Our BetterMost Community > Chez Tremblay
A weird Brokie
serious crayons:
So I'm taking a play-writing class, just for fun. Tonight, the teacher was talking about dialogue, and I asked whether she found a difference between what works well as dialogue on stage vs. what works well on paper, as in novels and short stories. The teacher was attempting to answer, when suddenly one of my classmates jumped in to comment.
"Take 'Brokeback Mountain,'" she said. "The original story is almost exactly the same as the movie. The dialogue is the same. You know, sometimes the book and the movie are really different, but not in this case at all. I saw the movie first, but when I finally read the short story, I couldn't believe it -- it was exactly the same, almost word for word."
I was astounded. I don't think of them as being "exactly the same" at all. Oh, the settings and characters and themes, stuff like that, are the same. But the dialogue?? There are parts that match, of course, but overall they're quite different. And of course the movie has a lot of plot that's not in the story. To me, the two are different enough that for a long time my reactions to the two were really unmatched, and it took me a while to reconcile them.
I wasn't sure what to say. I was glad my classmate is a fan of BBM, and I certainly didn't want to lecture her or publicly correct her. I also didn't want to confess to being a Brokie in this setting, didn't want to reveal that I'd seen the movie 20 times and read the story probably about 12. But I felt like I had to express my views.
So I said, "That's funny! I had exactly the opposite reaction. I feel like they're really pretty different. I have a book with both the short story and the screenplay, and I actually find a lot of differences."
Does that seem tactful? Do you think the story and movie -- particularly the dialogue -- are exactly the same? What would you have done in this situation?
Brown Eyes:
LOL, that's awesome K! Maybe you should just talk to her about it at some point outside of class. It might be fun. And, boy, I bet she had no idea that she'd made that observation about BBM in the presence of one of the moderators of Open Forum in addition to countless days and weeks analyzing BBM on imdb (and all your viewings, etc.).
Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed when someone happens to bring something up that I have a huge interest in or connection to (like BBM or Bowie). They become such huge topics, it's hard to know where to start even beginning a conversation. I also often feel myself getting almost automatically defensive (even if the tone of the new conversation seems positive).
Maybe she's on another Brokie forum like EJ or DC.
And, anyway, yes, I do find her sense of the film and story being so equivalent in terms of dialogue a little odd. I recall Larry and Diana mentioning in interviews that they tried to fit in as many aspects of the story into the screenplay as possible... but I've always taken that as a bit of an abstraction or that they took quite a bit of artistic license with that concept. Sometimes they seem to fit details from the story in obliquely or as suggestions in the film sometimes in different spots from where they appear in the story. I know there are good examples of this, but I'm too sleepy at the moment to elaborate. Maybe the tone of the dialogue is similar, but the film has a different feeling to me in many ways. And, clearly Larry and Diana had to invent a ton of the dialogue (in addition to filling out whole characters.. like Cassie). It might be fun to look up that old "Synergy" thread somewhere around here about the dynamics between Larry, Diana, Annie, and - maybe Ang is thrown into that thread too.
Or, maybe you should whip out the old STS book! There are definitely interesting threads here about the differences between that published version of the screenplay and what we actually see in the film. So, there are differences in all 3 major iterations of BBM (story, screenplay and film).
Ellemeno:
It's hard to admit, but it's been a long time since I've read the short story, but my memory is that most of the dialogue in the short story did make it into the film. But whatever - you've got yourself a locaBrokie, K. I think you two should tawk.
And superawesomatic that you are in a playwriting class. Give us plenty of notice on when to buy our plane tickets for opening night.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 23, 2010, 12:20:42 am ---Does that seem tactful? Do you think the story and movie -- particularly the dialogue -- are exactly the same? What would you have done in this situation?
--- End quote ---
I think it was a very tactful response. I wouldn't say the dialogue was "exactly the same," but I still remember how astonished I was the first time I saw the film at how much dialogue came directly from Annie Proulx. I had on purpose re-read the story shortly before I saw the film, so Annie's writing was fresh in my memory when I saw the film. My impression has always been that the dialogue was more faithful to the source--the story--than is usual for a movie, but, at the same time, I see so few movie adaptations of books or stories that I could be completely wrong about that. For example, I have no idea how the amount of dialogue in Brokeback Mountain that was taken directly from the story might compare to how much dialogue was taken from the story in a film adaptation of a John Grisham novel.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: Ellemeno on June 23, 2010, 01:27:26 am ---It's hard to admit, but it's been a long time since I've read the short story, but my memory is that most of the dialogue in the short story did make it into the film. But whatever - you've got yourself a locaBrokie, K. I think you two should tawk.
--- End quote ---
It might have been the dialogue that gave her the impression of the short story being almost identical to the film, especially, if she'd seen the movie only once.
I saw the movie and then read the short story, and the differences really seemed to stand out, especially the physical descriptions of Ennis and Jack, and the last scene. But memory is a funny thing. The first time I saw the film I could swear I "remembered" snippets that weren't in there; maybe there was something like that happening?
At any rate, the response was a tactful one. Would she consider visiting here, or DC? Or reading a few of the excelelnt essays that have been published? Or..... Damn, there's so much by now, who knows where to start?
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