Anthropologize

I’m already disappointed. I’ve only seen the trailer and I’m already disappointed.
I read The Help.
Along with about 436bazillion other people. I read it awhile ago, but from what I remember, it’s an easy read, the plot is simple, the characters are symbolic, and the message is powerful. Like, REAL powerful. It tells the story of something you know you already know, but nobody has actually told the story, so you can read words and take a journey into that world, and experience the message like you actually didn’t know it before. Even though you did.

I don’t know much about filmmaking. But I have friends that do, and I pay attention. I do know about storytelling. The craft of it, the presentation of it, the culture of it. And here’s my thinking. Turning a book into a screenplay/movie involves sliders. Like these:

And there are four areas of slideability; three areas in which you monkey with their sliders to achieve balance and not piss off, or lose completely, your audience.
1. Plot.
2. Characters.
3. Dialogue.
4. Design.

Most books are too dense with multiple plotlines and nuances in journey to fit into 180 minutes or less (hence why two movies that tell entire life stories, and are wonderful, Forrest Gump and Benjamin Button, take way more than that).
Most characters in books are too complex to bring to life on screen completely- they have thoughts and feelings and facets that you can describe or demonstrate with the written word and you just can’t replicate that articulation visually. You just can’t.
Most dialogue in books is amazing. Some books have a lot of it and some have very little. But movies have to find a rhythm and a style that makes sense when actually heard out loud, with multiple voices, instead of being heard internally, all in the voice of the reader.

So. The sliders. I think that when you transform a book into a movie, you have to monkey with the sliders. And it’s ALL risk taking. Which way do you GO with the slider?
I also think that the audience will only take so much sliding before you lose them.
You can simplify the characters, combine them, delete them, if you nail the logic of the plot and have a great dialogueic rhythm. We dont lose the meaning of the book.
You can simplify the plot if you create beautiful character complexity and keep the film moving through what is or isn’t said.
You can mess with the “exact quotes from the book” as long as the message is there through the plot and the articulation of the characters.
You get the idea.
So here’s my problem with the movie trailer of The Help:

The characters in the book are simple. We want to see the power of that simplicity shining through. We want to see their reason for being and that one idea that each of them symbolizes. They are archetypes (the mousey smart girl, the snob, the maternal maid, the useless mother). We need to see them as symbols. Instead, thanks to the casting agent of this movie, I see celebrities. That’s all I see. I don’t see a powerful hero in Skeeter. I see Emma Stone. With weird hair.

The dialogue is the book is powerful. The absence of dialogue, the meme about what people can and can’t say to this white and that black person, is powerful. There is so.much.tension in the dance between what is said out loud and what is totally NOT said out loud. What CAN NOT be said out loud, but sometimes is… and I dunno. It just sounds all kinds of polished up. Maybe it’s just the trailer. I hope it’s just the trailer.

The plot. We all know what this movie is about. Like I said, 436bazillion people read this book. And are still reading this book. I’m pretty sure most of them will go see the movie. And would have gone to see the movie whether Emma Stone was in it or not. Because it’s about heroism, and right and wrong, and standing up, and sitting down, and history… the plot of this book, the story, regardless of the beach-readable-format, is amazing. It’s a story we all know and don’t know and need to know.

And then there’s the design. What did it actually look like back then? Did they have curling irons? When were they sweating? How dark WAS it really when Skeeter snuck off in the night to the wrong side of town? From the look of the trailer, they had some serious stylists. And I bet they got the clothes, and the upholstery, and the wallpaper and the landscaping right. But the lighting? It’s really slick. And Skeeter’s hair is really weird. REALLY weird. And they don’t look sweaty. Isn’t it H.O.t.T.T.t.t.t.ttttt.t. in Jackson, Mississippi? I’m just not buying it. Dear Hollywood, you tried too hard. And forgot about reality. I wanted Once, and you gave me Glee.

I guess that my wish would have been, had I been in charge of the sliders, to let the characters BE simple archetypes, without famousness to get in the way, to find a way to show what was and wasn’t said, wihtout the terrible one-liners, and to let the plot just be a simple story, a feel-good, without trying so hard to say HEY! LOOK! A FEEL-GOOD!! I guess my wish would have been to keep Hollywood out of it. To let it be powerful, not polished. I dunno. I’ll be totally honest, the Hollywood stuff will probably get to me- the story is just too right. I mean, I still teared up a bit watching the trailer. But I just didn’t feel good about it. I want to feel something because a story fed my soul and I became awestruck, not because a formulaic slider-monkeying production preyed on my emotion.

PS- if you want an example of another recent beach-read-awesome-message book that I think nailed the movie, it’s Secret Life of Bees. Characters were cast with celebrities- but allowed to be complex and had powerful performances that made me forget who they were. Sophie Okinawe blows my mind. Plot was simple and left alone. Dialogue from the past infused the rhythm of the present with meaning. And was, again, delivered with meaning. Thanks, Latifah. And design. The music alone took me to another place.

Another failure? Like Water for Elephants. Reece Witherspoon had no business playing that role. A complex, moving character became a useless girl. And the incredible personification and performance by the Elephant, as Rosie, couldn’t even save it.

Ok, I’m done now.

PS- Thanks NC for the discussion. I got all fired up about it.