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.