Who's Reading, Who's Watching?

Is a book adaptation a movie's best ticket to an Oscar win? 

PRAVEENA SHIVRAM

5 March, 2006
CHENNAI, INDIA


Book, story, character, fiction – a world that is very personal to each and every reader. Perceptions, interpretations, reflections, things that can never be shared completely, and yet, it brings about a vague feeling of mutual understanding, between author and reader, book and reader or even between one reader and another.

In the last few years, Hollywood has only been capitalizing on that aspect; most movies released are adapted from either a book or a short story. In fact, through the history of cinema, more than one fifth or one third of the films are adapted from books. And looks like that is your definite one-way ticket to the Oscars. More than half of the Best Picture nominees, in the last few decades, have been films that have been adapted from books. Take the 2006 Oscars. Out of the 109 nominations, 47 have been adapted from books, including the best picture nominations, where Crash and Good night and Good luck are the only original scripts.

Right on the top of the list is Brokeback Mountain, which was adapted from a short story by Pulitzer Prize winning writer Annie Proulx and is up for eight nominations at the Oscars. Capote, of course, is based on the book by Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, with the movie being based on the life of the author during his work on the book. Munich too is based on George Jonas's Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team. That leaves Crash and Goodnight and Good Luck.

Other films at the Oscars this year that are book adaptations, are the Memoirs of a Geisha, with the book by the same title written by Arthur Golden. This film, though not nominated for Best Picture, has raked in six nominations nevertheless. Pride and Prejudice has Kiera Knightely for Best Actress and Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener, based on the bestseller by John Le Carre. Or even North Country, the film that earned Charlize Theron her second nomination, is also based on Clara Bingham's Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law .

Even in the Best Foreign Film Category, Tsotsi has been adapted from a novel by playwright, Athol Fugard's 1980 novel of the same name. Not to forget popular films like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, War of the Worlds, A History of Violence and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

In the past too, the Oscars has consistently singled out films that have been adapted from books. In fact, the percentage of adapted films have only remained steady over the past years. " The perception of [the number of adapted films released] is that they wax and wane," Patricia Burke, VP, Literary Affairs for Paramount, says in an interview for The Book Standard. "But I've found in my 20 years of experience that the number of literary acquisitions has stayed steady at about 20%." The reason being, according to Burke: "Books have a beginning, a middle and an end. Most other movies have a strong first act, a great second act and then they don't know where to go to get to the end."

One more day to go, and the results will determine which films have an edge over the other – the adapted films or the original scripts?