INTERVIEW: New TCM book by Kristen Lopez details book-to-movie adaptations
Image courtesy of Running Press / Provided by official site.
The title for the new TCM / Running Press book by Kristen Lopez says it all: But Have You Read the Book? This expertly detailed and endlessly fascinating tome examines “52 literary gems that inspired our favorite films,” with Lopez dissecting what’s in the book version, what’s in the movie version and how the art of adaptation was achieved.
There are many classic films/books on her list, all categorized by the movie’s year of release. The compendium begins with Frankenstein from 1931 and continues all the way to 2021’s Passing. Throughout the pages, there is a variety of directors and writers represented, including Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho and Rebecca), Mario Puzo (The Godfather), Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner), Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club), Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides) and Greta Gerwig (Little Women). Lopez, film editor at The Wrap, ensures there is diversity in the book, including diversity of genre and diversity of the auteurs whose work is showcased.
“It was a real collaborative thing with TCM,” Lopez said in a recent phone interview. “They had a list of things that they wanted, which I agreed with them on. We wanted a diversity of genres. We wanted a diversity of eras. We wanted diversity of authors, directors, make sure that there’s women, people of color, directors of color, so it was definitely going back and forth with them.”
TCM asked Lopez to include one book, and that was Frank Herbert’s Dune, which was recently adapted by director Denis Villeneuve and his fellow co-writers Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth (David Lynch also infamously adapted the book in the 1980s). Other than that suggestion, which Lopez agreed should be included, it was up to her to fill out the list.
“So I gave them a rundown of a bunch of books that I was interested in, which I think topped out at about 60 or 70, and we went back and forth,” she said. “I can’t keep Dennis Lehane’s entire filmography, so I had to go through a bit of a process of: Do I have too many of one genre? Do I already have enough from this author? Access was also a big thing because we want people to read the books. What books were still in print? What books had maybe gone out of print? What books were just way too hard for the average reader to find?”
Lopez was able to keep some of her mystery titles intact, but not all of them. Lehane and James Ellroy only receive kudos in the introduction, but she does include some wonderful film noir entries like Mildred Pierce and Kiss Me Deadly, plus the Truman Capote classic In Cold Blood. For those keeping score, her most represented years are 1993 (The Age of Innocence, The Joy Luck Club, Jurassic Park and The Remains of the Day) and 1999 (The Virgin Suicides, Cruel Intentions, Fight Club and The Talented Mr. Ripley).
“We also had to go back and forth on what constitutes a book,” Lopez said. “So I had originally wanted to do a different Philip K. Dick novel, but it ended up being a short story. And we wanted to go with actual book-length books. … People have asked me about, ‘Oh, 52, because you have one for every week of the year.’ I wish I was that smart. It eventually got to a point where I was like 52 seems like something that could be doable for me because I had a really short amount of time to write [the book].”
In order to complete the project in eight months, Lopez stuck to a strict schedule, filled with pages of literature and minutes of cinematic classics. On Sunday, she’d begin by watching a movie that would be included in the book, say 1985’s The Color Purple. She would then take the weekdays to read the book in sections, and on Saturday, she would write a new chapter for But Have You Read the Book? Then the cycle would start again.
“So I came up with a schedule at the beginning of the project where it was in order of what was necessary,” she said. “So at the top were movies I had never seen and books I’d never read. And then from there, it maybe was books I’ve read but movies I’ve never seen, or movies I’ve seen and books I’ve never read. And the last ones were books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen. So it really was a process of making sure that the ones that I really needed to give time to got done first, and there were several.”
Lopez said that Dr. No, the James Bond novel by Ian Fleming and the first cinematic effort of the Bond saga, was brand new to her. She had never read Fleming’s original novel, nor had she seen the Terence Young-directed feature. She begins her chapter on the Bond movie with this: “Monty Norman’s iconic theme, a vodka martini (shaken, not stirred), and the introduction of ‘Bond. James Bond.’ This trinity immediately sets the tone for the action and adventure that comes from the world of James Bond.”
“I think there’s this real fallacy that adaptations are kind of the best thing for a screenwriter because you have the book,” Lopez said about the art of adaptation. “There’s a great quote in The Thin Man chapter from W.S. Van Dyke, who was the director. When he gave The Thin Man book to the screenwriters, he said, use this as a foundation and not a guide. And I think that that is what some of the best screenwriters who work with adapted materials do. They take what makes the spirit of the book so beloved in an audience’s mind, and they try to get that feeling even if they aren’t verbatim lifting whole scenes or whole characters.”
Lopez added: “I’ve been fortunate to interview several screenwriters that have adapted books, and they have said that it’s really difficult because you have to appease two totally disparate audiences. You have to appease the people that have read the book and loved it, and people that have no idea that that book even exists and just want to see a movie. And those are two very different audiences, so it’s a real balancing act. And even with something that is verbatim like the book, something like No Country for Old Men, which lifts pretty much the entire book for the film, the Coen Brothers add so much levity, so much dark humor that is not present in the novel. So even when you’re dealing with the same characters and the same sequences, a director and a screenwriter can still add a little something that makes that entity totally different from its source material.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
But Have You Read the Book?: 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Your Favorite Films by Kristen Lopez is now available from TCM and Running Press. Click here for more information.
