Cynicism bounced off the walls of Cabot Auditorium on Monday night as four authors discussed the film adaptations of their respective books. Susanna Kaysen, author of Girl, Interrupted; Tom Perrotta, author of Election; Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My Affection; and Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion shared their experiences. For the most part, the writers had little good to say about the process.
The authors began the night by describing their reactions to the film adaptation of their words.
"It's everything you fear it will be. It's stupid and it's seductive and it makes you feel important and you're not," Kaysen said. Published in 1994, Girl, Interrupted was made into a movie in 1999. The book recounts Kaysen's 18-month stay at McLean, a private psychiatric hospital outside Boston.
"I feel that the movie brought to the screen every emotion that I tried so hard to avoid in my book," Kaysen said. "[The movie] was sentimental, self-pitying, boring, and put the girls in the place of victims. It was toxic waste."
Once a writer sells the rights to her book, the movie that results often becomes something entirely unrecognizable. Although the movie supposedly bases itself on the book, the author has little say in the production of the film.
"To think that you have any control is to get your heart broken," Kaysen said.
Shapiro agreed. "For the writer of the book to retain any control is almost impossible. Film is too collaborative," she said. Shapiro's novel, Slow Motion, is currently being adapted to film.
McCauley can relate to the anticipation that Shapiro is feeling right now. It took 11 years for The Object of My Affection to be made into a movie. Although McCauley said that the screenwriter, Wendy Wasserman, did a good job adapting his novel, the end result had little to do with him. "It was very much her project and very much not mine by the end," he said.
Although Reese Witherspoon is one of the producers of Shapiro's movie, Shapiro fears for the future of her novel. "There's a script floating around there somewhere in Hollywood. Reese is still very passionate about it but, most likely, it will turn into a made-for-TV movie starring Tori Spelling."
Though the other authors were dissatisfied with the process, Perrotta felt differently. "Everything happened the way it should have," Perrotta said. "I feel incredibly well served."
Election, written in 1993, was picked up by producers in 1996, and aired in theaters in 1999. The novel was published shortly before the movie hit the screen. "[The movie] was made so quickly it almost beat the book to publication," he said
Modern writers are discovering the marriage between their books and movies. They grapple with the notion that many people base their impression of a work on a movie adaptation. They also realize that the popularity of their book depends heavily on the popularity of the movie.
"Your book sells many more copies to people who won't read it [otherwise]," Kaysen said.
While Perrotta acknowledged that seeing the movie is a far cry from reading the book, he admitted that he liked the attention he received after writing Election.
"It's intoxicating to feel that something you wrote is a topic of common conversation, to be a part of something the world actually cares about. As a literary writer, that's a pretty rare thing," he said.
Shapiro hoped that her movie will encourage people to read her memoir. The fact that the book has been made into a movie does not change the book itself. She was only concerned that people will, in fact, read it. "The movie will keep the book out there and give it another life," she said.
All four authors agreed that, regardless of their feelings on the film adaptations, they would do it again. Writers can rarely support themselves simply by writing. For McCauley, selling the rights to his book meant that he could quit his job at a travel agency and focus on his next novel.
Kaysen, who felt the most disdain for her novel's adaptation, said that even she would relive the process. "Well, they made my book into a movie and it wasn't very good. Now I never have to work for a living, though," she said.
Some think this satisfaction with monetary benefits is missing the point, but the authors disagree. "It's not a compromise of artistic integrity if you've already written the book. It's just a sell-out," Kaysen said.
Sophomores Sarah Brasslett and Chris Cao were sitting in the audience. After the forum, they discussed the negativity of the night's speakers.
"It was interesting to see the incredible amount of dislike the authors had for the movies," Brasslett said.
"I kind of found it a bit disheartening how they separated themselves so much from the movie versions of their books," Cao said. "They shouldn't be so flippant about it. It's still their book."
