1990: Dances with Wolves

Screenplay by Michael Blake
Adapted from the novel Dances with Wolves by Michael Blake

After being decorated for bravery during the American Civil War, Lieutenant Dunbar requests to be posted to the frontier. When he arrives at Fort Sedgewick, however, Dunbar finds his new post deserted. His only companions are his horse and a lone wolf, until he begins to encounter Native Americans. Dunbar has been warned about their vicious, savage nature, and is therefore surprised to find them intelligent and just as human as he is. Soon the lieutenant finds himself torn between two worlds: the white world he was born into as John Dunbar, and the Indian world he grows to love as Dances with Wolves.

As has been the case with pretty much all of these Oscar-winning screenplays that were written by the author of the source material (I believe this was the 13th, counting ones that the original author co-wrote with other people), both versions of Dances with Wolves are quite similar. There are, however, a few extremely significant differences. The Natives in the book are Comanches, while in the movie they're Sioux, but almost all of the details about their culture and life are exactly the same. I don't know if that's because the Comanche and Sioux tribes are in fact very similar, or if they could just find more actors who could speak the Sioux language and therefore went through and changed every reference to Comanche in the original script to Sioux, but either way it struck me as a little odd. I did appreciate that they seem to have actually found Native actors to play the Native characters, which happens so rarely in Hollywood movies, but I would be curious to hear their thoughts on the accuracy of how their culture was portrayed.

Apart from changing tribes, there aren't a lot of major alterations to the story until the very end. Beyond that, the film depicts most of the main events of the book almost exactly as they originally appeared, but not always in the same order. The most glaring example of this is the beginning. The book starts with Dunbar on his way to Fort Sedgewick, and explains the events leading up to this later. The movie shows these events in chronological order, starting with Dunbar fighting the war. This doesn't make too much difference to the story itself, and I think it works well in both versions. But then there's the end. The end of the movie is completely different from the end of the book, which just feels strange given how similar the rest of it is. Granted, the final conclusion is the same: white people continued to invade and steal all the land. But the specific destinies of Dances with Wolves and his wife, Stands with a Fist, are on very different paths when each version of the story leaves them. Personally, I much prefer the ending of the book, but that's mostly because it's a little bit happier, and the rest is so sad that I really like seeing something even slightly good come out of it.

Stay tuned for the seventh and most recent Best Adapted Screenplay winner to also win Best Picture and Best Actress: Silence of the Lambs, aka the perfect Christmas story, based on the novel by Thomas Harris.

1989: Driving Miss Daisy

Screenplay by Alfred Uhry
Adapted from the play Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry

Daisy Werthan can no longer drive, so her son, Boolie, hires Hoke Coleburn to be her chauffeur, against her will. Ultimately her need for transportation overcomes her stubbornness, and she grudgingly allows Hoke to start driving her. Despite their differences in wealth, religion, education, and race, Daisy and Hoke form a close bond that lasts for the rest of their lives.

As is generally the case when plays are adapted into films, particularly when both scripts have the same author, the differences are minimal. Almost all of the dialogue is exactly the same, although the film makes some significant additions. The most striking change was the addition of more people. The play only has three people in the cast: Daisy, Hoke, and Boolie. While the film does mostly focus on those three, and most of the added people are extras, there are two important characters who are mentioned repeatedly in the play that we actually see in the movie: Boolie's wife, Florine, and Daisy's maid, Idella. They act pretty much exactly as they're described in the play, so their addition is still very consistent with the original. Florine doesn't do much, so I don't feel like her presence really enhances the story, but Idella is a great addition. I think the story greatly benefits from having her as an intermediary between Daisy and Hoke, which she kind of is offstage in the play, but I enjoy getting to actually see her interact with them in the movie.

Apart from scenes relating to Florine and Idella, the biggest change is during the road trip scene. The movie adds two police officers who question Hoke and Daisy suspiciously for no reason. Nothing terrible comes of this, and it's a relatively brief incident, but it helps to emphasize the deep-seeded prejudice of the society, mostly against black people, but also against Jewish people. This fits in well with the rest of the story, since although bigotry isn't the main focus, it's an ever-present undertone throughout, and this addition helps further tie this together. The play doesn't give much of a feel for how the outside world viewed this unlikely couple, and the film's use of these policemen to do that helps put the story into perspective. In many ways, the world was changing very fast during the time this story was set, but in others, not nearly fast enough. And unfortunately, that can still be said today. But it's nice to have this sweet story to remind us that friendship can prevail even when surrounded and discouraged by bigotry.

At the time of blogging, this is the second most recent winner of the three awards I've blogged about: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, and Best Actress. The most recent was two years later, but before I get to that I'll enter the 1990s with yet another Best Picture (but not Best Actress) winner to also win this award: Dances with Wolves, based on the novel by Michael Blake.

1988: Dangerous Liaisons

Screenplay by Christopher Hampton
Adapted from the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

The Marquise de Merteuil wants her friend and ex-lover, the Vicomte de Valmont, to seduce the young and innocent Cécile Volange, who is about to become engaged to a man whom the Marquise despises. The Vicomte, however, feels that Cécile is too boring of a target, and declares that he would rather focus on Madame de Tourvel, a married woman known for her strict morals. Without losing sight of her plans for Cécile, the Marquise makes a deal with the Vicomte: if he is successful in his seduction of Madame de Tourvel, the Marquise will allow him to return to her own bed.

In terms of the events of the story, the film is remarkably consistent with the novel. Naturally, some parts were simplified, and a few minor subplots were eliminated, but overall the main events were shown essentially the way they were described in the book. However, the way the story is told changed so significantly that they feel different. The novel consists entirely of letters written by various characters to each other, whereas the movie shows the characters interacting with each other. This allows readers to see different perspectives of the same event, which is particularly interesting since Valmont and Merteuil are almost always lying to everyone else except each other, and the other characters often feel the need to conceal their true thoughts to keep their dignity. The movie, showing the events themselves rather than letters after the fact, relies on the actors to convey these deceptions to the audience. Thanks to the film's stellar cast, the characters' thoughts and motivations are still quite clear without being spelled out.

However, some things are sacrificed with the elimination of the letters. For instance, the film doesn't develop Cécile or the man she loves, Danceny, very much at all compared to the book, so we feel less invested in them, which is perhaps part of the reason the movie doesn't bother to tell us what happens to them at the end. Not that I can truly blame the screenwriter for sacrificing these rather vanilla characters in favor of the far more interesting, though despicable, Vicomte and Marquise. The film mostly focuses on their relationship, which is also arguably the main focus of the book, but their whole dynamic changes significantly when they're talking face-to-face instead of writing. As far as I remember, Valmont and Merteuil never actually meet up during the whole course of the book (if they do, it's very brief), but in the movie they have several in-person conversations. While what they say is mostly very similar to what their original counterparts wrote to each other, there's a lot more back-and-forth in a real conversation than in letter correspondence, so the pacing of their conversations is a lot faster in the film. In addition, often the book put several letters from other characters in between theirs, so the reader has to wait longer to find out how they respond to each other than the viewer. I'm not sure if it's a direct result of this change in format or not, but I noticed that both of them, but particularly the Marquise, appear a lot more vulnerable and human on screen than on the page. They're still horrible, but they seem more real when they're having conversations than just writing formal letters. The movie version of the Marquise seemed to me much more clearly in love with Valmont than she is in the book, but perhaps I wasn't reading between the lines enough. Though different, I think both versions of the Marquise/Vicomte relationship are quite effective, with the one caveat that because we haven't seen them write very many letters to each other in the movie, the part at the end when the letters are revealed doesn't quite have the same effect. Otherwise, although I didn't particularly enjoy the story itself, I thought both the book and the movie told it very well.

Much to my relief, after this story about people being terrible to each other, I get to move on to a sweet story about an unlikely friendship, the sixth Best Adapted Screenplay winner to also win both Best Picture and Best Actress: Driving Miss Daisy, based on the very short play by Alfred Uhry. So stay tuned for that soon.

1987: The Last Emperor

Screenplay by Bernardo Bertolucci & Mark Peploe
Adapted from the book From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi by Pu Yi

At the age of two, Pu Yi became Emperor of China. At the age of six, he was forced to abdicate, but was still allowed to remain in the Forbidden City, surrounded by people who treated him as royalty. Thus, he grew up with all the privilege of an emperor with none of the responsibilities. As a young man, he became a puppet emperor of the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo, which he fake-ruled until the end of World War II. Later he was imprisoned and "remolded" by the Communist party, and spent the rest of his life as their poster boy.

This is one of those rare occasions when the movie is a vast improvement over the book. Generally, I'm not an advocate of films adding more drama, but the book was so incredibly lethargic that the story greatly benefited from the additions in the movie. The book is entirely chronological, but the film spices things up by starting with Pu Yi's arrest and attempted suicide (the latter of which was not recorded in the book at all), and then showing his early life in flashbacks as he reflects on it. The book forces the reader to slog through all the history, and then revisit episodes the reader barely remembers as Pu Yi at first lies to make himself look better, then tells what really happened. This makes the film much easier to follow than the book, as well as more engaging.

One of the biggest differences between the book and the film is the way the female characters are portrayed. Pu Yi barely mentions his wife and consorts in the book. The movie eliminates all but his first consort (I think he actually had four or five, it was hard to keep track), but it does turn her and the Empress into actual people with personalities. The edition of the book I read included several translator notes, which were probably the most informative part, and the translator indicated a couple of times that none of Pu Yi's marriages were consummated due to his impotence. None of this was mentioned in the book itself, but it might partly explain why he didn't seem to think the women in his life were worth talking much about. The filmmakers either didn't know about his deficiency or didn't care, because he definitely has sex in the movie. However, after his consort divorces him, he apparently stops sleeping with the empress, and she has an affair with her driver. When she becomes pregnant, Pu Yi tries to claim him as an heir, but the Japanese know who the father is and kill both the driver and the baby when it's born. The trauma of this is implied to contribute greatly to the empress's opium addiction. If any of that actually happened, it definitely wasn't in the book. She does become an opium addict, but there's no affair, no pregnancy, no murdered baby. But the story is way more interesting with all of that added.

The other major difference is the film's omission of the nauseating Communist propaganda that makes up the entire last third of the book. Over and over again, Pu Yi stresses how sure he was that the Communists were going to kill him or torture him, but instead they were kind and tried to help him become a better person. Once the Communists took over, all the poor people who had barely survived the Manchukuo-inflicted suffering were living wonderful lives, and isn't everything so wonderful for China now? In fairness, I'm sure there were people whose lives were improved by the new government, but I know a little too much about Mao's oppressive policies to share Pu Yi's reverence for him (if Pu Yi even wrote this whole book, which there seems to be some doubt about). Since the film was made by Westerners, it shouldn't be too surprising that it does not reflect the same enthusiasm for the Communist Party of China. The film portrays most of the prison guards as being angry and accusatory, which they were not at all in the book. The one warden with whom Pu Yi bonds due to his kindness and care is later shown being punished as a traitor to the Party (again, not in the book). Granted, the book was written while Mao was in power, so I don't think it would have been published without all the fawning over the Party that it does. Pu Yi was similarly enthralled by the Japanese during the Manchukuo days, until the Communists showed him how oppressive that regime had been. Sadly, it appears that no one ever showed him the same about the Mao regime. By adding the scene with the Party turning on the prison warden, the film exposes the former emperor's devotion to the new government as the naivete it was, which one only gets from the book by reading between the lines. One can't help feeling bad for Pu Yi in both versions, since he never truly got to be his own person in his whole life. The film shows him beginning to realize that, whereas in the book, he believes he has found freedom at last, failing to grasp that he has become a puppet yet again. I'm not sure which is better; both scenarios are pretty depressing.

Coming up next: Dangerous Liaisons, adapted from the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

1986: A Room with a View

Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Adapted from the novel A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Traveling in Italy, Miss Lucy Honeychurch and her chaperone/cousin, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, find themselves assigned to rooms without the view they were promised. Mr. Emerson and his son, George, have the audacity to offer to switch rooms in a rather improper manner, and thus an unconventional acquaintance is formed. When Charlotte comes upon George kissing Lucy, she whisks her cousin away. Upon her return to England, Lucy becomes engaged to the pompous and respectable Cecil Vyse, but finds it harder and harder to convince herself she's in love with him when the Emersons move nearby.

A Room with a View is everything that Out of Africa is not: the book is a relatively quick read and the film is a relatively faithful adaptation. I was delighted that most of the novel's chapter names were included on the screen, since they were pretty fun, my personal favorites being "Chapter VI: The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr Emerson, Mr George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive them" followed by "Chapter VII: They Return", as well as the many "Lying to ____" chapters. My other two favorites ("Chapter IV: Fourth Chapter" and "Chapter XII: Twelfth Chapter") were sadly absent, but we can't have everything. Including the chapter names emphasized how closely the film followed the novel. A few minor scenes were cut or altered, but on the whole the story and characters were quite consistent.  Probably the biggest change I observed was that Charlotte was more likable in the movie than in the book. That could have been partly because I find it very difficult to dislike sassy Maggie Smith, but it was mostly because the movie blatantly shows her softening significantly at the end in a way that the book only has other characters speculate about, so she's far less ambiguous on screen than on the page.

I find it rather interesting that the screenplay was written by a woman while the novel was written by a man. The story itself is rather sexist, so of course the movie is, too, but I noted that some of the book's more sexist observations were omitted from the film, though in fairness the 78-year gap between when they were written could have had just as much to do with that as the difference in sex of the writers did. The alteration of Charlotte's character could be interpreted as another way of making the story less sexist; the screenplay reveals her humanity while the book treats her as more of an obstacle. Not that I mean to disparage the book, because I did enjoy reading it, but I might have liked the movie slightly more for this reason. At any rate, it's very clear that Jhabvala actually read the novel she was adapting, but didn't feel constrained by it, which is what I'm always looking for in an adaptation. It's not my favorite book ever, but it's pretty good, and the adaptation more than did it justice, so I'd definitely call this a worthy win.

After the briefest of respites from Best Picture Winners, next up will be The Last Emperor, based on the autobiography of Pu Yi, which I believe was the 28th film to win both these awards. Contrary to what its title implies, it was far from the last to do so.

1985: Out of Africa

Screenplay by Kurt Luedtke
Adapted from the memoir Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, the book Silence Will Speak by Errol Trzebinski, and the book Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller by Judith Thurman

A Danish woman moves to Kenya to marry a Swedish baron and start a coffee farm. In her many years living there, she falls in love with the country and an Englishman, but ultimately loses them both.

Much to my surprise, I didn't find this movie quite as tedious this time as when I first watched it for my Best Picture blog. It didn't drag quite as much as I remembered. However, I must say that it is one of the worst adaptations to win this award, at least in terms of consistency with the source material. In Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen/whatever you want to call her (she went by about six different names) mostly relates anecdotes from her time on the farm, only a couple of which make it into the film. She barely mentions her husband, and while Denys Finch Hatton features fairly prominently, he's far from the main focus of the book. The movie, on the other hand, is almost entirely about her love life, and much of it isn't even accurate, to the point that I feel is almost insulting, both to her memory and to her book.

I get that the movie included her getting syphilis from her husband, even though she did not mention that in her memoir, because that had a very big impact on her life, and was included in both of the other books. But she seemed more bitter toward her husband in the movie than the books described, and most people didn't know about the nature of her illness until after her death, so in the movie when she tells Denys she had syphilis and he responds with "I know," it's kind of weird that she doesn't even question how he could possibly know that. Overall the movie spent way too much time focused on her marriage and love life in general. Her husband, Bror, also seemed a lot nastier on screen than in any of the books. And almost every detail of her relationship with her lover Denys Finch Hatton - how they met, how their relationship developed, conversations they had, even how she found out about his death - is different from how it actually happened. Possibly the thing that bothered me most about the movie was Denys calling her Karen. Pretty much nobody ever called her Karen, although that was her given name, and Denys always called her Tania. One of the biographies mentioned that it was only people who tried to pretend they knew her better than they did who referred to her as Karen, so it was kind of hard not to interpret this as a sign that the screenwriter was trying to pretend he knew enough to tell her story without actually having bothered to read it.

I know I'm probably coming across as unnecessarily harsh, but after having slogged through three rather long books about these people, I feel like I know them quite well, and this movie seems like an insult to their memory. And that goes for the Africans as well as the Europeans. Reading Out of Africa from a modern perspective, it definitely has some problematic elements, coming as it does from a colonial mindset, but Dinesen clearly cared about and respected the native African people she came in contact with, even if they were mostly her servants or subordinates on the farm built on land that was stolen from them. I can see why a movie made nearly 50 years later would find it difficult to portray some of her stories without seeming racist, but the decision to eliminate or greatly reduce the role of almost all of the African characters in order to expand a European love triangle isn't much better. And then, adding insult to injury, they couldn't even do justice to any of those three white people. Despite all this, the movie does have a few things to recommend it, and I don't hate it, but I'm almost completely certain that Isak Dinesen would have.

I cannot even begin to express how relieved I am to finally be done with this story. Next up is Room with a View, thankfully based on only one relatively short novel by E. M. Forster. So it should be significantly less than two and a half months until my next post.

1984: Amadeus

Screenplay by Peter Shaffer
Adapted from the play Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Salieri has an inherent love and appreciation for music, and desires nothing more than to compose great music to glorify God (and himself). To his dismay and bewilderment, however, Salieri finds that God has chosen to bestow incomparable talent not on the righteous Salieri, but on a vulgar, frivolous, silly little man named Mozart. Mad with jealousy, Salieri sets out to ruin, and perhaps even kill, his rival.

This is unquestionably one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations I've blogged about thus far. Peter Shaffer clearly has a profound understanding of the differences between these two media, and was not too devoted to his script to make several necessary changes. Perhaps the most immediately apparent change is the framing of the story. In both versions, an older Salieri narrates the story, but in the play he speaks directly to the audience, shattering the fourth wall. By contrast, in the film, Salieri tells the story to a priest in an insane asylum. To facilitate this change, Salieri's attempted suicide, which comes at the end of the play, is moved to the beginning of the film. The play employs a great theatrical method of drawing the audience in that would have been either too creepy or too hokey on film, and Shaffer evidently recognized that. In a similar vein, the play has two characters called the Venticelli, who facilitate the story and help indicate the passing of time by gossiping and carrying information between major characters. Since the film was able to use a lot more actors and a lot more sets, it could show the audience more than the play could, so the Venticelli became unnecessary, and thus were eliminated.

The movie added a lot of scenes that weren't in the play, and changed the details of most scenes it kept, but still managed to remain true to the original story (how historically accurate either version is, I'll leave to the Mozart experts to evaluate). The characters are all remarkably consistent, despite many changes to the specifics of their stories. For example, in the film, Salieri hires a maid to spy on the Mozarts, which isn't something he does in the play, but it's definitely something the Salieri of the play could have conceivably done. The movie does seem significantly longer, although by reading the play rather than watching it I didn't get a very good sense of how long the music lasted during the concert scenes. When I blogged about this movie's Best Picture win, I complained about the length, but also noted that there wasn't much that could have been cut out. After reading the play, I can see how it could have been shorter, but I honestly can't fault anything that was added for the film. It's a brilliantly crafted story, and if it seems a bit slow, it's never boring. I don't think I'd watched it since that blog, and I'm not sad I had an excuse to watch it again.

I hope, though I highly doubt, that I'll feel the same way about the next film, another very long Best Picture winner, Out of Africa, which I did not particularly enjoy when I watched it before. Enough time has passed that I wouldn't necessarily mind having to re-watch it, but it was adapted from three different books, none of which is particularly short, so it may be quite a while before you hear from me again.

1983: Terms of Endearment

Screenplay by James L. Brooks
Adapted from the novel Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry

Aurora Greenway is a widow whose life mainly consists of two things: toying with her various suitors, and criticizing her adult daughter, Emma, for her life choices. Emma does her best to please her mother, and everyone else in her life, though success is essentially impossible.

Speaking of essentially impossible, that's how I'd describe trying to summarize this story after reading the book and watching the movie. They are so incredibly different that if it weren't for the character names and the picture of Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger on the cover, I would have thought I was reading the wrong book. This is certainly one of the least faithful adaptations to win this Oscar. I can't decide whether I liked the book or the movie better. Some changes were definite improvements, but others I have strong objections to.

One thing I noted when I blogged about Shirley MacLaine's Best Actress win was that it seemed like Debra Winger (Emma) was in more of the movie than MacLaine (Aurora). Aurora is an important part of the movie, but Emma is clearly the protagonist. The novel is the opposite, or, more accurately, beyond the opposite. Aurora is decidedly the main focus of the book, and for most of it, Emma isn't even that important. The novel is split into two sections: Book I, called "Emma's Mother, 1962", which occupies pages 3 through 324; and Book II, "Mrs. Greenway's Daughter, 1971-1976", pages 327-371. Almost nothing from Book I made it into the film. The events of Book II start about 20 minutes in, and not even all of the first 20 minutes were from Book I, since the film starts earlier than the novel. Notwithstanding a few changes in the order and details of certain events, and an added trip to New York, Emma's story in the film is actually pretty consistent with Book II of the novel, but its importance is so altered that it feels inconsistent. To the novel, this story is almost an epilogue, showing that despite Aurora's best efforts to control everything and everyone in her life, bad things still happen to people she loves. The movie basically turns the epilogue into the main storyline. For the most part, I actually like this change. While the novel was obviously trying to emphasize that Emma always felt overshadowed by her mother by giving her a much smaller section, I think the mother/daughter dynamic was more intriguing than the widow/suitor dynamic, so I can't really fault the filmmakers for choosing to focus more on that. Also, by focusing more on Emma throughout, the movie makes the ending more devastating and personal, which works well from a dramatic standpoint. Book I of the novel goes off on a lot of tangents that really detract from the story. Aurora's maid, Rosie, has a lot of issues with her husband in the book that drag on and on. Rosie's barely in the movie, and her husband is only mentioned once, and I think these were wise omissions.

While I appreciate sacrificing some of the details of Aurora's, her suitors', and her maid's stories in favor of mother/daughter relationship development, I am almost appalled at what the filmmakers did to Aurora. Granted, Shirley MacLaine plays her to perfection. When I was reading the book, I could picture MacLaine doing and saying everything she did and said, even the things that weren't in the movie. But in the book, Aurora has all of her suitors wrapped around her finger. They're all terrified of her and try their best to woo her, but she's so willful and unpredictable that they always fail unless she wants them to succeed. When she finally picks the retired Army General, she is still clearly the dominant personality in their relationship. And now it's time for me to address the astronaut in the room: Jack Nicholson may have won an Oscar for this role, but his character isn't even in the book. I guess he's kind of a combination of a couple of the suitors, including the general, but there definitely was no retired astronaut in the book, much less a character named Garrett Breedlove. But the movie changed so many things that the name, profession, and even personality of the man Aurora ends up with are relatively minor. That's not what I object to. It's the nature of their relationship that I can't stand. I didn't like it the first two times I watched this movie, but after reading the book, it kind of disgusts me. Not only is Garrett the dominant personality in their relationship; she essentially swoons over him while he seems practically indifferent to her. And then there's the whole sex aspect. While Aurora's marriage to Emma's father wasn't particularly romantic, the book details several passionate affairs in Aurora's past. The movie treats Aurora's relationship with Garrett as a kind of sexual awakening for her, and she ends up almost worshiping him, whereas in her romantic relationships in the book, she is always the one who is worshiped. This is crucial to her character, and I can't help resenting the filmmakers' apparent need to "tame" her with Garrett. I don't mind the fact that they changed her, but this change almost ruined her, and I think probably would have done so in the hands of a lesser actress. So not only did Shirley MacLaine thoroughly earn her Oscar, I think she also partly earned James L. Brooks his.

I could go on a lot longer about all the changes, but I think I've pretty much covered the main ones, so I'll leave it there. Stay tuned for yet another Best Picture winner, Amadeus, based on the play by Peter Shaffer.

1982: Missing

Screenplay by Costa-Gavras and Donald E. Stewart
Adapted from the book The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice (aka Missing) by Thomas Hauser

In the aftermath of the Chilean military coup of 1973, American Charles Horman disappears. Several neighbors claim to have seen him arrested by soldiers. His wife and friend enlist the help of people at the American Embassy and Consulate, who are remarkably, even suspiciously, unhelpful. After weeks of little progress, Charles's father travels to Chile to aid in the search. Before long, Ed Horman begins to share his daughter-in-law's growing suspicions that the American government had a lot to do not only with the coup, but also with Charles's disappearance.

I'm glad I read the book before seeing the movie, because I'm not sure I would have fully understood all the implications of the story by just watching it. The book gives a lot of historical background of the events leading up to the coup, whereas the movie focuses mostly on Charles Horman's story. I understand why they made the movie this way, as I think it would have been difficult to show a lot of the other information presented in the book, but as someone extremely unfamiliar with Chilean history or politics, I found the additional context quite helpful. Overall, though, I thought the film did a pretty good job of conveying the political and social turmoil without going into all the specifics. It presents a few examples of the kinds of things that were going on through the eyes of the main characters, rather than deviating from their story as the book does, which I think worked well.

The change that kind of annoyed me, although I can still see why they did it, was the added conflict between Charles's wife and father. His wife is completely different, even down to her name (it was Joyce in the book and Beth in the film). She's significantly more blunt and sassy in the movie. In both versions, she's upset and determined to find her husband, but in the book she's not quite as angry and anti-establishment as she's portrayed onscreen. Charles's father is named Ed in both versions, but he's a lot meaner to Charles's wife in the movie. The book mentions that Charles and Ed didn't always get along or agree, but their relationship was in a pretty good place when Charles disappeared. In the book, Ed makes it clear that he didn't think much of his son's life choices, and is very rude to Beth about it. I don't remember book Ed ever being deliberately mean to Joyce, but film Ed makes it clear to Beth that he thinks she and Charles brought this on themselves, at least initially. He repeatedly calls her out for being "paranoid" when she expresses suspicion of the Ambassador and Consul, which is something else I don't remember from the book. Of course, I get why the screenwriters added this, since the tension between Beth and Ed makes for a more interesting, dramatic story, and their eventual reconciliation offsets some of the tragedy of what they eventually learn. I was just kind of annoyed because it seems a little insulting to imply that Charles's loved ones spent more time fighting with each other than trying to find him. I noticed that the film also changed the names of most of the American officials they encountered in Chile, which I assumed was because they're portrayed in a fairly uncomplimentary light. I thought maybe Charles's wife's name was changed to protect her privacy, but it could also be partly because they changed her character so much, and not for the better, that they wanted to emphasize that it wasn't really her.

We may never know the full story of what happened to Charles Horman. Most of the evidence remains classified for "national security reasons". This, along with everything his father and wife went through to find out where he was, seems to support the tragic theory that his execution was ordered, or at least approved, by the American government because he "knew too much" about America's involvement in the Chilean coup. The one consolation is that this story is allowed to be told. I don't think enough people have heard this story, but the fact that in the U.S. people are allowed to publish books and make movies accusing their own government of war crimes is, in my opinion, one of the best things about this country. If only we would stop supporting and even bringing about governments in other countries who arrest, torture, and kill people for owning the "wrong" books (which is what happened in Chile), that would be great.

Up next: Terms of Endearment, which will be the 25th film on both this and my Best Picture blog, the 10th to win both Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress, and the 5th to make it on all three of my Oscar blogs.

1981: On Golden Pond

Screenplay by Ernest Thompson
Adapted from the play On Golden Pond by Ernest Thompson

Norman and Ethel Thayer plan to spend another quiet, uneventful season at their summer home on Golden Pond, until their estranged daughter, Chelsea, turns up with a new boyfriend and asks them to watch his 13-year-old son for a month. Grumpy, prickly 80-year-old Norman forms a surprising bond with the young boy, who helps him regain an appreciation for what he has in life.

Act One of the play is almost exactly the same as the movie. A few lines here and there were slightly changed, eliminated, or added, and there were a couple more scene changes, but overall, from the beginning until Chelsea and Bill leave for Europe, the adaptation is quite consistent. I did note that probably the most famous line in the movie, when Ethel calls Norman her "knight in shining armor," wasn't actually in the play, but the lines leading up to it were. However, Act Two was changed significantly for the screen. Given that the playwright wrote the screenplay, I was rather surprised by just how different the two versions ended up. Granted, several of the lines from the second half of the play do make their way into the film, and the general message is the same, but the film made some major additions that I think greatly enhanced the story.

The character of the boy, Billy, is much better developed in the movie. He doesn't really do that much in the play after he's left with the Thayers, but in the film he pouts for a while and makes it clear that he doesn't want to be there. Eventually, however, Norman starts growing on him just as he starts growing on Norman. The movie adds a whole storyline about a giant trout that Norman has been trying to catch for years. Billy gets really into helping Norman look for this fish, and it contributes significantly to the development of their relationship. It's such a big part of the film that, since I had seen it before, I could hardly believe that nothing about this was even mentioned in the play. I guess it helped that they could actually film on the water, whereas in the play they could only talk about fishing after the fact, so the movie lent itself to more happening on their fishing trips. Still, this addition, and others that similarly contributed to the Billy/Norman relationship, definitely improved the story.

I'm not saying that the play was bad, but the movie was unquestionably better. It kind of reminded me of 1955's winner, Marty, in that the adaptation felt like a later draft of the original script. In this screenplay, Ernest Thompson strengthened the main weakness of his play: namely, Billy was underdeveloped as a character and underutilized in the story. And the result was definitely Oscar-worthy.

Coming up next: Missing, based on a book by Thomas Hauser that was originally called The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice, but the title was later changed to Missing.

1980: Ordinary People

Screenplay by Alvin Sargent
Adapted from the novel Ordinary People by Judith Guest

The Jarretts were once a relatively ordinary, if privileged, family, but not anymore. First, the older son drowned in a boating accident. Then, racked with guilt, surviving son Conrad attempted to take his own life. Now, Conrad has returned from the mental hospital and is back in school, trying to pretend everything is okay and that he isn't depressed anymore so his father doesn't have to worry about him. But Calvin Jarrett does worry about his son, and tries everything he can think of to relieve his pain. His wife Beth, on the other hand, tries to pretend that nothing has happened, but treats her son with cold civility. With the help of a psychiatrist, Conrad begins to emerge from his haze of suppressed feelings and remember what it feels like to be a person again.

I think this adaptation is probably one of the best to win this award. The characters are completely consistent with the novel's descriptions. Several details of the story were altered, but none of the changes ruined the tone or the big picture. The novel switches back and forth between Calvin and Conrad's perspectives more than the film, which is mostly focused on Conrad, but the film's audience is never in any doubt about how Calvin feels or what his role in the family is. Pretty much the only real changes that made significant differences have to do with Conrad's relationship with Jeannine, which progresses a lot further in the book than in the movie, but the story is really about Conrad's family rather than his love life, so I feel like the decision to sacrifice some of the romance to focus more on the family drama was a wise one.

One wouldn't think that the book would lend itself to a movie very well, since so much of it consists of descriptions of characters' thoughts, but this movie does a brilliant job of showing and telling these thoughts to the audience. Conrad has more conversations with his psychiatrist in the movie than the book, but most of the added ones are about things that Conrad thought and did in the book when he was alone. In this way, the extra therapy sessions weren't really additions so much as a different way of conveying the same information that was better suited to the medium of film. Most adaptations do this to a certain extent, but rarely is it done this well.

This doesn't really have anything to do with the adapted screenplay, but I have to add that the acting in this movie is incredible. As good as the script is, so much of it is about people fighting for control over their emotions that the acting is crucial to whether it works or not. And everybody nailed it. Seriously. I would have given all four of the main actors Oscars. As it was, only Timothy Hutton won, which, if only one of them could have, was the right decision, although how anybody could call his role "supporting" I don't understand. I guess it was just because he was so young. Anyway, there's not a lot of action in this movie, but it's one of the most genuine, raw stories about pain and depression I've ever seen, and certainly one of the best film adaptations of a book I've read.

Next up: On Golden Pond, for which Katharine Hepburn won her fourth and final Best Actress Oscar, based on the play by Ernest Thompson

1979: Kramer vs. Kramer

Screenplay by Robert Benton
Adapted from the novel Kramer versus Kramer by Avery Corman

Ted Kramer is quite satisfied with his life. He has a decent job that he's good at, he lives in a nice apartment in New York City with his beautiful wife, Joanna, who stays home to run the house and care for their young son, Billy. But one day Ted comes home to discover that Joanna, extraordinarily unhappy with her life, has packed and is leaving both him and Billy. It takes major effort, but eventually, Ted begins to adjust to his new role as a single father. But not long after Ted and Billy have finally gotten used to life without her, Joanna returns to sue for custody.

This is one of those adaptations in which the premise and the main characters are basically the same, but most of the details are different. The novel starts further back than the film, giving the background of how Ted and Joanna met, the early years of their marriage, Billy's birth, and Joanna's growing frustrations with being a stay-at-home mother. All of this is merely implied or briefly alluded to in the movie, which begins with the day Joanna packs. Initially, I thought this made Joanna more sympathetic in the book, since readers get a better understanding of why she leaves. But when Joanna comes back in the book she seems very cold, and even though she's grown a little bit, she's still incredibly self-centered. In the movie she seems more warm and genuine in her reasons for returning. Part of this might be Meryl Streep's incredible gift for making even the most despicable characters somehow sympathetic, but in addition to that, the things she says and does at the very end were drastically different, and made her seem like a much better person in the movie than the book. I don't want to spoil too much, but suffice it to say that while Joanna essentially makes the same decision in both versions, her motivation is significantly different. In the book, she is still clearly thinking of herself first, whereas in the movie she's thinking of what's best for Billy.

One change that might seem minor but had a major impact is the movie made Billy two years older than he was in the book. That doesn't sound like much, but in the book Billy was still in pre-school when his mother abandoned him, whereas in the movie he was in first grade. In the book, Billy is young enough that, while he clearly misses his mother, he accepts her absence as just the way things are. Movie Billy is enough older than book Billy that not only is he more disturbed by her abandonment, but he also believes he has something to do with it, which does not really occur to book Billy. This age change also means that Billy is already in school all day every weekday in the movie, whereas he's not in the book, so book Ted hires a housekeeper, which film Ted doesn't ever have a need for.

In addition to the housekeeper, the book shows a lot of other adults in Ted's life, like his parents, brother, in-laws, friends, and women he dates, who are eliminated from the film. The movie pretty much only keeps Ted's boss, one girlfriend (because Billy encountering a naked stranger on his way to the bathroom and asking if she liked fried chicken was apparently too priceless to cut out), and a neighbor friend who is a single mother (although her name and specific circumstances are changed). By getting rid of a bunch of extra characters, the movie has more time to focus on Ted and Billy themselves and less on what everyone thinks of them, which I feel was a good decision, especially since Billy was a little older. Most of the major events of the book made their way into the film, albeit with slightly different details, but the minor incidents were changed to accommodate this shift in focus. In the same vein, Ted loses his job right before the custody hearing in both versions (and manages to quickly get a new one for significantly less pay), but in the book it's because the company he's working for has been bought out and everyone's being laid off, which also happened earlier with a different company he worked for. The book makes it clear that losing his job was not even remotely his fault, which makes it completely unfair that they use it against him at the hearing. In the movie, he has the same job until just before the hearing, and now he's being let go because his work has been suffering while he's preoccupied with Billy. Overall, Billy is a more important character in the movie than the book, and I think the story is told more effectively that way. The book is good, but the film is better, so this Oscar was thoroughly deserved.

This Best Picture Winner will be followed by another Best Picture Winner: Ordinary People, based on the novel by Judith Guest.

1978: Midnight Express

Screenplay by Oliver Stone
Adapted from the book Midnight Express by Billy Hayes, with William Hoffer

College dropout Billy Hayes is traveling the world trying to find himself. Instead, he finds some very inexpensive hashish in Turkey, so he decides to smuggle a couple kilograms back to New York, where he knows he'll be able to make a significant profit. Unfortunately, Turkish airport security has just been heightened due to terrorist threats, and the Turkish justice system is extremely harsh on drug smugglers.

This is a true story, and the book is written in first person by the guy it happened to, but the movie is only vaguely recognizable as the same story. The beginning, when he's arrested and first goes to prison, is admittedly very similar, although many of those details are changed, and there are a few later episodes that happen in both versions, but as the story progresses, the two stories diverge significantly. Most of the characters have their names changed, and a lot of the characters in the film are amalgams of several people from the book. I wonder if there are more restrictions on portraying actual people on film than in books, since it seems like similar character changes have happened with other true stories, especially regarding people who are not being shown in the most positive light. But while the character changes in Midnight Express were notable, they were far from the most significant differences.

Movies frequently make things more dramatic than the books they're based on, and that certainly happened here. In the book, Billy effectively conveys how much he suffered - from being in prison, from torture, and from uncertainty about his changing sentence - while at the same time describing coping mechanisms he developed to remain relatively sane through it all. In the movie, by contrast, he goes berserk and bites someone's tongue out, ending up in a ward for the criminally insane, which I guess is in the same prison because one of the same guards is there. In the book he does spend some time in an insane asylum, but it's at a different facility and happens way earlier, and he's just there temporarily for observation. The guards in the book conclude he's not insane and send him back to prison. Also, not to spoil too much, but the circumstances of Billy's escape are completely different in the two versions. The book gives the impression that he could possibly have gotten by without escaping, whereas in the movie his situation was so much worse that if he hadn't escaped he clearly would have died in jail. However, unexpectedly, the movie cuts out probably the most intense part of the book, since after he escapes from prison he still has to get out of Turkey with very little money and no passport. The movie just ends with him walking out of prison and words across the screen saying he crossed into Greece on this date and made it back to New York a couple weeks later; the book actually takes us through how he did that.

Despite their many differences, both the book and the movie have the same very clear message: Whatever you do, don't try to smuggle drugs out of Turkey.

After 3 films in a row I hadn't blogged about before, I'm heading for another string of repeats, beginning with Best Picture winner Kramer vs. Kramer, based on the novel by Avery Corman.

1977: Julia

Screenplay by Alvin Sargent
Adapted from the book Pentimento by Lillian Hellman

Playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a risky mission in Nazi Germany at the behest of her childhood friend Julia.

This is an unusual adaptation because the book recounts several unrelated stories from Lillian Hellman's past, while the movie only focuses on one. So it's not really an adaptation of the book; it's an adaptation of the chapter called "Julia". Apparently there is some question about whether the Julia story actually happened, and if it did, whether it truly happened to Lillian Hellman, but it is nevertheless an intriguing story that makes for a fascinating movie.

Apart from a few minor alterations, the film is very consistent with the book, both in the story itself and in the way it's told. Both the book and the movie jump around in time a little bit, to introduce minor characters as they become relevant. The film's voice-overs from a more mature Lillian looking back on these events reflect how she narrates the book. The cast is flawless, perfectly bringing to life the characters described on the page. The "Julia" chapter was definitely my favorite part of the book (the rest of it was kind of irritating, to be honest), but I think the movie was even better. It was sometimes difficult for me to imagine people reacting to events the way they were described in the book, and not only did the film portray these reactions; it made them seem perfectly natural, not remotely over-the-top or forced as they easily could have been.

In short, I'm not sure how I feel about this book, but I thought the movie was extremely well done. I had never watched it before, and now I'm kind of angry that I had to watch Annie Hall the last two times I blogged about 1977 winners, since this movie was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress, and in my opinion deserved them both way more. One piece of trivia that I find interesting and probably no one else will is that Lillian Hellman was nominated for this award for her 1941 adaptation of her own play, The Little Foxes. That movie was nominated for nine Oscars without winning any, setting a shutout record that was not broken until 1977's The Turning Point lost out on all 11 of its nominations, the same year that an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's memoir won multiple Oscars. Coincidence, or bizarre conspiracy? Another random piece of trivia is that Julia was the film debut of some actress called Meryl Streep, who has since managed to accrue an unprecedented 21 acting Oscar nominations, and counting.

Stay tuned for Midnight Express based on the book by Billy Hayes and William Hoffer.

1976: All the President's Men

Screenplay by William Goldman
Adapted from the book All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

When five men are caught breaking into Democratic National headquarters at Watergate, the Washington Post assigns Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to cover the story. The two notice fairly early on that there seems to be more to this than meets the eye, especially since everyone they try to interview is extremely reluctant to talk to them, but they have no idea what they're about to uncover.

This book was originally published two months before Nixon resigned, and the movie came out two years later, so the intended audience presumably knew a lot more about Watergate than I do, as someone who was not born at the time. However, as both point out, the American public in general didn't have a lot of interest in the story while it was unfolding, so much is explained, and apart from not being very familiar with many of the people mentioned, I didn't feel like I was missing too much. Since the book was written by the actual reporters who uncovered the story, I'm assuming it was fairly accurate, if slightly biased. The movie was a relatively faithful adaptation, though it did cut out some details. For the most part, this didn't detract from the story, but I think the end suffered. The book effectively portrays the noose tightening around members of the White House staff until they are ultimately brought to trial, while the movie skips straight from, "Oops, we aimed too high and our whole investigation is set back" to "Now they're all going to jail". I would have liked to see a little more in between there. It kind of seemed like the filmmakers thought the movie was getting too long and they needed to end it.

On the other hand, I really liked how the movie shifted focus slightly away from Bernstein and Woodward toward the events themselves. The reporters are still very much the main characters, but the book starts with them finding out about the break-in, whereas the movie starts by showing the break-in itself. I appreciated the way the film added actual footage throughout, reminding the audience that yes, this truly happened. Otherwise, apart from skipping through the denouement and omitting some of the interviews and other small details, the movie is very similar to the book, and I think overall it was a good adaptation.

I have to say that it was kind of weird to read and watch this now. I often found myself wondering what the big deal was, since many of the illicit activities that Watergate exposed seem very slight compared to what the current administration is being investigated for. Also, Nixon's men were constantly accusing the Washington Post of inventing stories to make them look bad, and while they didn't exactly use the term "fake news," that was essentially what they meant. I suppose before long we're going to get some award-winning books and movies about whatever this is, and then in 40 years some young person is going to read and watch them and wonder what the big deal is compared to what's going on then. And now I'm sad.

Anyway, next up is Julia, based on the book Pentimento by Lillian Hellman

P.S. I recently updated my Best Actress and Best Picture blogs with last year's winners, so check those out if you want.

1975: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Screenplay by Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben
Adapted from the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Cold, calculating Nurse Ratched runs her mental ward with an iron fist. When rebellious, belligerent convict Randle McMurphy is committed, he effectively becomes a wrench in her perfectly-run machine, questioning rules and orders, and worst of all, stirring up the other patients. The power struggle between these two opposites grows and intensifies until it essentially becomes a full-blown war.

I had obviously seen this movie before, since I blogged about it for both Best Picture and Best Actress. However, I had never read the book. I think having seen the movie helped me follow the book better than I would have otherwise, but somehow reading the book also made me appreciate the movie way more than I had in previous viewings. I find it a little surprising that I feel this way because the novel and the film are actually quite different. The premise, most of the characters, and almost all of the major plot points are fairly consistent, but many of the details were significantly altered in the adaptation. For example, both versions feature a fishing trip organized by McMurphy, but in the book he plans it out in advance and even takes one of the institution's doctors with them, whereas in the movie he steals a bus to sneak out to the boat without the knowledge or approval of any of the staff.

Far and away the biggest difference is the perspective from which the story is told. The novel is written in first person from the point of view of Chief Bromden. The film mostly presents the story from McMurphy's perspective, until towards the end. This means that readers of the book know from the very beginning that Chief can in fact hear and speak and is merely pretending otherwise, while the movie's audience spends nearly an hour and a half assuming, along with McMurphy and the other characters, that he cannot. It also means that the readers of the book experience the ward through the eyes of a longtime patient, whereas viewers of the film see it through the eyes of a newcomer who really has no business being there in the first place. Bromden sees the ward and everyone in it as machines literally controlled by "the Big Nurse" (as he refers to Nurse Ratched), and it was fascinating, especially for someone already familiar with the story, to see it unfold through his sometimes hallucinating but always incredibly perceptive eyes. After having read the book, I sympathized with the other patients a lot more, which helped me more fully comprehend their motives in the movie than I had when I'd watched it before. However, I must say that I feel like the movie missed a tremendous opportunity to be even more disturbing and intriguing by not showing Chief Bromden's perspective as the book did. Of course, the movie's great as it is, but now I kind of want to see a remake that includes voice-over narration of some of Chief's more profound observations from the book and shows the machines and fog that he describes. Granted, no one will be able to play McMurphy and Ratched like Nicholson and Fletcher, but we can't have everything.

Up next: All the President's Men, based on the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

1974: The Godfather Part II

Screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo
Adapted from the novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo

This is both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather. Part of the movie focuses on Michael Corleone's rise to power; the rest on his father Vito's, decades earlier.

When I blogged about The Godfather, I mentioned that most of the book was already covered by Part I, so I didn't see what more was left for Part II. However, the book does include one section (Book III, i.e. Chapter 14) that gives some of Vito's backstory, and most of Vito's scenes in this movie are taken from that part of the novel. The Michael scenes are all new. I'm not sure how much of Michael's story in Part II was in Mario Puzo's mind when he was writing the book and how much of it was Francis Ford Coppola's addition, but the book pretty much ends where the first movie ends.

Personally, I much prefer Vito's story to Michael's, so I think the adapted material was far superior to the additions. The novel and the first movie both imply that Michael has stepped into his father's shoes as The Godfather, and will hold that position with perhaps even more ruthlessness, and honestly, that's enough for me. I don't need to see what happens next; I get the gist. To me, for both these men, it's more interesting to see how they became the way they were than to see them acting the way they turned out. Part I does that for Michael; Part II does that for Vito. Anyway, the adapted part was quite consistent with that section of the novel, and the additions seemed fairly consistent with the characters portrayed in the novel, so overall I'd call it a decent adaptation, but definitely inferior to Part I.

The main thing I remembered from watching this movie for my Best Picture project, lo those many years ago, was that it was very confusing. So I was not surprised that I wasn't entirely sure what was going on when I started this movie. I felt like I'd missed something, but I was still kind of following it, so I was waiting for it to take us back in time and explain what had happened. Until I went to change the DVD and realized I had been watching Disc 2 instead of Disc 1. So then I watched the first half of the movie, and shockingly enough, it made a LOT more sense. I think if I watch it a third time, in the right order, I might finally fully understand this film, but I don't think I'm up for trying that anytime soon. I know this is widely considered one of the best sequels ever made, but most of it seems superfluous to me. There are some great scenes, to be sure, but there is absolutely no reason for this movie to be three and a half hours long.

Next up: Best Picture and Best Actress winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, based on the novel by Ken Kesey

1973: The Exorcist

Screenplay by William Peter Blatty
Adapted from the novel The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

Actress Chris MacNeil is wrapping up a film in Washington, D.C. when her 12-year-old daughter Regan begins behaving rather strangely. And then very strangely. And then extraordinarily strangely. After consulting many doctors and psychiatrists, all of whom are baffled by Regan's negative test results in the face of her worsening condition, non-religious Chris begins to wonder if her daughter might be possessed by a demon, and seeks out a priest to perform an exorcism.

I'm not generally into horror films, but I knew that this one was very highly acclaimed, so I was glad when I noticed that this project was giving me an excuse to watch it, since I kind of wanted to see it but wasn't going to go out of my way to watch something that sounded so terrifying. Honestly, it wasn't as scary as I was anticipating, although it was plenty disturbing. I feel like I sort of did this wrong, though, because I ended up reading the 40th anniversary edition of the book and watching the extended director's cut of the film, so I didn't have quite the same experience as the Academy voters would have. Although I seriously doubt that most people who vote on the Best Adapted Screenplay winner have actually read the source material for all the nominees. But I digress.

As one expects when the author if the source material also writes the screenplay, this movie is very similar to the novel. I'm pretty sure that everything that's in the movie is also in the book, although there are several aspects of the book that did not make it into the film, as is generally the case with adaptations of novels. Most of the changes didn't really surprise me. I know of at least one scene that I read that was added for the 40th anniversary edition, so obviously that wasn't going to be in the film. The novel also repeats essentially the same conversation over and over again between Chris and various doctors, and I think the movie did a good job of capturing the gist of that without including all of it. There were a few side stories that helped develop some of the secondary characters more that I was a little disappointed not to see in the film, but I get that it wanted to focus more on the main story. One change that I was not expecting was the movie's elimination of the book on witchcraft, devil worship, possession, etc. that ends up in Regan's room. In the novel, the doctors and even the priest infer that Regan's condition was mostly induced by her subconscious mind's use of her knowledge of the contents of this book, which is ultimately what convinces most of them that an exorcism will cure her. I'm not sure if this was another plot point that was added in the 40th anniversary edition, but it seemed significant enough to the story that I was surprised that the film didn't include it.

Mostly, though, I was surprised by how much of the novel did make it into the film. The book is incredibly vulgar and obscene, and while the film does omit some of the swearing and most of the details about black mass and the specific desecrations of the church, it included a lot more vulgarity than I was expecting. There were definitely things I read thinking, "Well that's not going to be in the film" that actually were in the film. I can see why it was such a shocking and controversial film when it came out because some of that stuff is shocking even by today's standards. Which I think is partly why it is still considered one of the greatest horror movies ever made. Since I'm not a horror fan, I didn't particularly like this story, but I can recognize and appreciate that both the novel and the film did an amazing job of telling it. I'm not sad that this project gave me an excuse to experience The Exorcist, but I have no desire to revisit it anytime soon.

After this rather bizarre supernatural hiatus, I will now return to the Corleone family with Best Picture Winner The Godfather Part II.

1972: The Godfather

Screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola
Adapted from the novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Ten years of relative peace between the Italian Mafia families of New York is brought to an end when Don Vito Corleone refuses to agree to use his considerable connections and resources to back a narcotics dealer. The ensuing war forces the Corleones to re-evaluate how their family business needs to be run, and who will be the best man to run it when the aging Don is no longer in charge.

This book contains an awful lot of sex and violence, and describes both in a little more detail than I would have liked. I find it rather interesting - although entirely unsurprising - that the movie cut out almost all of the sex and included almost all of the violence. That's Hollywood for you. But to be fair, the main storyline is mostly focused on the gang war, so the violence would have been difficult to remove without detracting from the story, whereas the love affairs are mostly incidental and involve minor characters who could easily be reduced or eliminated. Still, it's interesting to me how much more comfortable American audiences seem to always have been with violence onscreen than sex, but that's a discussion for another time. Back to this particular adaptation.

I noticed that several things that were included in both versions were rearranged in the film. Many of the important events in the novel are revealed from the point of view of a character who didn't witness them as he or she learns about it, at which point the book takes the reader back to show what led up to that point. The film mostly presents such events to the audience in the order they actually occurred. This is a perfect example of what I'm always looking for in an adaptation: following the source material without being confined by it. The novel's method works very well in book form, but if the movie had done it exactly that way, it wouldn't have made much sense dramatically. I thoroughly enjoyed noting these changes, and would therefore highly recommend reading the book and watching the movie close together, as I did.

Beyond these and a couple other minor alterations, the film follows the book relatively closely. In a way, I found this slightly confusing, knowing that The Godfather Part II would go on to win this award two years later with the same novel cited as its source material. There doesn't seem to be a lot of the book left to adapt into the sequel. Given that I haven't watched it since my Best Picture project over 7 years ago, it shouldn't be too surprising that I don't really remember what happens in Part II, but I'm interested to revisit it and note whether any of it is directly from the novel, or if it's merely considered an adaptation by virtue of being a sequel. Regardless, I will not be reading the book again for that, so I'll be getting to the movie in the very near future. Particularly since I've already finished reading and watching 1973's winner, The Exorcist, which I should be blogging about quite soon.

1971: The French Connection

Screenplay by Ernest Tidyman

Adapted from the book The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and Conspiracy by Robin Moore

Two detectives notice a suspicious man surrounded by known underworld figures at a club one night and decide to investigate him. After many long days and nights of surveillance, they uncover that he is connected not only to the Italian mafia, but also to some mysterious Frenchmen who are highly suspected of smuggling heroin into the country.

This book does a great job of seeming true to life, but the result is that most of it is incredibly boring. All of the stakeouts and following people around do mostly pay off in the end, but they're rather tedious to wade through. The book effectively conveys how much endurance and perseverance was required of all the officers and FBI agents involved in this operation, but if it had been directly transported to the screen as is, it would probably be the most unwatchable movie of all time. But thankfully that's not what happened.

The movie doesn't seem to be at all burdened with remaining true to what actually happened. In fact, it doesn't own that it's based on a true story at all; at the end of the credits, there's even the familiar disclaimer about all events depicted being fictitious. This is already a significant departure from the book, which calls itself "a true account" in the title. All of the characters' names are changed (although the nicknames do remain the same), and most of the scenes in the film either aren't in the book at all, or are so altered as to be almost unrecognizable. Pretty much the only consistent scene is when the main detective, "Popeye" (Eddie Egan in the book, Jimmy Doyle in the movie) is following one of the Frenchman who has gotten on a train, then gets off, then back on, then off and on again. Popeye stays with him for most of that, but misses the last time he gets back on, and as the train passes him, the Frenchman smiles and gives him a little wave. That part is almost exactly the same in both versions. But for almost everything else, while some of the basic plot points are consistent, most of the details were completely changed. The movie is also way more exciting than the book; there's this whole intense part when one of the bad guys (who I'm not even sure existed in the book) hijacks a train and Popeye drives like a maniac through traffic to keep up with him, none of which was in the book. And the climax of the movie is about 50 times as intense as the climax of the book.

I can obviously see why the movie was changed to become more dramatic, but I'm not sure why it was so eager to distance itself from the source material, especially since the real detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso were credited as technical consultants and even made cameo appearances in the film. Maybe in some ways the movie was actually more accurate than the book? Or perhaps the film was more like how the detectives wished things had happened? Regardless, the movie is definitely more interesting than the book, so if you only want to experience one version of this story, I'd recommend the film.

The next book I'm reading for this project was the source material for two Best Adapted Screenplay Winners. Even though there's a different one in between them, I've decided not to read the book twice, although based on the first chapter it's almost infinitely more interesting than the last book I read. So stay tuned for The Godfather, based on the novel by Mario Puzo, then The Exorcist, followed by The Godfather Part II.

1970: M*A*S*H

Screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr.
Adapted from the novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker

This is the story of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, particularly focused on the hijinks of Captains Duke Forrest, Hawkeye Pierce, and "Trapper" John McIntyre, known as the "Swampmen." These three are rather brilliant military surgeons who cope with their physically and emotionally draining job by pulling off elaborate pranks, much to the chagrin of their commander, Colonel Henry Blake.

Rather than focusing on one continuous story, this book is really more a series of anecdotes, held together by the compelling characters and setting. It's therefore not in the least surprising that the story was eventually adapted to a TV series, since the book and even the movie are already fairly episodic, and the possibility for additional episodes is almost limitless. The main thing I noticed in comparing the book to the film is most of the gist of the episodes was the same, but the details were significantly different. Perhaps the best example is the Captain Waldowski incident. Waldowski, known as the "Painless Pole," is a dentist who is frequently described in both the novel and the film as very "well-equipped." In both versions, he intends to commit suicide, and the Swampmen come up with an elaborate plot to make him think he's killing himself with a pill that just temporarily knocks him unconscious, then do something to make him feel better about himself. In the novel, the Painless Pole is prone to worsening fits of depression, and they cure him by pushing him out of a helicopter to make him think he's come back to life. In the movie, he's depressed because he thinks he might be gay, and they cure him by helping him hook up with an attractive nurse.

In addition to illustrating the way the film changed the details from the book, the above example also demonstrates the other main thing I noticed: I'm pretty sure this was the first time the Best Adapted Screenplay winner had more sex in the movie than in the source material. The nurses definitely feature more prominently in the movie than in the novel, which I would ordinarily be in favor of, except they mostly serve as objects of desire for the men. I enjoyed the addition of Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan's cheerleading during the football game, since that added to the already considerable comedic value of that scene, but otherwise most of the nursing additions were completely unnecessary. This isn't to say that there was a lack of sexual content in the book, but there was unquestionably more in the movie, which is fairly indicative of the shift in what Hollywood considered allowable film content that occurred around the late 1960s/early 1970s. So from a historical perspective, I found this change fascinating; from a feminist perspective, not so much.

After watching this movie, I watched one of the special features, and learned that apparently, the screenplay was all but ignored when filming. The actors were encouraged to improvise, and the director made a lot of decisions himself without consulting the script. Ring Lardner Jr. was apparently furious, but still received sole writing credit, and thus received the film's only Oscar. I love this story both because it helps explain why the details in the film are so different from the book, and because it demonstrates how meaningless the Oscars can be. Says the person who spends a significant amount of her life focused on Oscar-winning films.

Coming up next: Best Picture Winner The French Connection, based on the non-fiction book by Robin Moore

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.