Oprah Winfrey has teamed up with Tom Hanks to turn her latest Book Club choice into a new movie.
The talk show queen introduced TV viewers to David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle last year and now she has joined forces with Universal executives and Hanks' Playtone company to produce the movie adaptation.
Winfrey says, "It's something I've never done before out of all the pictures I've ever done, I've always chosen to stay out of the movie making process.
"We will honour the book."
Yikes! My new favourite book is being made into a movie. I'm a little nervous. I am not a big fan of adaptations - well at least not of those books I have fallen in love with. I can think of only two movies adapatations that I truly enjoyed - "The English Patient" and "Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)".
I appreciate a movie can never completely be the book. Thousands of words could never be squeezed into two hours. I also realise the director, not the novelist, has the final say - but I also believe that a director should honour the book's "intent". If he cannot, has he not somehow failed the story? Is he even telling the story? If a director cannot respect the main themes of a given book, why would he bother making a movie of it in the first place?
I am reminded of "A Prayer For Owen Meaney". It's a stellar book and continues to be one of my all time favourites. I will admit, it had it's share of problems, not the least of which was Irving's tendancy to overstuff his tale with as many vignettes and characters and commentaries as possible. With such gluttonous tendancies, Irving could have easily lost his thematic way, but, of course, he's too fine a writer and managed to make everything connect. Owen Meaney is the tale of a boy who came to die for the sins of the Vietnam war. This theme of Jesus reincarnate, the second coming of Christ, the saviour of the Vietnam sinners, carried the book through misadventures and comedy, contrasting everyday laughter with the seriousness and tragedy of the main character's greater life purpose.
Clearly, it's a political book - anti-American in sentiment, critical of Reagan and the Vietnam war. The story also tackles religion and delivers commentary on its relevance, meaning and hypocracy. Politics and religion are the book's raison d'etre.
Director and screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson significantly altered the story when moving it to script. He did not relate to the the larger political and religious themes - offering up in one interview that, he was too young to appreciate the Vietnam war and saw that as justice for eliminating that "part". What did he decide to create instead? A series of cute little vignettes of course! He even changed the caracter of Owen Meaney. Irving made Owen small and almost existential looking for the same reason Jesus was made tall and striking - to stand out in the crowd, to appear different, godly. Johnson ignored this fact, choosing to make his Owen a deformed, physically challenged, sweet little boy.
I was disappointed to see Johnson ignore these major themes. He demonstrated a lack of appreciation and understanding for what Irving created. Seems Irving felt the same way and demanded the movie not carry his book's title. It was, instead, renamed "Simon Birch".
I recall the criticism of Mel Gibson's "The Passion". Many felt Gibson showed a lack of depth in telling the story of Christ; that it appeared he didn't have the intellectual wherewithal to pull it off. I felt the same of Johnson. Where it concerned Owen Meaney, he just didn't "get it" and the result was disappointment on the screen at at the box office. Indeed, Johnson appears to have realised this was not his niche. He went on to direct lighter fare, including Jack Frost, Daredevil, Elecktra and Ghost Rider. Good riddence I say - but then who is going to remake Owen Meaney into the movie it should have been? I'm not sure. Perhaps it's better left untouched.
Good luck Edgar Sawtelle. I hope you fall into good hands...
