Chapter 3: The implied writer’s communication 77
3.2. The screenwriter and the implied writer 89
3.2.3. Differences between the real writer and the implied writer 94
3.2.3.1. The implied writer in adaptations 94
Adaptations have formed a part of the film industry since filmmaking began, and theoreticians have been studying them these last eighty years. Considering the amount of years that
adaptation studies have existed, it is inexplicable why most theoreticians have disregarded the screenplay’s position in the adaptation process. Even today many analysts choose to only focus on the source material and the film without mentioning the screenplay text’s part in the process. Jack Boozer tries to rectify this oversight by focusing on the screenplay in the collection of essays, Authorship in Film Adaptation, which he edited and wrote an introduction to. As his title suggests, Boozer finds that ‘[f]ocusing on the screenplay in
adaptation necessarily foregrounds issues of authorship’.39 Even though adaptation studies
39 Jack Boozer, ‘Introduction’, in Authorship in Film Adaptation, ed. by Jack Boozer (Austin:
can highlight issues of authorship, they can also investigate the story, structure, and text of the screenplay without relating them to the writer.
Adaptation studies have over the years evolved from focusing on issues of fidelity to
questions of intertextuality.40 Using an intertextual approach enables the theoretician to not
only compare the source text to the film, but to compare the ideological, sociological, and cultural influences that affected the two texts. Robert Stam writes that ‘the literary text is not
a closed, but an open structure […] to be reworded by a boundless context’.41 Through
referring to work by Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, and Gérard Genette, Stam further finds that adaptations need to be inserted into a ‘broader intertextual dialogism’, with intertexual dialogism referring to ‘the infinite and open-ended possibilities generated by all the discursive
practises of a culture’.42 Brian McFarlane puts it more simply: ‘To say that a film is based on
a novel is to draw attention to one […] element of its intertextuality, but it can never be the only one. Conditions within the film industry and the prevailing cultural and social climate at the time of the film’s making […] are two major determinants in shaping any film, adaptation
or not.’43
Considering that most theoreticians focus on an adaptation’s intertextuality, it seems
even more surprising that so few highlight, or even mention, the screenplays’ integral part of the film’s intertextual context. Boozer, although still focusing on the question of authorship, finds that ‘[i]ntertextual study can reveal both the screenwriter’s struggle for a creative take on preexisting literary materials and the collaborative process tied to the director who seeks to
put his or her particular reading on the screen.’44 He further concludes that ‘[a] revised
contemporary sensitivity to adaptive film authorship would […] include the environments of all three texts – literary, script intertext, and film. All three can be sites of personal and
cultural struggle and perhaps revelation.’45 It is evident that more examinations of the
screenplay text’s place in the adaptation process are necessary, and that the screenplay needs to be regarded as an integral element of the film’s intertextual context.
40 For good overviews of adaptation studies see McFarlane (1996), Naremore (2000), Aragay 2005),
Stam and Raengo (2004), and Cartmell and Whelehan (2007).
41 Robert Stam, ‘Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation’, in Film Adaptation, ed. by James
Naremore (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), pp. 54-76 (p. 57).
42 Stam, ‘Beyond Fidelity’, p. 64.
43 Brian McFarlane, Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1996), p. 21.
44 Boozer, p. 21. 45 Boozer, p. 24.
Even though adaptation studies has moved on from questions of fidelity, it is apparent when looking at published screenplay adaptations that are based on well-known novels and short stories, that fidelity to the source text is still given great weight. Most covers of
published adaptations emphasise the source text and the source text’s author. On the cover of the published screenplay Fantastic Mr. Fox it says: ‘Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox’, with the subheading (half the size of the title): ‘The Official Screenplay by Wes Anderson & Noah
Baumbach.’46 Roald Dahl’s name is three times larger than the screenwriters’ names. To
emphasise the importance of the source text even more, the foreword is written by Roald Dahl’s wife Felicity Dahl. The reader is thus inclined to not only construct the implied writers of the screenplay, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, but also the implied author Roald Dahl of the source text.
Writers of screenplays based on previous published material are forced to meet and
deal with the implied author of the source text. It is then up to the screenwriters to either create an image of themselves that corresponds to the implied author of the source text, or one that is clearly separated from it. The emphases on Roald Dahl as the creator of Fantastic Mr Fox leads to the belief that Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach have chosen to align their implied writer with Roald Dahl’s implied author. This is, however, not the case. Throughout the screenplay still photographs from the film are inserted together with extracts from Roald Dahl’s original text. The interesting part is that none of the inserted quotes from the source text actually appear in the screenplay text. Every extract is slightly altered and revised in the screenplay. This highlights the difference between the implied author Roald Dahl and the implied screenwriters Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. On a first impression the reader is inclined to construct an implied writer of the screenplay that closely corresponds to the implied author, but on a closer reading the reader discovers that the screenplay text is significantly altered from the source text, which indicates that the implied writer of the screenplay are different from the source text’s implied author. If the reader knows other works by the screenwriters (both their screenplays and their films) they would also be aware of the distanced comedy that appears in most of their work, which would lead readers to see more similarities between the implied writer of Fantastic Mr. Fox and the implied writer of, for instance, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (written by Wes Anderson and Noah
Baumbach, directed by Wes Anderson, 2004) than between the implied writer of Fantastic Mr. Fox and the implied author of its source text.
Fantastic Mr Fox shows that even though the author of the source text is emphasised on the cover and in a foreword, the screenwriter can still create an implied writer that is clearly separate from the implied author of the source text. Brokeback Mountain, on the other hand, is an example of when the implied writer of the screenplay is almost inseparable from the implied author of the source text. This leads to a greater difference between the real writers and the implied writer than between the implied writer and the implied author of the source text. Brokeback Mountain was originally published as a short story written by Annie Proulx. It was then adapted into a screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. There are three factors that lead the screenplay reader to infer the implied author of the short story as the implied writer of the screenplay text. Firstly, the screenplay was written in collaboration while a single author wrote the short story. Secondly, the short story’s author is clearly stated to be the inventor of the story on the screenplay’s title page. Thirdly, and this is the main factor, the screenplay is published together with the short story with the short story ahead of the screenplay, which leads to the reader already having read the short story and inferred an implied author from it before starting to read the screenplay (unless, of course, the reader skips the short story and reads the screenplay first). The conclusion is that readers of
Brokeback Mountain are inclined to infer an implied writer that corresponds very closely to the implied author of the short story. The writers, McMurtry and Ossana have intentionally created an image of themselves that is aligned with the implied author created by Annie Proulx. Diana Ossana states in the afterword to the screenplay that they saw their screenplay as a ‘long, honest and credible extension of Annie’s writing, her dialogue, sense of time, place and landscape’, and she concludes her afterword (and the book) by stating that ‘Brokeback Mountain the film stands faithfully beside “Brokeback Mountain” the short story’.47
Another example of where the screenwriter created an implied writer that closely
corresponds to the implied author of the source material is Sense and Sensibility (written by Emma Thompson; directed by Ang Lee, 1995). In the case of Sense and Sensibility, however, the creation of the implied writer is more closely linked to the film production. Ossana and McMurtry wrote their adaptation independently from producers and directors. They
commissioned the rights directly from Annie Proulx, and they did not turn to production companies until after they had finished the screenplay (and discussed it with Proulx). The production of Sense and Sensibility, on the other hand, was initiated by the producer Lindsay
47 Diana Ossana, ‘Climbing Brokeback Mountain’, in Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, by
Annie Proulx, Diana Ossana, and Larry Mcmurtry (London: Harper Perennial, 2006), pp. 143-51 (pp. 148-49, 151).
Doran who spent ten years looking for a screenwriter she felt could properly adapt it. In the foreword to the screenplay Doran writes that she ‘knew exactly what [she] was looking for: a writer who was equally strong in the areas of satire and romance […]; and a writer who was not only familiar with Jane Austen’s language but who could think in the language almost as
naturally as he or she could think in the language of the twentieth century.’48 Doran, thus,
searched for a writer who could create an implied writer faithful to the image of the novel’s implied author, which she had constructed when reading it.
It is worth highlighting that other readers of the novel might construct different images
of the novel’s implied author than Doran, and they might not regard Jane Austen’s capability of writing romance mixed with satire as the core element. That this is the case is apparent when looking at some of the critiques of the film and the screenplay. Kristin Flieger Samuelian, for example, finds faults both with Thompson’s feminism and her inability to
communicate the truth of Austen’s novel.49
Doran found her screenwriter in Emma Thompson, stating that Thompson ‘not only
knew how to think in Jane Austen’s language, but she understood the rhythms of good scene writing and how to convey a sense of setting’, and that Thompson ‘[l]ike all good
screenwriters […] didn’t object to rewriting a scene again and again when it was required.’50
Doran concludes the introduction with the following: ‘Our fondest hope is that people who love Jane Austen will find the film to be faithful to the humour and wisdom of the original
novel.’51 Doran’s specific requirements of Thompson to write in a way similar to Jane Austen
makes it possible to conclude that Doran co-created the image of the screenplay’s implied writer.
That a difference exists between the real writer Emma Thompson and the screenplay’s
implied writer becomes apparent when reading Thompson’s diary of the film production, which is published together with the screenplay. Thompson’s sense of humour and her ability to get it across the page is evident in both the screenplay and the diary, but in the diary Thompson shares her opinions on the characters and their lives, and she openly writes about all the ups and downs of the shoot. It is difficult, for example, to see the writer of the classical
48 Lindsay Doran, ‘Introduction’, in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility: The Screenplay & Diaries, by
Emma Thompson (London: Bloomsbury, 1995), pp. 7-16 (p. 11).
49 Kristin Flieger Samuelian, ‘Piracy is Our Only Option: Postfeminist Intervention in Sense and
Sensibility’, in Jane Austen on Screen, ed. by Gina Macdonald and Andrew F. Macdonald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 148-58 (p. 155).
50 Doran, in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, p. 14. 51 Doran, in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, p. 16.
and Austen-like screenplay in this statement: ‘Omigod. Stare at wine-sodden eyes in mirror
and hate myself.’52
In the diary Thompson also writes of script meetings and how she changed and revised
the screenplay throughout the production process, incorporating not only Doran’s opinions but that of other production team members as well, especially the opinions by director Ang Lee and co-producer James Schamus. What becomes most apparent, however, when reading Thompson’s diary is her love for the story and Jane Austen, and her determination to produce a screenplay worthy of Jane Austen’s novel. Thompson thus intentionally created an implied writer who is closely aligned with Jane Austen’s implied author.
Another adaptation that needs mentioning is Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of Susan
Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief, which Kaufman entitled Adaptation (written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonze, 2002). What makes Adaptation such an interesting case is that the story of Adaptation focuses on how the fictional character Charlie Kaufman struggles to adapt Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief. In his struggle to adapt the book, the
character Charlie Kaufman gets help from his brother Donald Kaufman who also tries to make it as a screenwriter. The screenplay Adaptation is credited to both Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman but the reality is that Donald Kaufman does not exist – he is purely a
fictional character that Charlie Kaufman invented when writing the screenplay. The reader of the screenplay, however, will construct an image of the writer, that is, the implied writer, as being made up by both Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman can thus be seen to purposefully have created an implied writer that is different from him.