1969: Midnight Cowboy

Screenplay by Waldo Salt
Adapted from the novel Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy

Joe Buck knows he doesn't have the biggest brain, but he's very proud of his body. He's positive that if he moves to New York, he'll be able to make a killing as a hustler. However, this proves to be much harder than he anticipates, and before long Joe finds himself alone with no money. After being locked out of his hotel, Joe encounters sickly, slimy "Ratso" Rizzo, who swindled Joe earlier but now offers to let him share the condemned apartment he's living in. In their struggle to survive, the two misfits form a close friendship.

This movie's most famous line - "I'm walkin' here!" - was improvised by Dustin Hoffman, so obviously it wasn't in the book. But otherwise, most of the dialogue was either directly quoting or paraphrasing the novel. The movie cut out some of Joe's backstory, which I thought was a wise decision, since that part kind of dragged in the book. There are some confused flashbacks in the film, which I understood a lot better after having read the novel, but the movie spends most of its time focusing on Joe's life in New York, whereas a huge chunk of the book takes place beforehand. To make up for these eliminations, the movie does add a few conversations between Joe and Ratso that were not in the book, which helps develop their relationship more. I actually greatly appreciated these changes. I think the book was trying to make a point about people needing friendship and not just empty encounters with strangers, but it spent way too much time on how crappy Joe's life was before meeting Ratso, and not nearly enough on how their friendship improved his life. It seems almost sacrilegious to say this, but I feel like the movie does a better job of conveying the book's message to the audience than the book did.

As usual, the book was more explicit than the movie, although not quite as much so as one might expect. This movie was originally rated X, after all, although it was later changed to R, and I'm pretty sure I've seen PG-13 movies that were more explicit. There are quite a few sex scenes, but more is implied than shown. Joe's initial intention when he moves to New York is to have exclusively female clients, but as he becomes increasingly desperate, he has several homosexual encounters. Since I didn't remember much about the movie, when I was reading the book I was sure these were going to be omitted. While some of them were, a few actually made it into the film. True, there are a lot of homophobic slurs thrown around, but at least this movie didn't go the route of several previous winners of this award and erase homosexuality altogether, despite its presence in the source material. It's fascinating to me how much more concerned people are with censoring films than books. Anyway, this movie makes it clear that by the end of the 1960s, Hollywood had changed to the point of welcoming and awarding films that addressed previously forbidden subjects, even if they didn't do so in the best way. I'm still not a huge fan of this movie, but I have to admit that it's better than the book, so while I disagree with its Best Picture win, I think it deserved Best Adapted Screenplay.

Next, the 1970s will begin with M*A*S*H, based on the novel by Richard Hooker.

1968: The Lion in Winter

Screenplay by James Goldman
Adapted from the play The Lion in Winter by James Goldman

It's December 1183, and King Henry II decides to let his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, temporarily return from imprisonment to join him and their three sons at his castle for Christmas. Henry wants their youngest son, John, to inherit the throne, but Eleanor is in favor of Richard, their oldest surviving son. The middle son, Geoffrey, is overlooked by both his parents. Meanwhile, King Phillip II of France shows up demanding that his sister, currently Henry's mistress, marry Henry's heir to fulfill the terms of a previous agreement between Henry and Louis VII, who was Phillip's father and Eleanor's ex-husband. Much family drama ensues.

This play is almost entirely made up of phenomenally witty, snarky dialogue. Given that both the play and screenplay were written by the same person, it should come as no surprise that the movie is the same way. It's not exactly, 100% word-for-word the same, but it's pretty darn close. Like maybe 98%. The film does add a couple of action scenes: for example, we see each of the brothers exhibiting his unique skill (or lack thereof) on the battlefield at the beginning, which was not in the play, but introduces their characters quite nicely. The film also adds several scene changes, a few minor characters, and many extras, but otherwise it's exactly like the play. And it works. Most plays aren't meant to be directly transposed onto the screen, but apparently this one was, although in the hands of a lesser cast it might have failed. Not to take any due credit away from the brilliant writing, but Katharine Hepburn was born to play this version of Eleanor, and I could not read the play without hearing her voice say those lines. And the rest of the cast is fabulous as well. Apparently the play flopped when it was first on Broadway, but this film led to its revival. Of course, I never saw the original production, but I can believe that the film breathed new life into the story.

There's not much else to say about this winner. It's probably the most faithful adaptation I've encountered so far, and it works well. I would highly recommend checking this movie out if you haven't seen it, although you might have to watch it a few times before you fully understand everything that's going on (I certainly did).

Stay tuned for Midnight Cowboy, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy. When I watched this for my Best Picture project, I said I didn't think I would be watching it again any time soon, and sure enough, it's been over 7 years and I haven't seen it since. So I'm interested to see if my opinion of the movie changes, either because of time or because the book influences my opinion.

1967: In the Heat of the Night

Screenplay by Stirling Silliphant
Adapted from the novel In the Heat of the Night by John Ball

When a white man's murdered body is found in the middle of a road in a small town in the American South in the middle of the night, the unfamiliar black man at the train station with a wad of cash in his pocket is an immediate suspect. Upon questioning by the police, the black man reveals himself to be Virgil Tibbs, who just so happens to be a police officer himself. Not only that; he happens to be a homicide expert. Reluctantly, Chief Gillespie and Officer Wood allow Tibbs to help them solve the case they initially arrested him for.

This is one of those adaptations where the gist of the overall story is the same, but the details are a lot different. The murder victim in the book is an orchestra conductor who's trying to hold a huge concert in the town, which is supposed to bring in lots of tourists. In the movie, he's trying to build a factory that will create lots of new jobs for both black and white people. Tibbs is from Pasadena in the book and Philadelphia in the movie, but that doesn't really make much difference; either way it's a faraway place that had slightly better race relations at the time. But his whole attitude is significantly different. In the book, the way he's treated by the white people he encounters is obviously very upsetting to him, but he's very non-confrontational about it. When he does things that flout the social rules, like sitting in the front seat of the police car next to a white officer, he does it quietly, almost nonchalantly. The book describes the white people's confusion and hesitation, and occasional revulsion, when he does such things that indicate that he expects them to treat him as an equal, but usually they decide to let it slide. Book Tibbs doesn't seriously break any major rules until towards the end, when he's about to catch the killer. In the movie, Tibbs is much more confrontational. Instead of casually breaking minor "rules" without drawing attention to them, Tibbs calls white people out for their racism. Perhaps the most significant example is when he's visiting Endicott. (Side note: there's a character named Endicott in both the book and the movie, but in the book he's originally from the north and is one of the few white people who willingly works with Tibbs, whereas in the movie he's a bigot with lots of black servants.) In the movie, Tibbs makes it clear that he suspects Endicott of the murder, and Endicott slaps him in the face. Tibbs immediately responds by slapping him back. This is in the presence of Chief Gillespie, who does nothing, which Endicott and others make clear is not acceptable, as pretty much any other white police chief would have immediately shot Tibbs in "self defense". There is nothing that even remotely resembles this incident in the book, but in the movie it stirs up the town and ultimately leads to a would-be lynch mob.

I had seen this movie several times, both because it won Best Picture and because it's a really good movie, but one thing had always bothered me: the murderer kind of seems to come out of nowhere. It's a great film about racial tensions in the American South in the 1960s, but the mystery part isn't very well done. This was the first time I had read the book, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the quality of the mystery is much better there. There are a lot of clues pointing to the killer in the novel that were cut out of the film. I can't elaborate too much without spoilers, but the movie kind of makes it seem like Tibbs himself doesn't even know exactly who it is until the murderer dramatically steps out of the shadows, which makes sense because nothing has been revealed to particularly implicate this person in the crime. In the book, on the other hand, while Tibbs admits that he's spent most of the time pursuing the wrong person, he ultimately recognizes the clues and figures it out without the killer having to dramatically pull a gun on him.

There are several other differences between the book and the movie, but I think the ones I've described and the others I noticed mainly boil down to this: the book is intended to be a murder mystery with racial undertones, whereas the movie is intended to be a story about racial issues that happens to involve a murder mystery. They both do their job very well, so even though this isn't the most consistent adaptation to win this award, I would call it one of the best.

Next up: The Lion in Winter, for which Katharine Hepburn won Best Actress (although technically she tied with Barbra Streisand)

1966: A Man for All Seasons

Screenplay by Robert Bolt
Adapted from the play A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

Sir Thomas More is loyal to King Henry VIII, but he is also loyal to God and the Church. When the king appoints himself head of the new Church of England because the Pope won't grant him a divorce, he demands Sir Thomas's support. Sir Thomas refuses to lie, but he is loath to speak out against his king, so he remains silent. But sometimes silence speaks louder than words.

Given that the play and screenplay were written by the same person, it should come as little surprise that they were very similar. A few lines were added, eliminated, or changed slightly, but not in any drastic way. I only really noticed two significant changes. One was the omission of the diplomat Chapuys from the film. His main purpose in the play is to emphasize Spain's influence over the Pope, helping to explain why Henry is having so much trouble getting his first marriage (to a Spanish princess) declared invalid. In the film, the refusal to annul the marriage is basically just portrayed as a matter of principal rather than of politics, whereas the play makes it clear that both were significant factors. I assume the reason for this change was to place more of the focus on Sir Thomas. Since he didn't really care about Spain, this was essentially irrelevant to his story, though in the play, Chapuys initially takes More's silence as support for his cause.

The second major change is a perfect example of one of the differences between stage and screen. The play is essentially narrated by a character known as The Common Man, who does not exist in the movie. The Common Man frequently breaks the fourth wall, and often changes costume to become several different minor characters: Sir Thomas More's steward, a boatman, a jailer, etc. This works well on stage, where the audience anticipates more suspension of disbelief than from the screen, but would probably seem confusing or even silly in a movie. Consequently, some of the Common Man's more important lines are given to other characters in dialogue, and each of his other roles are given to different actors (i.e., the steward is played by a different actor than the boatman, etc.). The film adds the character of the steward's wife, who is in one scene and has no lines, to give him an excuse to say part of what was originally a monologue to the audience. If you hadn't read or seen the play, none of these things would feel out of place in the film, so it was well adapted.

I find it interesting that this film won this award so soon after Becket because, apart from taking place four centuries apart, the premises are remarkably similar. In both, a King Henry of England has a disagreement with the Church, appoints someone to a position of power whom he believes will support him, only to find that person on the Church's side. However, Becket very clearly and openly opposes the king, and expects to be martyred for it. Sir Thomas More, on the other hand, believes his silence will keep him safe from death (historical spoiler alert: it doesn't). Still, the similarities are rather striking, especially knowing that two years after A Man for All Seasons, the winner of this award was once again about King Henry II, the same king from Becket, and was also based on a play. But in between was a contemporary story about racial tensions in Mississippi, so stay tuned for In the Heat of the Night, based on the novel by John Ball.

1965: Doctor Zhivago

Screenplay by Robert Bolt
Adapted from the novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Yuri Zhivago doesn't want much out of life: just to settle down to a quiet life with his wife and daughter, practicing medicine and writing poems in his spare time. However, a couple of minor obstacles keep getting in his way. One is a hauntingly beautiful but troubled woman named Lara with whom he keeps crossing paths; the other is the Russian Revolution.

Personally, I found this novel incredibly difficult to follow. All the characters are referred to by multiple different names, and I had a very hard time keeping everyone straight. Conversations between characters were frequently recorded without any indication of who was speaking, so I often found myself having to re-read several pages when I realized that my initial assumptions about who said what were incorrect. I'm not sure if this is more a reflection on the book or on me as a reader, but I feel like either way, this makes me rather ill qualified to judge how consistent the film was with the book. There were lots of things in the movie that I didn't remember being in the book, but whether that's because they weren't there or because I didn't catch them, I can only guess at this point. Of course, I'm still going to do my best for the sake of the blog.

The movie has some issues of its own, but I at least felt like I mostly knew what was going on. It's much easier to keep characters straight and tell who's talking when you can see and hear them. As far as I can tell from my limited comprehension of the book, the essence of the story was fairly consistent, but the details were often quite different. While there were probably some parts of the book that I didn't understand or remember enough to recognize them in the movie, I know there were definitely at least some things that the book merely implied that the movie chose to show, and vice versa. For example, the movie shows more of Yuri and Lara's affair, while the book mostly focuses on Yuri reflecting on it later. On the other hand, Yuri being captured by the Red army and forced to be their medic takes up a good chunk of the book, and it goes by very quickly in the movie. This is particularly odd because overall the film's pace is excruciatingly slow.

This might have just been my own personal interpretation (or misinterpretation), but the movie seemed to me much more explicitly anti-Communist than the book. The novel certainly showed characters suffering because of the unstable political climate, but the reasons behind their suffering seem much more subtle than in the movie. I don't remember Yuri publishing poems early in the book, but in the movie he's kind of famous for his poetry, which the Reds later forbid people from reading. The film also completely changes the reason Yuri's family moves from Moscow to Varykino; originally it was to get away from fighting, but the movie makes it to get away from the redistribution of their house to people who hate them because they used to be wealthy. In a way, it feels like the book is more critical of the Revolution, and the movie is more critical of its aftermath. That's an oversimplification, I know, but it's the gist of what I got out of this.

Coming up next: the 1966 Best Picture Winner, A Man for All Seasons. Both the play and the screenplay were written by Robert Bolt, who also wrote the screenplay for Doctor Zhivago. From what I remember, the story is remarkably similar to that of Becket. So it won't be the most unusual winner of this award, but I enjoyed the film seven years ago, so I'm not sad for an excuse to revisit it.