Conversations with wife (part 2)

Wife: you know what book would be good to turn into film?
Me: what?
Wife: the uglies series...

That’s right, the “uglies” series by Scott Westerfeld. When hearing this I thought about it for a second and although it would be completely awesome, I also said to her that it would be incredibly expensive to create! Think about it, you’re creating a new world. Sure it’s meant to be set in America which is where almost every book I read these days are set, but I can’t imagine such a life Tally lives in to become reality. I guess it’s been done before. Star wars anyone! Epic genius *sighs happily*
What I thought was a good book to turn to film is Peeps. I loved Peeps for the fact that it was set in modern New York, yet had that science fiction side to it. Putting those two together makes everything in it almost...believable!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Peeps, to sum up it’s a vamp book. However, vampires are called parasite positives or “peeps”. It’s funny, when you label something that’s fictional to slang or put a scientific name on it, it makes it all the more believable.
We realised, after having a rant about Hollywood being unoriginal, that it must be quite hard to turn a book into a film. That, in itself must be the real challenge. The following reasons are:

1. Violence. So many books, especially young adult have a wide range of violence through them but somehow it seems less violent when you read it yourself, rather than having to watch it. When reading “Chain of Hearts” by Maureen McCarthy I thought that if they ever turned this into a movie that it would be *SPOILER ALERT* flashbacks of the girl jumping in the river...the car crash...possibly implications of the main character using self harm. Even if she didn’t, when turning a book into a movie a lot of things are changed. *END SPOILER* *cough* ERAGON *cough* but in the book itself everything is only the characters point of view and memory of the situations and was mostly implications of what happened.

2. Pleasing the audience. This brings me to the book “Coraline” by Neil Gaimen. When reading it admittedly I was young. It was one of the first novels I read and I absolutely loved such a bleak, dark story that was for my age group. However, because it’s suited to such a young age, when turning it into film they have to be careful with the violence. To do this, they are making it animation. It’s worrying me. Hopefully they can turn it into something like “Howls moving castle” or even “Death-note”. Both being anime, yet both being bleak and dark. I’m worried it’s going to turn a great story into something that’s comical, sweet and sappy. But there’s always hope with the audience. And then always some disappointment when you see the film. Because as much as we hope and hope and hope, it’s always, always, always different to the book. I know it’s going to fail, but deep down I hope it won’t! Even Coraline is worried!!

3. What to include. One of the hardest things to achieve is how much you include in 2 hours. Some people can do it and others just fail. Fail is Eragon, no offence Stefen Fangmeier. Epic is Twilight. I know it’s strange but I think that Catherine Hardwicke honestly did do a great job in capturing characters, setting and the storyline. Everything was included and nothing was given away. Thank you for not mentioning in the first movie that Jacob is a werewolf. Or even implying it. Because implications piss me off.

It’s always fun talking with wife.

Happy Valentine’s Day for yesterday!

Jinx xx