It’s heard so often that it seems clichéd: "the book was
better than the movie." That’s because adapting fiction to the
silver screen is hard to do well. Why do some adapted screenplays work while
others wilt? What do successful adaptations have in common? And what can the
screenwriter learn from unsuccessful attempts to go from page to celluloid? If
you’re a writer who needs answers to these questions, this is the book
you’re looking for.
In I Read It at the Movies, Mark Axelrod, a veteran screenwriter, fiction
writer, and literature professor, alerts you to the pitfalls that sink poorly
written adaptations, describes which writing tools to hone for this kind of
work, and tells you exactly how to use them. Axelrod leads you through a close
reading of four films made from adapted screenplays—Bladerunner, Death
in Venice, Lolita, and The Postman—examining in
detail what choices the writer made and whether those choices succeeded. He
ultimately leads you to understand why a script devoted to the letter of its
source work is less desirable and less likely to be well received than one
embodying the originating story’s spirit.
With so many adaptations in today’s theatres, if you’re a working or
aspiring screenwriter, you need to know how to get inside a book, find its
narrative essence, and extract a well-considered, artful, and entertaining
screenplay. With I Read It at the Movies everyone who sees a film you write
will say, "It was better than the book!"
