How did you become interested in
the subject of adaptation? I mean what does it open up
intellectually? I think I've always had a penchant
for I don't want to say rescuing or protecting but it always feels
that way. Parts of our culture that people think
of as secondary, less important than others. Many years ago, I worked
on parody because everybody said, parody wasn't an important thing. I
thought it was incredibly important. In the middle of a post-modern
culture that we were in. And adaptations were another one
of these things that people see as, secondary, derivative. I think they're really interesting. And the reason I think they're
interesting, adaptations in particular is that this is how we I think
have always told stories. We haven't just told stories from the
beginning of human time, we've retold stories and that's what
interested me. It's not just that we have today but
is true, we have more media, new means of diffusion, so we need
more stories. But, we aren't just making up new
stories. We're re-telling old stories, but we always have. We've always retold stories. I mean only one of Shakespeare's
plays is not an adaptation, And even it adapts conventions from
other things. so this is a history of how
we've always been. Why do we denigrate it? I was fascinated by that. You said an adaptation is a derivation
that is not derivative. Yea, it obvisiously comes out of... I
think that because a text comes first, a word comes first doesn't mean
that it has any claim to any kind of authenticity. I think that these
stories, adaptations, and their adapted stories exist sort
of vertically from me rather than, horizontally, that there isn't a
priority and an after. They exist. For me when I watch, I suspect this is
true for other people too, when I watch an adaptation of a book, a film adaptation of a
book that I know, it's like watching a palimpsest,
there's sort of two things going on. And what's happening for me is that
I'm oscillating between, the work I know, the novel or the
book in this case, and the film I'm watching. And I'm flipping between the two. And I'm not necessarily
comparing them. I probably am, but I'm not
evaluating that comparison, I'm just noticing, this is the same,
this is different or whatever. But, I've always got that doubled
experience. So for me going to see, an adaption or read an adaption is
always a nicley doubled experience. It's not just singles, there's two
layers for me. And you don't give higher priority
to the original? I sense this sort of disparaging way
you allude to the original, It seems to me, the original is
the original. Well no, because it was probably
based on something, I mean, take Shakespeare, I mean the adaptions
of Shakespeare, Shakespeare was, himself a great adaptor. I mean,
I'm not sure we have original stories, I think we're always re-telling
stories in some ways. Movie adaptations are amazingly
popular, I think you see something like 85%, of all Oscar winning Best Pictures
are adaptations. 90% of all mini-series of course.
A part from the hunger for material, why do you think that is? You know how children love to have
stories told to them again and again, read to them again. I think there is something about this
pleasure of a familiar story that we, like and enjoy. But seeing it in a slightly
different way. And seeing it in new ways, I think
there's really something to that, that sameness, but difference that
comes in. Because I was surprised for instance
something like masterpiece theater, and they started, I think they started
calling it masterpiece classics, and they're actually remaking
Jane Austen, I mean they have been re-made in the
last year or two. Jane Austen, adaptations that they made 20-30
years ago. Remaking the remake. It's a different culture today and I
suspect we would remake even, make historical ones differently. I think that remakes are always
interesting because films that remake, films because what changes? Well the
audience changes. If it's twenty years later, the
audiences they may know that film, so that becomes part of the background
that is the new environment, to use a biological sort of imagine
into the adaptation. Like True Grit for instance. Yea, like True Grit, perfect
example.