***** How to (not) adapt a book
Excellent book that explains how to adapt a novel, a play, or a true story into a film screenplay.
Although it was published in 1992, the information about adaptation itself is always current. Certainly less so are some references that do not take into account the emergence of streaming service production studios.
The only flaw, which obviously applies to me as an Italian reader, is that it refers exclusively to how films are made in the American market, although the author often highlights how certain adaptation choices are more common for European markets, but at the same time advises against them, since the target of her book is, precisely, the American screenwriter.
Nevertheless, the book is very interesting, because it offers a glimpse into the way films are produced in Hollywood, which also allows us to better understand the motivations behind the choices made when adapting American films, including those we don't like at all.
Adapting existing works is an extremely common phenomenon these days, certainly more so than it was when this book was written, so much so that it is now difficult to find a film in the theatres that is not in some way a derivative work. Yet I was surprised to read, at the end of the book, the list of films that won Oscars from 1930 to 1990 and to discover that over 90% were in fact adaptations of other works.
Purchase Art of Adaptation at Amazon.
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