Hailey's Novel Diary – 12/23/17

I have a few conflicting opinions about selling the rights to my book. I like watching movies, as long as it is not computer animation of computer monsters or computer superheroes saving the CGI day. This book has nothing like that, unless they completely World War Z it and change everything except the title.

I would absolutely love to play a part as one of the characters in a movie based on a book that I wrote. How cool would that be? But that is never going to happen. From what I know about studios and book adaptations, they want the original author as far away from the set as possible. The fact that I live in Hong Kong is probably a plus to any producer. I don't know which character I would play even if I could. I don't physically match any of the leads, and studios want names in those parts anyway. At most, I would be Woman in Restaurant #3.

I would have no say in casting. I could make a wish list of who I would want to play each character, but that list would have nothing to do with which actors are available, which agencies represent everyone and which personalities cannot work together. My list would be thrown in the trash before a casting director was even hired. Probably for good reason. I have no idea who the most bankable actors are these days and who the studio executives prefer. My choices would be about who could play the part, not about who could make the most money. I don't know the first thing about being a producer.

Once you sell the film rights, you have no control over anything. They can change the characters into different people. They can change the setting away from Los Angeles. They can rearrange the story so that everything happens backward, cut out the most important scenes or make it unrecognizable. Forrest Gump in the book is a completely different character than in the movie. The author of the original MASH book was politically conservative while the movie and TV series were far more liberal. Ernest Hemingway had all kinds of negative things to say about movie adaptations, and JD Salinger hated the process so much that he never allowed anyone to film Catcher in the Rye.

JD Salinger was a great writer, but I have never wanted to emulate him or his career. I grew up on movies and still have faith that they can be more than computer cartoons. My point of view is that a movie and book are entirely different animals. A book is written by one person in isolation, more or less. A movie is made by dozens or hundreds of people with their own agendas and lists of notes, ideas, ultimatums, compromises and demands. Movies cannot be completely faithful to the book. Time and money are different in both worlds. A book about two people talking over coffee costs as much to publish as a detailed history of the universe. Movie budgets can vary by hundreds of millions of dollars. Higher expenses also mean that movies are more dependent on commercial popularity. A book can lose money, break even, be a modest success, be a bestseller or be the next big thing. Today, a movie is either a blockbuster or a flop.

Even the best adaptations cut something out of the book. They have to. This usually annoys the author, but definitely does not make them bad movies. If authors always got their way, some great movies would have never been made.

Jack Nicholson's performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is brilliant, but Ken Kesey wanted the story told from Chief Bromden's point of view. Truman Capote did not want Audrey Hepburn to play Holly Golightly. PL Travers did not want Julie Andrews to play Mary Poppins, and hated the movie so much, they made a movie about it. Both Stephen King and Anthony Burgess thought that Stanley Kubrick did not understand their novels. Maybe they don't understand his films. Or maybe they can't separate the stories in their minds with the interpretations on screen. Although you would think Stephen King has enough experience with that. He can't hate The Shining more than Maximum Overdrive.

The African Queen, Gone With the Wind, Howard's End, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Clockwork Orange, Sophie's Choice, Terms of Endearment, The Bridge On the River Kwai, No Country For Old Men, Psycho. The list of great movies made from books without the author's involvement is practically endless. Sometimes the original novels are great. Sometimes, they are less than great. A movie is someone else's vision, not the original author's. If you want the author's vision, read the book.

If all of the stars align and my book somehow gets filmed, I would love it to become a masterpiece by someone like Stanley Kubrick, even if he interpreted it in a completely different way. Obviously, he is not available anymore. This was not his type of story anyway. But that brings up another reason I could never be a producer. I can't think of a single director for this story. I would want one of the best of the best, and hopefully living, like Terrence Malick, but this is not his type of story either. I'm sure there are any number of wonderful directors who would fit perfectly. I just don't know who they are.

But even a piece of crap movie that gets destroyed by the critics and heckled by audiences is still ok. Maybe less for the studio. Just going through the process would be an interesting experience for me. A bad movie never hurts the book, but a good movie only makes more people go out and read it. I really have nothing to lose.