Stage, Page or Cinema

by Christina Hamlett

“In a movie or novel, a character can walk out the door of his New York flat and emerge--two frames or paragraphs later--at a trendy French cafe. Furthermore, he may even have aged ten years in the interim.”

A former student recently sought my advice on how to adapt one of her short stories to a screenplay. “Everyone tells me it would make a good movie,” she said. Although it had garnered several awards and was unmistakably well crafted, it was nevertheless apparent after the first reading that “everyone” and I were not in accord about its potential for a two-hour film. Hence, the subject of this month’s column: Choosing the Right Medium to Convey Your Plot.

It was Hitchcock who said that a good movie was one that could be watched without sound. Why? Because films are primarily action-driven. We don't have to watch one for very long to figure out who's being chased, who's doing the chasing, and who's falling in love in-between.

In contrast, the measure of a good stage play is one that can be enjoyed without visuals. (Remember the popularity of bygone radio programs?) Theater scripts are dialogue-driven. Even if all three acts take place on the same set, we are riveted as an audience because we care what the actors have to say and, most especially, how they say it.

Last but not least are books, which are IMAGINATION-DRIVEN and fueled by the individual reader's frame of reference. (Why else would they keep us up late at night, peering into the dark corners for evidence of the goblins our minds have crafted from off the printed page?) Novels also hold the distinct advantage over film and theater in that they usually allow us more intimate access to the characters' heads, hearts, and souls.

There are other differences as well which you need to take into account when either writing your initial draft or re-fashioning an existing project into an alternative venue. While some plots certainly contain enough material to successfully satisfy all three options (i.e., THE LION IN WINTER), it is not without significant compromise, as the following elements demonstrate.

TIME, SPACE & DIMENSION

Books and films have virtually no limits regarding physical setting, the latter owing much of its freedom to the advent of computer-generated wizardry. A play's parameters, however, are dictated by the limitations of the stage on which it will be performed, which accordingly influence the set design, cast size, and feasibility of special effects (i.e., pyrotechnics, prehistoric raptors, and garden variety ghosts).

Transitions from one place to another are also handled differently in live theater. In a movie or novel, a character can walk out the door of his New York flat and emerge--two frames or paragraphs later--at a trendy French cafe. Furthermore, he may even have aged ten years in the interim. In theatrical scripts, such transitions not only require a change of makeup and wardrobe but a total overhaul of the set and everything in it. While these can be accommodated with intermissions, you can't very well keep sending audiences out in the lobby every time a character has to exit and end up somewhere else!

On the plus side, live theater has a convenient way of establishing places and times for viewers who might be slow-witted; specifically, programs distributed before the show neatly clarify if it's "Later, the same day" or "Five years later in Amsterdam" (which is better than having your characters make doofy curtain-raiser remarks like, "My goodness! Is it Sunday morning already? Who'd have thought we'd be here in Cousin Midge's guestroom in the Catskills...").

Speaking of time, it passes differently on stage than in the other two, even though all three employ an accelerated pace of storytelling. While books and films can flash back, fast forward, or hover in multiple zones simultaneously, a play is relegated to the structured increments of acts and scenes. Audiences accept these temporal boundaries because they’ve already accepted the notion that 20 minutes of stage-time does not necessarily equate to 20 minutes of real-time. Compare it, if you like, to dog-years: 20 minutes of theatrical action would take up at least an hour and a half anywhere else.

EMPATHY

Unless you’re reading aloud to someone, a book is a solitary experience--one in which we can superimpose our own personalities and vicariously "live the plot.” With a book in hand, you can skim, linger, re-read, or you can envision anyone you want in the key roles. You can even set the whole thing aside, think about it and come back a month later. For movies and plays, however, you’re being told the story on someone else's clock and with someone else's definition of the cast. There isn’t as much room for your imagination to go wandering off to other things because, at any given time, you’re being directed as to what to pay attention to. This is especially true of film, where you’re seeing everything from only one angle and POV--the camera's.

When it comes to arousing sympathy or empathy, a play shares the novel's capacity to engage an audience in a seductive manner that movies cannot. Can you name a single musical, for instance, that was ever made better by its adaptation to the big screen? There's something electrifying about the presence of real bodies, real voices, real music and real energy that even the glitziest cast-of-thousands blockbuster can't compete with. Suffice it to say, people on stage are also the same relative size as the people in the audience (which always makes for better "bonding" than looking down the tonsils of a 30-foot-high face).

Likewise is the degree to which we're allowed to "know" the characters in the story. In a novel, we can literally read their thoughts and emotions at every juncture. In a play, we learn about them gradually through the course of their conversations; we only know what they're thinking, though, if they actually express it out loud to someone else or in a monologue. In a film, we tend to get more distracted by, "Oh, here's Harrison Ford or Meryl Streep in another role" than we are by the background of whomever they’re supposed to be portraying. While flashbacks and voiceovers ala ANNIE HALL can reveal what's on a character’s mind, excessive use of such devices can confuse an audience.

THEN THERE’S THE PAPERWORK

A typical screenplay is approximately 120 pages and is comprised of master shots and dialogue. A three-act play is a little shorter, with the longest act being first and the balance of the show split between the remaining two (i.e., 40:30:30). An average book runs about 400 pages and, depending on genre, is comprised of roughly 65% narrative and 35% dialogue. Right away you can see the challenge in adapting a book to a feature film--if that bulk of narrative can't be explained in dialogue or conveyed through the lens of a camera, out it goes. Nor can every film smoothly segue to live theater or a paperback--the first requiring it to substantially contract and the second demanding that it expand with enough intellectual exposition or gratuitous scenes just to fill up space.

Clearly, the easiest transition is from a play to a film, their respective lengths and content being the most similar. Keep in mind, though, that in putting a dialogue-driven story against a bigger and more colorful backdrop, you run the risk of killing the very charm that made it accessible and unique to begin with!

-- CH
©2000 by Christina Hamlett