Lost In Translation

Why do so many attempts to turn books and short stories go from bad to downright unwatchable? How does the good intention of bringing something from page to screen so often result in total disaster?

I understand books and movies are different media with their own rules and regulations, but that doesn't stop the pain when I witness a story I love, and therefore have a lot of emotional investment in, turned into a complete dog's breakfast.

I would hope the people who write, produce and direct big screen versions of best selling and/or much loved books want to do a good job, but too often something goes awry. Why, for example, would anyone change the ending of My Sister's Keeper? Jodi Picoult can't have been too pleased about that. I wouldn't be if it happened to something of mine.

My knowledge of the movie business is limited, and I'd appreciate some insight into the thought process. More adaptations than I can count seem to me like they've read the blurb on the back cover of the book, spun a whole new story off it and made the movie from that. If you're not going to respect the source material and the people who created it, why bother? Why insult them and their readers with something that misrepresents the story they know?

Prose writers can and often do use the classic Hollywood three act structure in their work. I've tried it myself and it's very helpful when plotting, so there goes that hurdle. Writers also like to be as involved as possible when bringing their work to celluloid, but very few of them have that chance.

Look at Stephen King and Ray Bradbury, both great writers who've had far too much of their hard work turned into terrible movies. Why does this happen? They can't be so hard up financially that they'll sign any old contract to help them pay the gas bill. Why don't they, or their estate in Bradbury's case, have more say in who does what and how?

After he got burned a couple of times, Clive Barker was determined for this not to happen again and he took the director's chair himself. The success of Hellraiser proved him right for a while, until the studio suits and the MPAA set their hearts on turning Nightbreed into a travesty, then blamed him when it failed.

I am both a control freak and a shocking collaborator, so it's very unlikely any of my stuff will ever make it to the small or large screen. Having said that, I might one day be very tempted to sell the rights to my work to the highest bidder. My namesake Gabrielle Lord, who I've met twice, made enough out of the movie version of her debut novel Fortress to flee a failed marriage and make a new start. Changed ending or not, a similar arrangement might just help fund my long held dream of disappearing for a while and wiping the slate clean.

An addendum to my rant of January 25th

On Christmas Eve 2006, I found myself locked out of the house in the small hours of the morning and had one of those 'oh God, is this all my life is ever going to be?' moments. Soon thereafter, I had a vision of myself with twin daughters (Eleanor Victoria and Nathalie Joanna) who would get double firsts at Oxford and make their old man even more impossibly proud by playing Man On The Silver Mountain and Temple Of The King on viola and harpsichord at the village fair.

I laboured under this delusion for a couple of years until my friends started to reproduce. I went to someone's house for a Sunday lunch and was surrounded by babies and toddlers. They shuffled about like drunken midgets, bumped into things and broke them, screamed like banshees whenever they fell over, puked, shat and peed all over the place and poked their sticky little fingers into EVERYTHING.

The above was the stuff of nightmares for a neat freak like m'self, and I realised it would only get worse from there if I had children of my own. I'd have to feed, clothe, discipline and educate the little buggers for at least eighteen years, cook for them, clean up after them, answer their endless questions and try not to strangle them all the while.

That seems like a pretty tall order for someone who can barely look after himself, and from there it was only a hop, skip and jump to the realisation that not only did I not want kids, I didn't even like them. If nothing else, being a parent is so permanent. You can't send them back for a refund if you change your mind and, if you stuff up, which I almost certainly would, that one mistake or lapse in judgement will affect them for the rest of their lives.

So, long story slightly less so, no kids for me. I'm quite happy to be remembered through the books I will write, mostly about people like me who hover around the edges of society and can't quite make sense of it all, and the English Lit courses I will teach once I'm qualified to do that. I want to be part Socrates and part Alice Cooper with a dash of Dead Poet's Society. In short, the cool tutor everyone hopes they get, who will blow their minds by encouraging them to think about the books and films they already love in ways they never considered before.

I will chase that dream at the expense of everything else and go anywhere in the world to make it come true. Compromising it, or giving it up altogether for the sake of a partner and a family, isn't an option, nor would I expect anyone to give up or change her plans and ambitions so she could be with me while I follow mine. That isn't fair.

To quote my old pal Clive Barker, 'personal relationships have their place but everything is put aside for work. To me, the idea of a wife and children is a millstone, getting between me and the things I want to do. My most intimate relationship is with my imagination. It always has been. My imagination is the one thing that I really like about myself. It is the longest one night stand I've ever had. And it has never let me down. Yet.'

I may die alone. I believe we all do no matter who is with us at the time, but I sure as hell won't die forgotten.

Signal To Noise

I went to see some old friends on Boxing Day and came home with a bag full of horror DVDs, which I've watched sporadically. Some are great, some good and some awful, but that's another topic for another post. Or several.

One of many things I've noticed about films of this genre in recent years is an over reliance on music to compensate for lazy writing or direction. Music can be, should be and has been used to evoke emotion and enrich the whole viewing experience but too often in contemporary horror, I find it telegraphs the scare moments from miles away and lessens their impact. Not only that, it also leads to the dreaded 'fake out' and case after case of directors crying wolf to milk every last moment of tension.

When music or special effects are done well, they complement the film rather than overwhelm it. Consider the violins in Psycho's shower scene, the snatches of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells in The Exorcist or pretty much any of the recurring themes in John Carpenter's better films like Halloween and The Thing. Aren't any or all of those so much more memorable than the constant CRASH! BANG! BOOM! that is today's standard horror soundtrack? 'Why is this orchestra following me up the stairs? Something scary's going to happen! Oh no!'

It's not just horror either. Modern cinema, and TV to a lesser extent, suffers from the need to make everything self consciously epic; to manipulate and exploit the viewer's mood rather than enhance it. Doctor Who is especially guilty of this. In the 70s, Dudley Simpson would write virtually the same score for every episode, complete with ascending scales whenever a monster appeared, and nobody complained or even noticed because we were caught up in the story. Nowadays every significant moment or ropey plot point ('quick, let's blow up the Earth's atmosphere. Again!') is accompanied by what sounds like a manic John Williams in hopes we'll buy into the manufactured drama and turn a blind eye to such poor storytelling.