Basically, A. E. Hotchner takes almost nothing and creates something out of it. The question then becomes, Is it still Hemingway’s story? And the answer, to my mind at least is, well, . . . yes, technically. Maybe.
Is that a clear enough answer? Nope!
I guess you could say that Hemingway drew a sketch and Hotchner created a painting out of that sketch. But since we’re talking about Hemingway, that sketch would probably have been no more than a stick figure on a blank piece of paper.
The layout of the story is this: Port town. Storm blowing in. Bar fight in which Stick figure A fights Stick figure B and the result is that Stick figure B gets cut with a knife. Stick figure A runs off, thinking he’s killed Stick figure B. Stick Figure A escapes in his boat, but has the storm to contend with . . . Fast forward to daylight, after storm has passed. SFA sees birds hovering over a section of water. SFA goes over to check it out. He sees debris and knows that a ship has gone down. The ship is a large vessel, fancy, with rich passengers. SFA dives in and sees that those inside have all perished. He can’t get into the ship, but he can see through a porthole.
Here is a cool scene in the story: Looking in the porthole we (SFA’s POV or point of view—not that you couldn’t figure out what POV stood for, but just in case, you know.) see a woman floating, hair billowing out. She’s just floating there, dead. This is a great scene. I’ve used something like this scene, more or less, in at least two stories of my own (prior to ever reading this story, of course. Honestly). No porthole though, and I never even thought about this connection of my stories to each other, before just now.
I’m not sure that I used a similar scene in any of the Pirate Tales, but I used it in the last story of the Civil War Dark Tales series: Volume 2, and then again in a story in Volume 4. And I’ll probably use it in the future.
Anyway, back to Hemingway’s story. SFA tries to break through the porthole to get at the riches that he knows are inside the ship. He knows that others will come and break into the vessel and get the treasure. He thinks that he might as well break in and get the goods first if he can. He makes several attempts. In the end, no luck! End of story.
So that’s what A. E. Hotchner has to work with. The whole story is pretty much two main scenes: The bar fight (which is the lesser of the two scenes), and the scene of SFA finding the large vessel and trying to break into it to get at the treasure. Hotchner’s job was to adapt the story into a screenplay.
In his book, which includes both the short story, and the screenplay, along with a discussion of Hemingway’s style of writing and what it was like working with him, Hotchner lists five varieties of adaptation. His definition of adaptation is “conversion into a movie of a work not written for that purpose.”
And the five varieties of adaptation are . . .
1) Scissors Adaptation—take a classic play and use scissors to cut and paste. He gives examples of Shakespeare, etc.
2) Distilled Adaptation—taking a large work, usually a novel, and boiling it down to a manageable length.
3) Expanded Adaptation—fashion a screenplay that is bigger than the source from which it sprung.
4) Straight Conversion—the source material is just right for the screen. To my mind, this is what happened with The DaVinci Code. I watched the movie right after reading the book and was bored to death, knowing exactly, every little thing that was going to happen. However, I do believe in remaining true to the author’s vision.
5) Wild Adaptation—taking a basic work and converting it beyond its apparent resiliency. In other words (my words) F-ing it up. This, I believe is what might have happened in the case of The Color of Money. I mentioned this book/movie in the last post (The Walter Tevis post). Though I have yet to read the Tevis book, or the Price screenplay, I did read the intro to the Price/Color of Money screenplay, where Price states proudly that he made all kinds of changes, including adding characters that weren’t in the book. So anyway . . . the envelope please–
And the winner for the variety of Adaptation used in the adaptation of “After the Storm” is . . . (imagine the sounds of me ripping into the envelope here).
Number Three! Expanded Adaptation. Of course, you knew that all along, because this story is way, way too sparse in prose, as Hemingway’s stories are.
Okay, I’m going to digress for a minute or two (you knew it was gonna happen), from the “After the Storm” story and screenplay. In Hotchner’s book, he mentions that he also at one point adapted the Hemingway story “The Battler.” In any case, James Dean was supposed to play the character the Battler (the punch-drunk boxer), and Paul Newman was supposed to play the part of Nick Adams. Well, Dean got killed just before rehearsals started, so Newman got switched to the part of The Battler. And of course, that then led to Newman’s playing Rocky Graciano in the movie Somebody Up There Likes Me.
And here’s where I part completely with the Hotchner book (at least for another minute or so) . . .
Somebody Up There Likes Me is one of the best Paul Newman movies ever! Now, I know that’s a bold statement, because there are so many great Newman flicks. I mean, it’s really hard to top Cool Hand Luke, and Hud, and The Hustler, etc. I saw SUTLM on TV when I was a teenager and loved it. I’ve seen it once since, and I think I’m going to watch it when I finish writing this post. Okay, I just snuck and watched the two-minute trailer for it on my phone. I had forgotten that Pier Angeli was in the movie, playing the girlfriend. And that’s weird, because she had been James Dean’s girlfriend. I believe I had read, way back, that she and Dean had had a fight and she had broken up with Dean which was why he was driving crazy/angry and then wrecked, killing himself. And what makes things really weird is that Newman and Dean were supposedly always vying for the same parts in plays when they were both starting out in New York. (I couldn’t really envision that when I read it.), and now Pier Angeli is playing girlfriend to Paul Newman’s Rocky Graziano. So had Dean not killed himself, he would have still played the Battler. So, would that have then led to Dean playing the Rocky Graziano role in Somebody Up There Likes Me? Kissing Pier Angeli on the screen? All kinds of crazy questions. Of course, I don’t think Dean would have been as good in the Graziano role. That’s just my opinion, however.
Okay, I’m back to “After the Storm” and its adaptation to screen.
It was really cool to have the short story followed up by the screenplay in the book. And Hotchner’s commentary was good. Even without the commentary, which was just in the introductory section, fortunately, just reading the story and screenplay straight out was very informative. Hotchner took the little he had to work with and ran with it. I mean, there were twists and turns galore. The screenplay was, surprisingly, really exciting.
I did have one problem with it, however, and that was the ending. I thought the ending was a little off. I thought it went just a bit against character to have what happened, happen. But then again, it is hard to express character, just through the dialogue and words on the page of a screenplay I would imagine. I believe that character really gets expressed, and rightly so, through character actions (movements, mannerisms, facial expressions) and interactions on the screen. After all, isn’t that the actor’s job? Although it does help if there is enough character expressed on the page.
I guess I’m so obsessed with characters because my stories always seem to be character driven. I mean, without the characters popping up and taking off, I would be dead in the water when it comes to writing. So, yeah, I love the idea of character and character expression.
And the beautiful thing about the modern age (unlike my (back in the day) happening to see Somebody Up There Likes Me on TV simply because it happened to be showing on one of the three available networks at the time, in black and white—though I’m pretty sure the film is black and white) is that I was able to stream the After the Storm movie immediately after I finished reading the book with the short story and the screenplay. This was all in just a matter of a couple of hours. I got the full instruction, and followed the path of short story to screenplay to film.
Though the movie kind of seemed like a B grade movie to me while I was watching it—and I’m not sure why—it was still good. The ending, that I didn’t especially care for in the screenplay, played a little better on screen. Other than that, the screenplay was, in my opinion, a little bit better than the movie itself. And as far as it feeling like a B grade movie to me—that I can’t explain. All of the elements were there to create a good movie; though the film did vary a little from the screenplay (but not too much). The acting was good, and the actors were top notch. I’m not sure whether I would have picked Benjamin Bratt for the role of the main character. He was good, but perhaps played the character a little lighter than the impression I had of the character in the story. Maybe that was my issue, if there was one. Maybe he had to play things a little lighter due to there being a romantic interest, which wasn’t really there in the story. And the character I had in mind in the story was probably a little heavier built. Maybe I was imagining a character similar in build to Hemingway. All of his stories seem to lean toward being autobiographical. I tried to imagine Armand Assante playing the Benjamin Bratt role, and it almost works. I wouldn’t know who to place in the role that Assante played in the film. He was perfect in it. Such a great actor (who might not get the credit he deserves). He was excellent as Napoleon. And, of course, he’s such a manly man, or is the term a man’s man. LOL He’s cool in any case. Now I kind of want to go watch the Assaante movie I the Jury, based on Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.
So, anyway, the movie After the Storm was winner of the 2000 New York International Independent Film Festival Awards for Best Picture and Best Screenplay. I would highly recommend checking it out, but only after reading Hotchner’s book.
Hotchner’s screenplay became so much more than the Hemingway story. The question remains, however, was it, in the end, still the Hemingway story?
***
And right there, just above, would have been the perfect place to end the post. I should have, but I can’t. Here’s why, and it has nothing to do with anything, really, except the fact that Patricia Neal keeps popping into my mind. She’s standing, looking out the kitchen window, watching Hud (Paul Newman, of course). Now this is either an exact scene from the movie Hud, or it’s something I’m remembering from a story I wrote, where I was imagining Patricia Neal as the main character, standing in the kitchen (and now this is going to bug me because I can’t remember what story it was). God, if I don’t become a schizophrenic in the end, it will be a miracle. But what I’m really thinking about with Neal at the moment (and what I’m trying to get to) is that she was married, in real life, to Roald Dahl (you know, James and the Giant Peach, and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; yeah, that guy, that author.). Crazy, huh? Though I’ve never read either of those books, or stories, or even seen the Wonka film (either of them), I’ve read the Dahl short stories. The stories are odd and Twilight Zone-ish, and fantastic.
And thinking of that odd union also brings to mind the craziest love connection of all time (to me, at least): the actress/model Faye Dunaway and Peter Wolf, who were married for five years. If you don’t know who she is, watch these movies: Chinatown, Bonnie and Clyde, Network, Three Days of the Condor (based on the James Grady book Six Days of the Condor—movie and book are both excellent), and many more movies. Too many to name them all. The beautiful and classy Faye Dunaway and the Wooba Gooba! To know what I’m talking about, and to know how crazy Wolf is, you have to listen to the J. Geil’s Band Live album and listen to the super long intro (15 min?) to the song “I Musta Got Lost.” Or you can look up the You Tube video of the Geil’s band playing at Holy Cross college and watch the crazy man in action, moving spastically and riffing it. Then, and only then, will you see why it is so crazy to me that he was married to Faye Dunaway.
Okay, I know, I’ve gone way off the rails at this point. LMAO. But I’m having fun. I have the urge to break into the Wooba Gooba/Musta Got Lost intro right now, you just don’t know. I might, in fact, be doing just that. I say, Ba-a-by, Ba-a-by . . .
Later. Check out the Hotchner book, or at least read the Hemingway story.
