truth be told, both the movie and the book are so dated that I have difficulty criticizing them. I wasn't alive when either of them came out. The Sound of Music is actually the first movie my mother ever saw in the theatre, and she's 55 now. In fact, the book constantly refers to how things are in Europe as opposed to the US. Pretty much every single thing here has changed so that it's now the same in Europe, and it feels weird to think that there was such a huge difference between the cultures back then.

Of course, if you look at the movie, there was no difference - rich Austrians spoke English and drank pink lemonade, making small talk like in American movies.

Girl, Interrupted

Book: Girl, Interrupted was written by Susanna Kaysen. It's an autobiographical novel about Kaysen's year in a mental institution in the 1960's. Published in 1993.

Movie: The screenplay was written by James Mangold and Lisa Loomer, and the director was James Mangold. It was going to be Winona Ryder's comeback to stardom, but became Angelina Jolie's triumph instead, and Jolie ended up winning an Oscar for her supporting role as Lisa. The movie came out in 1999.

Plot Differences: The book has no linear plot; it's a collection of memories and musings about sanity, society and interesting personalities, a very modern and fragmentary novel. The movie pretty much changed it into a clear-cut linear narrative intersected with flashbacks of Susanna's life. Events that never really happened have been added to the movie; these include Susanna and Lisa running away and Lisa stealing Susanna's diary and threatening to kill her.

Character differences: The character of Lisa is expanded in the movie; she only appears in one or two chapters in the book. In the movie, Lisa pretty much steals the show from the protagonist Susanna, whose symptoms of insanity are played down and she seems like a downright dull character in a crazy setting. Susanna's roommate Georgina is made less central than in the book. The story of Daisy, who is abused by her father, is expanded considerably and tied to Susanna's story. The black nurse, portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg, does not appear in the novel in a similar form (there is a nurse named Valerie, but she is not at all like Goldberg's character).

Author opinion: Kaysen has said she hates the movie, calling it "melodramatic drivel". Full article here.

My opinion:
Girl, Interrupted is a movie I've seen many times and used to love - until I read the book. Which is brilliant. Kaysen really has an original voice as an author, and her insights were interesting to read. Unfortunately, almost none of them were used in the movie, and the writers decided to just change the entire story. It seems like the target audiences for the book and movie are completely different. This is a definite case of dumbing down a novel to please a wider, less educated audience, an audience more used to linear narratives and flashbacks and probably uninterested in the book.

The film flows fairly nicely. Winona Ryder is good, but the character of Susanna has been blanded down a bit too much and fails to make the impression she makes in the book. More VO's might have helped. Angelina Jolie as Lisa is really good, of course - and completely unrecognizable as a junkie with rings around her eyes and ruffled hair. The outfits, furniture and town landscape fit well to the 1960's, and the Vietnam war news run alongside the events in the institution. Some of the humor works and some of the dialogue is poignant enough to keep up my interest.

The movie is a bit different from the mainstream. It does portray people in a mental institution, which you don't see too often. However, their insanity has been sort of toned down to not offend people. One woman does shout out dirty words compulsively in one scene, but we don't see Alice Calais painting herself with her own feces like in the book, or something else that might upset more sensitive viewers. The problem with the movie is that it makes the institution seem like a nice little summer camp for pretty young girls whose appearance and behavior don't offend the viewer. Some characters don't really display their problems at all. For example, Georgina's "I'm a compulsive liar" is never backed up with anything. She doesn't tell one lie during the film.

The DVD has lots of deleted scenes. The fact that a lot of these scenes are Susanna seeing things or experiencing "insane" moments speaks about the weirdly political thread running through this film: that Susanna's hospitalization had a lot more to do with her society and its norms than with her being sick. Which in itself is fine and to some extent present in the book. The problem is that the film makers clearly didn't want to portray Susanna as insane or in need of help at all. The clearest sign of this is the scene where the head nurse, played by Whoopi Goldberg, tells Susanna that she's just a lazy, spoiled rich girl who doesn't know what real insanity even is. It's an abominable scene. Firstly, the book has no "lesson" Susanna must learn, and it's condescending to state the message of the film like this. Secondly, it would be horribly unprofessional of a nurse to tell a patient something like this - a judgement, really; something she can't possibly say with any authority, because she doesn't talk to the patients about their problems. She simply wouldn't know, and even if she made that judgement in her mind, it wouldn't be OK for her to say it out loud. And we're supposed to side with her?

The scenes added by the screenwriters can be clearly distinguished from the ones based on real events. Susanna and Lisa never ran away. Susanna wasn't there when Daisy committed suicide. The ward didn't go to an ice cream parlor where Susanna's ex-lover's wife was told off by Lisa. The patients didn't spend nights going down a secret pathway and bowling while 60's music played. In fact, very few of the scenes and dialogues that took place in the book actually made it to the movie.

Most notably of all, the scene where Lisa steals Susanna's diary seems unreal and strange. I thought at first it was a dream sequence, but no. Susanna finds the other patients reading her diary in the basement, and Lisa chases her and threatens to kill her. Susanna tells her she's already dead, and Lisa has a nervous breakdown. This kind of thing brings the movie down. People telling each other they're already dead, with dramatic music in the background, gives the feel that we're watching a performance, not an interaction between real people. Too much of the dialogue in the movie is clearly aimed directly at the viewer: "Dear viewer, please note that Daisy is abused by her father, and the only reason she was released was because her Daddy was rich and powerful." "Dear viewer, are you catching the irony we're playing on here: Lisa threatens to kill Susanna, while she herself is already dead inside?" Dear writers? We get it. Less would have been better.

The use of music is another thing that bugged. When they sing Downtown to Polly who's in seclusion, it just becomes another unbelievable cinema moment where they sing a famous song of the era. Again, less would have been more.

The movie isn't bad, exactly. It's just that it's too far removed from the book to really be an adaptation of it. It's more a movie loosely based on the characters in the book. As an adaptation of the book, it's a failure. As a movie, it's kept my interest on repeated viewings and is at times compelling. The movie clichés drag it down, but don't completely ruin it. If they had used the deleted scenes, which are mostly based on the book, it would have been much better.

You know who should have made this movie? Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. Imagine how they could have done justice to the non-linear timeline and the visual imagery in the novel.

Movies vs. Books...

So there's a book and it's adapted into a movie. Most of the time, fans of the book are disappointed in the movie, and fans of the movie are disappointed when they read the book. It's an interesting phenomenon. What is it that makes us so disappointed? Why are screenwriters and directors so bad at recognizing what makes certain books successful? Can all books be adapted into movies that really work?

I'll be looking at some specific examples in this blog. Coming soon: Girl, Interrupted, Atonement, and lots of Stephen King adaptations.