Adaptation

[robotnik2004]

So as the seven stalwart players (although not Chris F., with whom my only contact is occasional ghostly music on my car radio late at night) already heard, a film student emailed me the other day to ask if I was the person behind the game Unknown USA, and if so, if it would be OK for him to adapt it as a screenplay. I said it was up to the other players as well as me, but that if he wasn't doing anything commercial, I didn't have any problems with it, and indeed I'd love to see the finished project when it's done. (If any of you who played in the game do have reservations, let me know. It's your baby as well as mine.) It's just a student project, but it's flattering, and hey, who hasn't imagined a screenplay or a movie of one of their games?

But I'm already doubting if I have the equanimity for adaptation: I said in an email something about how big and sprawling the story was and that I wondered how it could be shaved down into a screenplay. The student said "oh, I know I'll have to cut things - for instance, I was thinking the Doc Lully subplot will have to go." And in my head I was instantly CUT DOC LULLY NO WAY HOW CAN YOU CUT DOC LULLY WITHOUT LULLY THERE'S NO IAM AND NO DERO AND NO WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN IV IN MEXICO AND DANNY'S STORY WON'T MAKE ANY SENSE AND DANNY'S LIKE DOROTHY, HE'S THE MORAL CENTER OF THE WHOLE THING!!! Even though intellectually I can see how one might cut the Lully-IAM-Monarch mind control/historical shift part of the story, the truth is my emotional response would be the same to any cut. The homicidal state trooper with the chimp? The Cuban cop with a walk-on part in the second session? The old couple selling frozen lima beans outside Ochopee Swamp? Deathless brilliance, I tell you! Remove the tiniest figment and the whole masterpiece collapses like a house of cards!

Would you be any different if it was your game?

Comments

[bryant]

It's a damned miniseries or it's nothing!

I'd like to see the screenplay, yeah.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

If HBO was willing to pick up Carnivále they'd better be willing to pick up our game, since we did it first.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, I thought Angie was the moral center of the group. She was, after all, the party's healer.

I am not a cleric!

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

Anyway, as was pointed out last night, nobody ever listened to Angie anyway.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of all the sessions that ended with Danny charging in and dragging Mickey or Reese out of some violent fight or standoff that was just about to get much much worse, and then the Eldorado screaming off into the night.

That might not be much of a "moral center," come to think of it, but you take what morality you can get.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

You need Chris's email?

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

It's not urgent that I have it, but yeah, I guess it would be nice to have for completeness sake.

[crisper.livejournal.com]

No adaptation screenplay that was ever worth a goddamn ever got there without strangling the life out of one precious little baby or another. The worst thing an adapter could possibly do is keep Everything. I fully anticipate WATCHMEN to be the perfect demonstration of this, one way or the other.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Intellectually, I know you are right. But my babies!