Film Adaptation 101

With adaptations of works by Richard Yates, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Bernhard Schlink hitting theaters this holiday season, the biggest screenwriters are dishing out movie-writing advice. Over at Hollywood Reporter, a crew of script writers explained how they changed lines, added scenes, and created characters while adapting literary works.

Screenwriter Justin Haythe explained how he added scenes to Yates’ story in his adaptation of Revolutionary Road. Screenwriter Eric Roth had an even tougher job, expanding Fitzgerald’s bitty short-story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” into a full length feature. Most dramatically, screenwriter Peter Buchman invented an entire character as he dramatized Ernesto “Che” Guevara‘s diaries for Che.

Playwright David Hare recently adapted Schlink’s The Reader, and explained that adaptation always changes the book: “You can’t simply step your way through a book with perfect fidelity. If you do, the whole thing is completely dead.”

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