remember my best sellers challenge? et al.

Remember that thing I said? That I was going to pick up my best sellers reading challenge from 2016? I really did enjoy diving into The Horse Whisperer and getting transported back to the 90s while watching the visually beautiful film adaptation. It was one of those books that makes you almost *enjoy* your anger while you’re reading it. So yeah, maybe I’ll make an empty promise to go back to this list again.

I still have my copy of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and his prose is mainly what stopped me from reading the rest of it. His writing is so bad for so many reasons… but hey, I have no excuse not to finish it now. And, in case you can’t tell, I love books with film adaptations. I love seeing changes/differences and understanding why the writers made the changes they made.

I’ve been watching one of the Great Courses on screenwriting with all my downtime and I’m getting a lot from it, except one major point with which I disagreed mid-course. Prof. Angus Fletcher recommends writing an adaptation as a “warm-up” exercise to eventually writing an original story of your own. Having done both, I can say an original script felt FAR simpler than an adaptation. You’re not attempting to meld a story from one medium into another when you’re writing an original piece. Can’t say it wouldn’t be a great challenge though for someone interested.

We’re so quick to criticize books > film as an audience I don’t think we tend to appreciate the MASSIVE challenge screenwriters/directors face in the process. Having recently watched the 2020 Emma., and being about as unimpressed as I thought I would be (not with the visuals – those were super fun), I keep going back to my favorite 2009 BBC adaptation with Romola Garai in the title role.

Honestly, it’s probably THE only adaptation where they get Harriett’s character right…

It’s 4 hours compared to 2 which should be noted, but Sandy Welch does an excellent job with every series for which I have seen her adapt a story for the screen.

Bringing it back, I’ll probably go back to The Da Vinci code and watch the movie just to see what Tom Hanks was so excited about. Although reading the book… I think Dan Brown was imagining more of a Chris Hemsworth type than a Tom Hanks for his protagonist.

We all have dreams, don’t we, Dan Brown?

greta, thou hast surprised me

Color me wrong. The best kind of wrong.

There were many happy surprises throughout a film that I was prepped not to like, but found myself charmed instead. It reminded me a bit of the book > film adaptation Mansfield Park (1999) which fills out the heroine’s personality (Fanny Price) with characteristics of the story’s author (Jane Austen). A huge deviation from the book, but something that works for one of Austen’s most criticized heroines.

There’s flecks of Louisa May Alcott’s actual life peppered into Jo’s story in the film (her meetings with her publisher) which rely less on the source text of Little Women and more on the actual journey of Alcott as an author. Not a bad choice considering I think the book, overall, is a bit more saccharine than Alcott seemed to be herself.

A friend tipped me off that the story was told in a non-linear fashion, events unfold out of sequence and the movie does a great deal of timeline hopping. This actually reminded me of my initial reading of the novel when I was in high school. I was given the SECOND installment of Little Women, published under the title Good Wives in 1869, as a gift and read it without knowing it was the first half of Alcott’s now famous tale of the March sisters. Much as this reading experience didn’t affect my appreciation of the story – neither did the this choice for the film. A technique of which I am usually skeptical, but Gerwig uses it effectively. One example is with Professor Bhaer.

He’s the first man we meet in the film as it works it’s way back to him again. This gives the audience more familiarity with him than in the book where he can seem like a tacked-on love interest after Jo’s rejection of Laurie. That’s my take on it anyway. If you’re looking for a more in-depth reason as to why Prof. Bhaer is so dreamy in this version I think The Cut covers that pretty well here. And I agree with Gerwig’s choice.

I think the 90s version still has my, overall, favorite casting choices. I won’t harp too much on comparing one film version to another as this is a novel > film comparison, ultimately. I think each adaptation brings it’s own strengths/weaknesses to the table. HOWEVER, if you want a good laugh that will leave you wondering if some critics ever bother to read the source material you can always click here to see why one man thinks what I consider an OK adaptation is OMFG THE BEST EVER. He pretty much hates everything Greta did with a vehement passion and offers no justification tying it back to the actual novel. He says Gerwig “settles for sentimentality.” Classic. Um, have you even *read* Little Women, bro? It’s sentimental AF. Why is that a bad thing? ROTFL. #endrant

Other than that, the reviews I found online were mostly favorable. Mine being one of them. I could go on about casting choices (surprised how much I enjoyed Emma Watson as Meg in this, Gerwig really seemed to bring out her acting chops and not just rely on her Emma Watson-ing), but I think I was pleased with most of them. The actors played well off each other and the sister-dynamic that is so crucial to the telling of Little Women was present and accounted for. Amy was much more grounded in this, but I attribute that to a slight rewriting of her character and less on Florence Pugh’s performance. Another change I didn’t mind.

I think if an audience member comes into this film with no expectations and fresh eyes it can be an amazing experience. I didn’t think a new version of this story was needed. Now, I’m glad we have this one in the canon. I think Gerwig made it just different enough to introduce a new generation to the March sisters and renew an interest in Alcott and her legacy. I just wish the previews didn’t make it seem like such a feminist manifesto, save for a few bolder scenes (Amy’s speech about marriage to Laurie), the film is much more nuanced than that (Jo’s speech to her mother about being independent, but also lonely <— REAL LIFE).

I recommend Little Women (2019) right up there with my other favorite version(s) of the film. Oh yeah, the book is pretty great too.

little women (the preamble)

Today I was asking a friend of mine whether or not she’d ever read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or seen any of the film adaptations. She had not! A very exciting prospect to consider, coming to such a well-known text with no prior impressions. What a treat!

She then said she always prefers film adaptations which stick closest to the book.

Slightly disagree. I can’t say I entirely agree. There are too many differences in the way a story is told to justify the idea that “the book is always better than the film.” As previously explored in my post about The Art of Adaptation there’s many reasons why major changes to a source text can result in a successful film. So long as the heart and characters of the story remain intact, I’m happy.

Of the 3.5 versions of Little Women I have seen, the 1990s adaptation with Winona Ryder us my favorite. I didn’t even finish the most recent, gritty, BBC series… 30 min. in and it just didn’t feel like Little Women. As for the most recent theatrical release in the U.S., I have avoided it. From what I can tell, feminist anachronisms abound and I am not about that. The Alcott’s were mold breakers in their own time and I prefer to keep their attitudes in context. But hey, I’ll give it a go today and see if it surpasses my expectations.

the goal

It finally happened. You went back to school, got another degree, went back into the workforce for a while and put your nose to that grindstone and told yourself, “Dammit, this will be the time I get a job in my field! I WILL get paid for having a degree in English and all those people who asked, ‘So, are you going to be a teacher?’ can finally go suck an egg when I get there!”

That’s a really great goal, right? Accomplish something so you can say:

I told you so?

Joke’s on you, Smug Writer Who Thought She’d Be Writing Masterpieces Of The Stage By Now, a pandemic caused you to lose your job. Well, almost lose your job. Let’s hope there’s still a job by the time this is all over. I used to laugh at this blog because I’d give all this advice on reading and writing and yet I wasn’t getting paid to do it, then I was, and now I’m not (again). During that brief period when I was legitimate – I managed to post 0 updates. How’s that for irony?

So, here I am back at it. I actually finished another book since being unemployed which is rare for me these days considering I have so little time and mental focus to read these days. That could very well be why I’ve spent so little time on a blog about reading and writing. That and WordPress seems to update their system every time I log back onto this thing.

All this to say, I guess the hunt never stops. And the only consistent (or inconsistent) part of my writing life has been my scripts and this blog.