"You owe everything to the movie and nothing to the original" with David Kajganich | The Movie Racket

22:17And it's tough to choose. And I think it's situational. Different projects have led me to different answers.

22:23Michael Phillips:Have you ever done a streaming series adaptation, meaning six, eight episodes, and then you're talking about more of what you can never get, obviously, with two hours, but also with pitfalls? But yeah, tell me about your experience. I created and adapted a book called The Terror by Dan Simmons. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a chunky 800-page novel. But there's another interesting example, that we had 10 hours to tell that story. And ours departs pretty significantly in certain respects from the book. And I can say, because someone counted, like in the fan community, somebody counted that there are something like 14 lines of dialogue from the book in our 10-hour adaptation, which sounds crazy.

23:06And it sounds like we must have wanted to sort of refuse to let the book in. And that wasn't the case at all. We all loved the book in the writer's room and I loved the book. But just as we unpacked it, we just found ourselves tweaking so many things and inventing so many things. And at the end of the day, Dan Simmons was very happy with that adaptation, even though he must have known or must have felt that almost none of the dialogue was from the book. It's strange. I mean, it's a crazy business.

23:36Michael Phillips:A man called Cornelius Hickey told me this expedition was a year in the polar sea and then out the other side. He told me the ship's planned to stop at the Sandwich Islands and the crew was going to dry out in the sun. It's the other side of the world, I thought. A year's nothing. So I dabbed him, left him in Mises Canal. And here I am instead. How's the new place? Get your Wi-Fi figured out? I got T-Mobile 5G home internet and I'm loving it. It's the fastest 5G home internet. My old provider was so slow. Mine is slow. And only 35 bucks a month. Do I need to try this? Try it for 15 days. Love it or get your money back.

24:22Michael Phillips:I love it already. There are over 250 reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours and check availability at t-mobile.com slash home internet. That's this according to Oculus Speed Test Intelligence. Date a second half of 2025. All rates reserved for T-Mobile. Impact guarantee within 30 days of cancellation. Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts. It's been a long bumpy road dealing with yet another bladder infection. And driving to the pharmacy to pick up meds, I went over a pothole and a little pee came out. So now I get to stand in line with pee-pee pants. Next time, skip the pain and get fast free delivery with Amazon Pharmacy.

25:01Michael Phillips:Healthcare just got less painful.

25:07Michael Phillips:This is Charity Lawson from Bachelor Happy Hour. Charity, I was thinking about this the other day. What's something that you'll always say yes to? That's easy. Seeing my friends, last minute girls trip, basically making memories you'll talk about for years. Same. And somehow every one of these memories comes with something to plan. That's so true. That's why Klarna stands out. It's about smarter tools that help you manage your money without taking away from the moments that matter. Exactly. With flexible ways to pay, cash back that builds automatically, and everything in one place, Klarna helps you feel more confident making everyday money decisions.

25:42Michael Phillips:Because when you have the right tools, everything feels more manageable. Download the Klarna app today or visit Klarna.com to learn more. California resident loans made or arranged pursuant to California Finance Law License, NMLS number 1353190. Klarna balance account required to be eligible for cash back points, limitations, terms, and conditions apply. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Ben and Ashley and I Almost Famous podcast. Did you know that over 70 % of new parents are combo feeding? They're using both breast milk and formula to feed their baby. Whether you're exclusively formula feeding, combo feeding, or just want to back up in the pantry, Bobby is the formula that I trust to deliver safe, complete nutrition to my baby's bottle.

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27:16Michael Phillips:I remember talking to Gillian Flynn. I think she's still a Chicagoan, you know, around the time where her film adaptation of Widows, her script adaptation that was directed by Steve McQueen, had come out. And that was based on a six-hour British series that came from the prime suspect creator, Linda LaPlante. And that's one act of serious compression, like six to two hours. At the same time, she was finishing up Sharp Objects, which was a pretty short novel. This is Flynn's own. And the dictate was eight episodes, not eight episodes of like 41 minute, but like closer to an hour. And then that was kind of a challenge in a different way.

28:01Michael Phillips:And I don't know if either, I liked, I vastly preferred Widows of the Two, but that's, you know, that's a different story. But that is not an easy thing. And that's a common, certainly what we talk about all the time about certain miniseries where you just feel like this doesn't really justify the length. And how do you as an adapter cope with that? I mean, I've only found one way to cope with it, which is just to decide that the most important thing is character and your understanding of character. And, you know, in the same way that we have relationships with people, I can give you a three-paragraph summary of my sister, Lori, who I've known my entire life.

28:40Or I could give you a 10-hour summary of Lori, because I know her that well. And I think, you know, when I've really felt unprepared or ill-equipped to write an adaptation at any given point, it's because I just simply don't know the characters well enough to bend them to the amount of space I'm being given, whether that's an hour and a half or whether that's 10 hours. And so that lesson I learned pretty quickly, which is, it's about how much nuance or how much earned and respectful and interesting generalization one can make about a character depending on what time frame you're writing for.

29:17Michael Phillips:Does Laurie ever bug you about, like, well, where the hell's my 10-hour miniseries? I mean, I sound pretty interesting the way you tell it. Well, I mean, I think at this point she's sort of, she's relieved not to be put into a genre. Okay. Do you have different experiences of actually talking to the authors you're adapting? And whether it's a courtesy that you want to pay them, or if it's more like a contractual situation where you want to find out what's truly important to them, if a lot of stuff has to go, or can they, in some cases, I know some authors are like this, they just say, good luck, goodbye.

29:56Michael Phillips:Has that come up in your career yet? Yes. I think if an author wanted to be deeply involved in the adaptation process, I wouldn't agree to do the project. Not because I would find that uninteresting or problematic as a person. I just, I think it would be a tough negotiation for the work. my preference and i've been able to have this each time is to have ideally one long conversation with the author basically where i quickly prove to them that i've deeply read the source material and can be conversant about it in a way that is both nuanced and soulful and then refuse to do that initially by just simply asking them what they want me to know is important to them about the adaptation, which sometimes will surprise me.

30:47I'll think I have an idea of what their thematic agenda will be for me, and it proves to be wrong. And I can give you a pretty funny example about that. But at the end of the day, saying, I've read your book very closely, or read your article, or read your memoir, whatever it happens to be, very closely, and I can say a few things so that you feel that confidence, but then I quickly ask you to talk to me and tell me everything that you think is important about the source material that you would want preserved. And then I can speak to both. And if I do it intelligently, then the person hangs up from that Zoom or that phone call reassured.

31:24If I don't, which so far hasn't been the case, I've been pretty lucky in being articulate and reassuring, but also not hiding what I plan to do with an adaptation, which can sometimes be, I can imagine, difficult for an author. But I think once you earn their trust by convincing them that you're not interested in putting your voice in front of theirs, it gets much easier. So what's the example, Dave? So I adapted a book called Bones and All, which was a sort of a YA novel about a young cannibal. Oh, of course. Yeah. Timothy Chalamet. Yeah. Who falls in love with another cannibal. And the author, Camille DeAngelis, I said, I want to have one really good conversation in which you tell me what is most important to you about the book because I really want to hear you.

32:09And also I was aware I'm a middle-aged man adapting the book of a female writer who has chosen a main character who's a young woman. So I already had a lot I needed to hear before I exerted my own sensibility. And she said, okay, there is something very important subtextually I want to talk about. So when we talk, I'll walk you through it. And I was sure she was talking about feminism or body dysmorphia, you know, two things that are pretty important in the book. So I was pretty surprised to find that her cannibalism novel, the most important thing to her was that the movie be vegan. And I just remember thinking, I don't even know what expression to put on my face.

32:51What does that mean? A vegan film about cannibals? And once we talked about it, I understood completely. She in her own life is a very soulful vegan and, you know, is trying to point out in this story, which was not clear to me when I read the book, that it's important to understand that whether you're talking about people or you're talking about animals, you're talking about relationships. And so to have these cannibals crossing the country, eating people, and having a really unclear moral reaction to that, why would that be any different from cows or chickens or lamb? And once I understood, I was like, oh, I can actually even do your book a few steps better by choosing imagery, you know, choosing moments in the plot that push this even further, you know, to force the audience to sit in the middle of a Venn diagram between how do I feel about these people eating people and how do I feel about these people eating animals?

33:43And it was fascinating, really fascinating. So, you know, the week between scheduling that call and having that call, all that boning up I did reading, you know, Susan Sontag and everyone else, which I should have been reading about veganism, but I didn't know one time.

33:57Michael Phillips:So a fair chunk of your career so far, Dave, has been working with Luca Guadagnino, the director of Bones and All, yes? Three films, yeah. Three films. Can you briefly talk about sort of the range or the different sort of emphases in terms of your adaptation work on those three? I mean, Luca is pretty fearless. I mean, he is someone who is definitely in the Witt Stillman camp of understanding that, you know, when you move a story from a textual medium to a cinematic medium, of course, things are going to have to be different. The primary currency of filmmaking is the image. and this goes even so far as I remember a moment speaking with David Fincher I did an adaptation for him years ago and he was telling me that he and most directors he knows would really prefer to be making silent films where imagery is the only language of what you're seeing so Luca comes at adaptations from the point of view of knowing that you're going to have to break bones as we were saying earlier and is pretty fearless about what that might mean for the film and our process is always the same, which is we spend a lot of time talking before I ever start typing anything, an outline, a treatment, the first draft of the script.

35:11We cover everything, you know, for a bigger splash, which was, it wasn't an adaptation. It was a remake of a film.

35:17Michael Phillips:We should just say it's a remake of The Swimming Pool from 1969, I believe, right? Yeah, a lucky scene. And we changed it so much. I wonder if it's not more accurate to call that an adaptation as opposed to a remake. But we spent a month, six to eight hours a day for a month, talking about everything. The characters' psychologies, their arcs, their references, their humor, how they express themselves in language and music and clothing. We talked about all of those things before I even put an outline together, which made it very clear to me that we were seeing the same film and I never wanted to be a part of a process with a film where I I wasn't in that kind of conversation or some approximation of that level of conversation with the director before I started to pull together a point of view about the project, if possible.

36:04It's not always possible, but when it is, it's something I value and just short of demand. What's the point of pulling your life now?

36:15Michael Phillips:I was angry with you. Yeah, I know I was slutting around, but you took everything so hard. And now look what I've done. I've thrown you this square. Yeah, you're square, Marianne. He's a square bear. He's all cuddly and built for hibernating with. And he's stuck. I will always be grateful to you for Paul. Dave, it's time to get to the categories that actually kind of break it down for people who are curious about, well, in your opinion, what screenplays, what films work that are really quite faithful and prioritize fidelity to the source material and which adaptations that really kind of go far afield, loosely based on, barely based on, or whatever it is that also work for you.

37:10Michael Phillips:And then we'll get to the dish staff side in a second. But give me one that's like relatively faithful, quite faithful, that really is like for you kind of a model of the form. Personally, the kind of the gold standard of that category is Ruth Parajabala's adaptation of Howard's End, which I think is impeccable. It has a great deal of fidelity to the source material, but you feel in her adaptation a kind of modern sensibility as well, which to me is always how a period, a good period adaptation should feel. You know, the ideas in an adaptation set a hundred years ago, those characters really felt modern.

37:44And as we do in our lives, and we will be, you know, of course we won't be a hundred years from now, but the way we talk, the way we use language, the way we pull ideas into our relationships, we really feel like we're being quite modern. I can't think of another word. And that's something I get from that adaptation, which is if you go through the book, she is using the dialogue. She is using the blocking. She is, you know, with some exceptions, she is using the sort of the flavors and the textures of that, of the world that Ian Forrester created, but is also, there is a voice in that adaptation.

38:18Michael Phillips:You have mentioned Mrs. Wilcox. In reply, may I mention Mrs. Best? Nothing yourself all day, Mark. Henry, listen, you have had a mistress. I forgave you. My sister has a lover, you drive her from the house. Why can you not be honest for once in your life and say to yourself, what Helen has done, I have done?

38:45Michael Phillips:I repeat what I said before. I did not give your sister leave to sleep at Howard's End. Now do you understand? And it's interesting to me, I don't know if I would feel the same way if a man had adapted that. It's impossible to tell, but I'm very grateful that it was a woman adapting that book because Margaret Schlegel, the main character, is so intricate. I walked around graduate school with a t-shirt saying, WWMSD, what would Margaret Schlegel do? As a reminder to myself to try to behave more like her. I think there is something to the fact that, I don't know, Ruth Prager-Gavala, who is one of the great humanist screenwriters, took on a book that is an allegory and is somewhat intellectual and was able to pull real warmth out of that source material.

39:36Michael Phillips:I mean, that could be the very best of the Merchant Ivory pictures, I think. I think it is, yeah. Yeah, I got to see that again. I think the common link here is Emma Thompson, because my pick in that same category would actually be Emma Thompson's first produced screenplay, which was her adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility for Ennui. Absolutely. You know, it's not entirely faithful. Of course, there's a lot of compression. Of course, a lot of it didn't make it. That's just such a given. It's not even worth wasting the podcast time for. But I think the real stroke of good fortune on that is that Emmett Thompson's sense of wit and just her kind of easy eloquence and a way of kind of infiltrating the language in the world of Austin, it was just, you know, like who else would have been better for that?

40:21Michael Phillips:So to me, that just sings, I think. And I'll tell you, somehow I had gone through a formal education without reading any Jane Austen, which seems crazy to me now. But when I saw that film, I thought, I'm going to read this book and learn what I can learn about the adaptation process because I think this adaptation must be so great. And it was greater than I even realized, because if you've ever read a Jane Austen novel, you come quickly to understand she doesn't write dialogue. Most of the conversations in a Jane Austen novel are summarized in paragraph form. So the idea that Emma Thompson had to break up those paragraphs of description of a conversation with actual lines of dialogue, it's incredible to me the job she did because those characters, they resemble clearly the characters in the book.

41:05But she had to give them rhetorical identities in the way that they use language that were both different from one another, but still true to who their souls were in the book. I just, if I ever have occasion to meet Emma Thompson, the first thing I'm going to say to her is, I can't tell you what your adaptation of that book meant to me in my education as a screenwriter. All I want, all I have ever wanted is the quiet of a private life. But my mother is determined to see me distinguished.

41:33Michael Phillips:As? Anything. A great orator, a leading politician. I think even a barrister would serve as long as I drove a Berushan dined in the first circle. What do you wish for? I've always preferred the church, but that is not smart enough for my mother. She prefers the army, but that is a great deal too smart for me. Would you stay in London? I hate London. No peace. A country living is my ideal, a small parish where I might do some good. Keep chickens. Give very short sermons. Give me an example, Dave, of a different situation where you have a very... by some measurements, unfaithful adaptation of source material that for you works like gangbusters.

42:21A lot of people probably would say this is The Shining, Kubrick's The Shining, which has huge departures from King's novel, but is somehow more coherent than King's novel. It didn't surprise me at all to learn that Stephen King hated that adaptation. And when I think he wrote his own adaptation for a limited series that was done many years later, it just doesn't work nearly as well. Because I think the subtext of that book, which is that the horror is turned up to 11, but really it's a book about domestic abuse. I think the Stephen King adaptation, that's somehow less apparent where the emotional and spiritual and intellectual stakes are somehow.

43:01But Kubrick went straight to it. And it is so hard to watch because you feel the damage being done to that husband-wife relationship, that father-son relationship.

43:11Michael Phillips:Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me. And it will then take me time to get back to where I was. Understand? Yeah. Fine. And we're going to make a new rule. Whenever I'm in here, you hear me typing. or whether you don't hear me typing what the f**k you hear me doing in here when I'm in here that means that I am working that means don't come in how do you think you can handle that yeah fine why don't you start right now and get the f**k out of here lasting permanent incredibly transformative violence so that to me but a more fun answer I guess to the question is is Ken Russell's The Devils.

44:04Which, you know, the events are the same, but I just love how little he cared for accuracy in production design costume, you know, sort of the behavior of the actors, the score. It is a crazy film, but somehow having read both Aldous Huxley's book on which it's based and seen the movie a number of times, they're such great cousins to one another because they do tell the same story, but there is such a punk rock fanatic, you to somehow to the idea of a period film. Right, right. In Ken Russell's adaptation that I just love it. Love it.

44:39Michael Phillips:I guess I'd have a couple. I mean, Greta Gerwig with Little Women, there's so many things I love about that. I love it that it found a big audience, even with its substantial restructuring and also the addition of a very, to me, creative and somewhat risky last act, the epilogue, where we kind of turn it into Alcott's own story of getting her book published at the time. And it's, to me, that I don't know if that, if you read that, I think even if you liked the sound of it and the voice you're getting from Greta Gerwig at that point in her career, I don't know if it would fully work. And I thought somehow in the complete finished version of that film, it worked wonderfully.

45:23Michael Phillips:And I love that it didn't throw audiences off like some people, I think, probably suspect that it might. So that, to me, I love that. It's faithful enough for me. And I'm not a guy who gives points for fidelity, the original, just as a default. But, I mean, another one I really love is, and this is a much more controversial film, Where the Wild Things Are, the Spike Jonze adaptation, which is Jonze working with Dave Eggers. Hey, Max. Yeah? When you go home, will you say good things about us? Yeah. My will.

46:04Michael Phillips:Thanks, Max. And that is an emotionally wrenching adaptation of Marie Sendak's book. You're the first king we haven't eaten. Yeah, it's true.

46:22See ya. Bye, Max. Bye.

46:26Michael Phillips:Which certainly has its sobering and kind of interesting dark edge to the whole thing is Max is not a conventionally sympathetic boy, right? But you're getting into territory in that film that is on the page and as realized on the screen that is really traumatic in a way that I didn't feel exploited or beaten up by. I mean, I remember coming out of that screening was the year that Tony, Scott, A.O. Scott and I were doing the movie show for a year after Roger Ebert and Richard Roper were off. And we came out of that screening. We both had sons around the same age, within three or four years, you know, in an adolescent period, let's say.

47:14Michael Phillips:And we both came out of there kind of unable to speak. And that film was hated by many. I mean, many. Was it? Yes. It had a second week drop of like, well, Trump would put it at about 400%. You know how he always goes over 100%. It was like, I mean, the word was out in terms of like your average family of five taking a four, seven and nine year old to, oh, where the wild things are. We love that book. And they come out of there looking like they had had a series of small strokes and it was, it was rough. But that to me, that was a huge risk that was just, can only speak for myself, worked like crazy.

47:50Well, it makes me wonder. I mean, I know at some point we're going to talk about the Odyssey because of the times we're living in. It makes me wonder, bringing up where the wild things are, if there is a difference in how audiences respond to adaptations of things they read when they were younger. and then maybe because you engage differently with a narrative when you're 10 or 15 or so than you do when you're older. Maybe it feels more yours somehow in a way that when someone makes stark or pronounced deviations from the text, you take it a little more personally because it seems to be some kind of judgment about your own imagination too.

48:30Michael Phillips:Messing with your childhood. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, that's the Star Wars phenomenon, And certainly with Rian Johnson's film in that, I mean, that was sort of the beginning of a wave of somewhat terrifying resistance to any meddling with any memories of anybody who lived in a certain mindset and a certain fidelity, meaning fierce fidelity to the original. Yeah, crazy. Well, since you brought it up, let's talk about it. This is why we're doing an adaptation episode at this time. It's the Odyssey has gotten people talking about, even if they haven't read Homer since high school or never read it, somehow they all have, everybody has an opinion about whether or not this adaptation, quote, works, unquote.

49:17Michael Phillips:And then, of course, we have this interesting wrinkle of all these, especially Emily Wilson, whose adaptation was an inspiration to Nolan. But Emily Wilson is now sort of on the record, is not really loving the movie, doesn't really like Christopher Nolan. But it's an interesting time that this has become a topic where you can go years, Dave, I think, without really hearing much mass opinion about how the adaptation either was or wasn't faithful to the original or interestingly creative when it goes off it. But what's your feeling about the results? Well, it's interesting to me because I hear two conversations going on at the same time and they're pretty slippery.

49:57So I think sometimes someone thinks they're having one conversation when they're really having the other, which is there's a conversation going on about the adaptation that this film affects. And there's also a conversation about translation. And it makes me think a little bit about Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, which was sort of one of the things it did that I think was interesting to people, maybe problematic at the time, was it kept Shakespeare's language, but it affected a different kind of energy. It was a sort of like a YA energy, but with great production qualities. And it felt it just was over the top.

50:32But the language stayed true.

50:34Michael Phillips:Why did thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee bimboleon and look upon thy death. I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword. Or manage it to part these men with me. Peace? peace. I hate the word. As I hate hell, all Montague's, and thee. And I think some of what I'm hearing about people's concerns about the Odyssey is the liberties that Nolan took with translation, with the language. And I wonder if that's not somehow, without people being able to articulate that or why, it's the difference in the language they were expecting as opposed to other choices he's making about the storyline, which I find really interesting.

51:29And you take some of the criticism coming from classical scholars or people who translate the classics, sometimes it feels to me like they're even confusing a discussion about translation versus a discussion about adaptation, because from their point of view, it probably is closer to the same thing than your average moviegoer.

51:46Michael Phillips:Hmm. What do you think of the film? I mean, I feel what a lot of people feel is I think it's incredibly good news that it's made a billion dollars. You know, there is something about people feeling not just happy to go and see it, but excited to go and see it. I mean, it's, I think it says so many things about how much we can ask and trust an audience to participate in that. I hope we were learning the right lessons from it. But in terms of my memory of reading it, I thought about reading it before watching it again. The last time I read it was in high school, like most people. And I decided I had to make a decision, which is, is this one of these adaptations where I would prefer to have my version of it in my head?

52:30And that's how I felt about Lord of the Rings. I didn't see Peter Jackson's films because I worked so hard as a teenager building those worlds in my head that I didn't want to give them up. Same with Dune. I haven't seen any of the Dune films. But this wasn't that to me. This felt less personal and I hadn't worked as hard in my imagination with the Odyssey. So I was happy enough to go and see it. And I mean, it does so many of the things I think Homer was trying to do in terms of like an energized, adrenalized sort of epic quest that it sort of puts on display a lot of, I don't know if it's fair to call it sort of how men respond to trauma or how they process.

53:12trauma and danger outside of the context of war. It's interesting. It does a good job of that. Now, do I have a bone to pick with his use of language? I mean, not really. Do I prefer Homer's language or the translations I've read? Sure, of course. Do I have any bones to pick with Nolan about casting? Of course not. Things like that are just so silly, but it goes back to what I was trying to articulate a few moments ago. I think people want to be offended by it because it seems to be reproaching their adolescent relationship with it somehow. So let those people yell.

53:44Michael Phillips:I think there's a lot to learn from Emily Wilson's criticisms of Mellon's work, because I do think there's something about the way he makes these really well-tooled prestige epics. And I mean, even if you just want to look at the last two, Oppenheimer and the Odyssey, there is something, I think she's right, there is something a little hollow about the depiction of the charismatic visionary loner at the center that is not really a dimensional character. And I think if you look at her ideas about what Odysseus is in the original, it's a much crazier, contradictory character and less conventionally heroic.

54:30Michael Phillips:And I think that's just my preference. And yes, that would have taken about 400 million off the box office. Yeah. Just as, you know, a more maybe troubling and slightly more accurate picture of depiction of J. Robert Oppenheimer might have caused second thoughts throughout as opposed to occasionally in the film version of Oppenheimer. That said, he's a hell of a filmmaker. So it's in many ways. So it's a good reminder that we probably we can and should have about seven different feelings about one thing, you know. Sure. And also this sort of enters into the territory of how budgets command certain approaches to filmmaking, right?

55:12So, you know, yes, if you lose$400 million off the box office of the more nuanced version of the Odyssey, is that a win or is that a loss? I mean, it's only a loss if the budget remained the same, but could you have made that film for half the budget and been riskier? And I would always argue that I will take the lower budget, you know, and if I put my producer's hat on, I'll take the lower budget to make the more interesting film that still comes out at the same level of success than a higher budget that needs to make more, that probably needs to please an audience more. But that's just my take on it.

55:47I don't know that Christopher Nolan feels the same way.

55:49Michael Phillips:Well, you're arguing for the resurgence of a mid-budget motion picture produced by a studio, which is apparently just the subject of laughter among whoever's... Which makes me crazy because it's like we're just foreshortening our own future with the medium. So, yeah, it makes me nuts. No one could stand between me and home. Not even the gods. Keep us straight!

56:24Michael Phillips:I think it's asleep.

56:45Michael Phillips:15 days. Love it or get your money back. I love it already. There are over 250 reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours and check availability at t-mobile.com slash home internet. This is according to Ooglu Speed Test Intelligence Data. Second half of 2025. All rates reserved. Redeemed money back guarantee within 30 days of cancellation. Amazon Health AI presents Painful Thoughts. I, um, I can't stop scratching my downtown. Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown. town, some things you'd rather type than say out loud. There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health AI.

57:25Michael Phillips:Chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24-7. Healthcare just got less painful. This is Charity Lawson from Bachelor Happy Hour. Charity, I was thinking about this the other day. What's something that you'll always say yes to? That's easy. Seeing my friends, last-minute girls trip, basically making memories you'll talk about for years. Same. And somehow every one of these memories comes with something to plan. That's so true. That's why Klarna stands out. It's about smarter tools that help you manage your money without taking away from the moments that matter. Exactly. With flexible ways to pay, cash back that builds automatically, and everything in one place, Klarna helps you feel more confident making everyday money decisions.

58:07Michael Phillips:Because when you have the right tools, everything feels more manageable. Download the Klarna app today or visit Klarna.com to learn more. California resident loans made or arranged pursuant to California Finance Law License, NMLS number 1353190. Klarna balance account required to be eligible for cashback points. Limitations, terms, and conditions apply. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. Did you know that over 70 % of new parents are combo feeding? They're using both breast milk and formula to feed their baby. Whether you're exclusively formula feeding, combo feeding, or just want to back up in the pantry, Bobbi is the formula that I trust to deliver safe, complete nutrition to my baby's bottle.

58:50Michael Phillips:Both of my children use Bobbi. We love it so much. Had the best experience with this brand. They're incredible. If you want to feed with confidence too, head to HiBobbi.com. That is Hi, H-I-B-O-B-B-I-E.com to find your baby's new favorite formula. There's so much I'd love to talk to you about, but I'd also just love to bring up this point, or it's a question. Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptations, to me, represent something very different because you're talking about, in the case of There Will Be Blood and One Battle After Another in particular, we're talking about quite, quite selective and free-handed reorienting, rewriting of the narrative almost in total.

59:39Michael Phillips:So these are not conventional adaptations. Inherent Vice was a little closer to a conventional adherence to the Pynchon novel, right? And didn't work as well. Didn't work as well. Because who went to that movie to actually follow the most willfully Byzantine plot that even Pynchon wasn't interested in, you know, I think, in my view. But There Will Be Blood, I think, is fascinating. It's based on about 70 or 100 pages out of a 400 or 500 page of the Sinclair novel. And the rest is, you know, it's just one tiny section of a big novel. And I think to me, that was kind of a lovely result. Not a perfect film, but I love it anyway.

1:00:16Michael Phillips:And that's kind of how I feel about one battle after another. But is there something a screenwriter or filmmakers in general can learn about that sort of adaptation? Well, sure. I mean, I think, you know, this goes back to something we were talking about earlier is how much do you put your own concerns, questions, you know, obsessions in front of the author of the source materials. I think you shouldn't try unless you are both supremely intelligent and supremely humane, which I think Paul Thomas Anderson is. I also think Jonathan Glazer is. So when I look at his adaptation of Under the Skin or his adaptation of Zone of Interest that have very little to do with their source material, to me, it's okay in the cases of these two filmmakers because they are so intelligent and because they are so humane.

1:01:02And they both seem to be willing to have conversations about their own blind spots. And so I get very excited when a filmmaker is at that level, both as a human and as a crass person, as a filmmaker, where I can sort of forgive them for walking that far away from the source material. Those are the films I long for. But it's just very rare that someone can pull that degree of difference

1:01:24Michael Phillips:off. I could not believe reading the novel, The Zone of Interest, that the novel was essentially Dangerous Liaisons. It was a, it's a pistillary novel about a sort of a romantic, well, sexual anyway, sexual triangle going on between the commandant, his wife and a third party. Right. And I was, I couldn't have been more gratified by every single change Glazer made to make that movie what it is.

1:02:06Michael Phillips:Let's talk about adaptations that maybe just represent some sort of like Goldilocks ideal of like just right, faithful enough, also surprising and inventive enough here and there, responding to the work, but not with the primary goal being fidelity to the original. Is there anything in that category that would work? I'm thinking of things like Richard LaGrevenaise's work on the bridges of Madison County. That's an easy call for me because it is, I think that's one of the very best films made from one of the very worst novels I've ever read. And just by simply adding certain scenes that were nowhere, you'd never find in the novel, were not from the novel, where the Meryl Streep character, Francesca, just calls Robert Kincaid, you know, the sort of dreamboat photographer who kind of wanders into her life for four fateful days, you know, really kind of like harsh, kind of table-turning, very emotionally kind of urgent and messy scenes that are not in the novel.

1:03:09Michael Phillips:And the movie is so much better for him, I think. You know, I have a similar feeling about Silence of the Lambs, the adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel, which is a fine novel, but it is still a genre book. It's a thriller. I think a lot of people read it on a beach, not to say that that's some kind of mark of a distinction in any way. Like The Godfather, like Jaws, yeah, sure. Yeah, The Exorcist and The Collaborators, the intelligence and humanity of those collaborators elevated it into something even greater. It is one of the, I think, the great, truly feminist films. And it comes from, implausibly, from a book about sort of the destruction of women.

1:03:50Michael Phillips:We're interviewing all the serial killers now in custody for a psycho-behavioral profile. Could be a real help in unsolved cases. Most of them have been happy to talk to us. Do you spook easily, Starling? Not yet, sir. See, the one we want most refuses to cooperate. I want you to go after him again today in the asylum. Who's the subject? The psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal the cannibal. I don't expect him to talk to you. But I have to be able to say we tried. Let's talk about theater to film for a second. Sure. Stage to screen adaptations. Not to be negative. But let's start with a couple of heartbreakers.

1:04:33Michael Phillips:Can you think of a play or two where they really just did not make the jump? And it's just like, ugh. You know, for whatever reason. But starting with the writing, let's say, or what the adapter had to deal with and work around and just simply couldn't. To me, the best example of that category is Night Mother. It was a play that won the Pulitzer Prize in the 80s by Marsha Norman. And like many plays, it has a very tight scope. It really takes place in one farmhouse, mostly in one room. So it's easy to imagine why that the situation of that play makes sense for theater, which is it's essentially an adult woman and her mother on the night that the woman is deciding to commit suicide.

1:05:14And she decides she comes to regret this, but she decides to tell her mother that this is, in fact, the last few hours they'll be spending together.

1:05:23Michael Phillips:I'm still doing your nails, though. You want to try that new chinaberry color? Well, I'm calling Dawson right now. We'll just see what he's got to say about this little stunt. Dawson doesn't have any more to do with this. He's your brother. And that's all. Dawson will put a stop to this. Yes, he will. He'll take the gun away. If you call him, I'll just have to do it before he gets here. As soon as you hang up the phone, I'll just walk in the bedroom and knock the door. You will not. This is crazy talk, Jesse. Dawson will get here just in time to help you clean up. Go ahead. Call him. Then call the police.

1:05:54Michael Phillips:Then call the funeral home. Then call Loretta and see if she'll be in there. Now, that's an incredible situation. I mean, you almost don't have to do anything except try to render those two characters as fully as you can, and you immediately have a rich two hours in front of you. And, of course, the limitations of a stage play needn't to be the limitations of cinema, except if they are the limitations of the people adapting it. And I think, you know, what's interesting about that film is they not only had Marsha Norman, who wrote the play, adapt it. Now, she had had some experience writing for television.

1:06:32I think she had had one television movie and maybe had written a couple of episodes of a couple of television shows. But she didn't have a sort of a long career as a screenwriter. But I think even more damning to that production was that they hired the director of the play to make this as his first film. And so you can imagine the trouble that that causes. I mean, there is even spatially a two-dimensionality to a theater production for the audience, which is you're looking at the events happening under a proscenium. And it's very difficult to render space. It's very difficult to render passages of time.

1:07:07It's difficult to control all the things that you can control in cinema. And it's like it didn't even occur to him to try.

1:07:14Michael Phillips:The way you're describing that makes me think immediately of the heartbreakingly not very good film version of Death of a Salesman, 1951, which opposite of Night Mother, it's, you know, the fluidity about past and present and in and out of different memories of Willie Loman's experiencing and many different locations. Much of that would seem, because it's cinematic on the stage, especially everything you read and see and analyze about just the visual quality of Ilya Kazan's staging on Broadway, Death of a Salesman in 1949, it seems like it would actually slip into a new medium pretty comfortably.

1:07:53Michael Phillips:Everything about it was working against it. Columbia Pictures was very nervous about dealing with this sort of, at this horrible moment in mid-century, mid-20th century American history when the Red Scare was really, really clamping down on Annie. You know, the studios were not wanting to put up with any government scrutiny about like, well, what's this anti-capitalist, anti-American business, Pulitzer, Schmulitzer, you know. And their solution there with Death of a Salesman was, in the writing and especially in just the direction of the film and everything, was just, okay, we can't really bear down on the system that is swallowing up this sort of ordinary, arguably mediocre everyman as a human being.

1:08:43Michael Phillips:It's simply that he's going nuts, and we'll just call it a day. He didn't have an eye. He'll think I'm something for the first time, Ben. Because that funeral will be massive. They'll come from New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts. All the old timers with a strange license plate. And he'll realize that I'm known, Ben. Willie Norman is known. Remember, William, the jungle is dark but full of diamonds. Ben, I'm frightened. One must go in to fetch a diamond out. I need courage, Ben. The diamond is hard, but it's something you can pick up with a hand and touch. Yeah. And Frederick March had to play a good actor, had to just play a lot of distraught, losing my mind, wrenching sort of close-ups, and that character had nowhere to go.

1:09:39Michael Phillips:That was a tough disappointment, you know, for me. and rightly nobody remembers it. It's amazing a number of great American plays, Glass Menagerie being another one. I mean, the just didn't quite, you know. The films that really come to mind though on that front were recent. For me, I mean, when you look at something like, this was an interesting case. Did you see the stage version of August Osage County? Yeah. You did. And did you see the film? Yeah. Yeah, and that's Tracy Letts, on the one hand, you know, he's hired to do the adaptation of his own script, which worked like a son of a bitch. There's no question about it.

1:10:17Michael Phillips:I mean, it really cooked in that original production. Okay, hired by Weinstein. And okay, we've got to make it a conventional length, two hours, all right? So that means cutting out almost somewhere between a third and a fourth of the play. And it's hard to keep that many characters, even if it's all taking place in one house, which then you want to make the decision, okay, we'll open up this conversation. will go somewhere else in town or whatever. All that worked okay, I think, in theory. But to take out all the sort of, in many cases, the most interesting kind of conversational sidewinders and wind-ups before the pitch, before the next big explosion, before the next huge confrontation, it's all highlights then.

1:11:01Michael Phillips:It's just like a highlights reel from that play. And also, directorially, that was completely miscast. I mean, John Wells, competent, fine. It was one of those films where it was over, and I thought I'd love to ask that director, well, what did you think of the play? And I've thought that often. That's the case where I would actually argue a little bit with what you said earlier, Dave, just about like, well, it's not my place to kind of get my opinion of whatever in there. I know what you're saying, and it's not as simple as that, but there's too many stage productions and films where I just sort of wonder, well, what excites you or disturbs you or what, you know, what's your feeling about this?

1:11:40Michael Phillips:I want to see that. And then maybe that'll translate to a better film, you know? And it's heartbreaking to me that Robert Altman couldn't do a three-hour version of August Osage County. He would have been great, and more of Letts' very good writing would have survived, and who knows what that could have been, even with that same cast. I feel similarly, although I think this was a more successful film than August O.S.H. County, was The Adaptation of Doubt. I remember seeing a production of that play. I saw it twice. And one production, Jenna Malone was filling in as Sister James. I think she had just joined the cast.

1:12:17And it was the second time I had seen the play. And it was fascinating how different it felt because of that one performance. You think of that role as a sort of secondary role. she's the kind of witness of the battle between these two great other characters but the way that she played this actress played it and i was hoping the film would learn something from that performance was that it made sister james really the protagonist somehow of that film that that she was being swayed sort of equally for much of the film much of the story by both points of view and couldn't decide. And that rendering that story as kind of a war for the soul of that young nun makes a lot of sense.

1:13:00But when you think of just the sheer wattage of the actors, you know, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep playing those two roles, Amy Adams probably never had a chance. You know what I mean? But it was interesting to me to think about how a performance actually with same words, you know what I mean? Same play can really shift the focus in an interesting way.

1:13:21Michael Phillips:Yeah. Let's talk about the adaptation we're going to see next on screen. I believe that's next for you. And it's in many ways, just at least reading the short description of it, it's the biggest pop you may have had in your career. I'm not sure. Who knows? Who knows? Let's talk about it. But it's based on an Australian novel. Tell us about it a little bit. Yes. The book is called The Riders by an Australian, you know, considered the greatest living Australian writer, Tim Winton. And it is about a man who has been traveling around Europe with his wife and his young daughter. The last stop on their tour is Ireland.

1:13:59The wife sees an old dilapidated cottage and says, I think we should live here. Why don't you stay? Her husband is a builder. You stay, fix it up. I'll go back to Australia with our daughter. I'll sell our house. I'll get our affairs in order and we'll be back by Christmas. And the inciting incident is that when he goes to the airport to pick up his wife and his daughter, only his daughter gets off the plane. And in the novel, she's so traumatized, she can't even speak. And the rest of the story is him retracing their steps all over Europe, trying to find his wife to understand what's happened.

1:14:29And it's a fascinating book. And I knew it was going to be a really interesting adaptation process because the book very smartly plays genre as the invitation, but then quickly undermines it in an interesting way, which is that premise sounds like she may have been kidnapped, she may have been murdered, she may have lost her mind. It feels like a very strong thriller with a capital T at first, but very quickly you come to understand that she's essentially leaving him and their daughter. And so it keeps stepping down in terms of what genre of wattage it's trying to broadcast. But as it does that, the character study of this man who's now seen his family explode and doesn't understand the reasons just keeps escalating.

1:15:16And so you trade a thriller for a character study. And I thought, oh, this is going to be interesting to see if this works nearly as well as a film. Because in the book, you can pause, you can close the book and think about why that is happening and how the character study might be more interesting to you than the thriller. But once you sit an audience on the roller coaster and you go up the first hill, there are expectations about how that's going to play out in the moment. No one's going to pause in the theater to consider why genre is being traded out for a pretty intensive character study.

1:15:50And so I knew that the film adaptation would have to sort of give you other things. And as a producer on that film, also thinking about the importance of seeing an actor in that role that you haven't seen play that kind of role before how that would really ennoble the whole experience, that you might actually find Brad Pitt playing that character as thrilling as a thriller in a way. Do you know what I mean? To put it that way. And just the scope of it is huge. We shot in four countries, you know, all across Europe, incredible scope to a film that is a, probably in its summary form, a smaller story than we shot it as.

1:16:27But all of those things to try to give it the subjective weight of what that character is going through. It feels like a real epic. And the stakes, you are just glued to him for the film. You really don't leave his side. And you have to decide scene to scene how reasonable you think he's being, whether his assessment of his own marriage is accurate, whether he's allowing his own blind spots to enter the conversation he's having with himself. So I knew it was going to be a difficult film to mount. But as soon as Edward Berger came aboard and then Brad Pitt came aboard. It was clear we were going to make it.

1:17:02Michael Phillips:And this was directed by Edward Berger, who just did Conclave and then All Quiet on the Western Front. So it sounds like it'll sort of require something, you know, a different kind of tension than you get in those two films. Yeah. But yeah. Would you say this is the screenplay that you've had the most as producer? And I know it's not the first time you produced, but is it a screenplay that you had to kind of, I don't know, argue for your material the least on? Yes. I was very relieved when A24 was making a film with us. And I now know to ask these very specific questions in the process. And I needed to know from A24 that they understood that this was a kind of thriller, but not the thriller, the version of a thriller that one might want it to be.

1:17:50And it was very important to us that they didn't need it to be that, and that they weren't going to market it as that, that they understood that this was a sort of a kind of a subversion of the genre. And they absolutely do. They had almost no notes on the script, and we were able to shoot essentially what the script was. And it was even an overly long script because I wanted to be able to sit with the director once we discovered who that was going to be and curate the thing further with the director. And Edward and I have worked together. He was the lead director on The Terror. And he said, no, I want to shoot all of this.

1:18:23Let's bring everyone into the conversation. Let's bring Brad in. Let's bring the other actors in. Let's bring the designers in. Let's bring the cinematographer. And he's a very egalitarian director. He has almost no ego. And so it was a massive conversation and, you know, it was clear we were all making the same film, which is, again, it's just a delight when that's what's happening.

1:18:43Michael Phillips:Dave, it's been great to talk to you about your adaptation processes and challenges and rewards and all that. And I mean, I think in the end, I just probably advise every screenwriter to just open the book. We'll have somebody hold down the spine and just copy it just like the Coens. It worked for No Country for Old Men, you know. dangerous advice, actually. Well, I mean, I'm sure there are situations where that is the right move. It's just, I think, not often the right move, at least in my experience. But this premise of your podcast is fantastic, and I loved listening to the previous episodes, and just thanks for having me.

1:19:23Goodbye forever, goodbye forever. I'm going with for a long, long time.

1:19:29Michael Phillips:I was plagued by one example after another of faithful adaptations that worked on screen just beautifully, and I didn't remember them in time to include them in our conversation. I mean, for one, Louis Mal's adaptation of Andre Gregory's eternal rehearsal adaptation of David Mamet's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Vanya on 42nd Street, that is the best Chekhov ever filmed. Too late for the taping, I remembered Nina DaCosta's remarkable Hedda with Tessa Thompson and Nina Haas, a bracing response to Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. That was a top five of 2025 for me, at the very least. And yes, plenty of examples of relatively faithful stage-to-screen adaptations that were big hits, for example, like Tom Hooper's Les Miserables.

1:20:22Michael Phillips:That stuck to what worked, yes, but too often it also made the performer's nostrils, at least as important as anything Victor Hugo had to say. As for The Odyssey, I mean, Christopher Nolan is the world's biggest movie star. He just happens to be a writer-director, not an actor. I like the debates around his movie, and I do recommend that you read Emily Wilson's essay. She is really good on what got left out of The Odyssey, and what's less interesting about the new film's Odysseus than Homer's vision of him. Also, am I the only one out there who really would like to see a Searcy spinoff starring future Academy Award nominee Samantha Morton?

1:21:03Michael Phillips:This much I know. We have to give any adaptation the latitude to respond to whatever's being adapted, not simply just to transcribe it. Otherwise, we're never going to get beyond the surface of anything or underneath our own immediate reactions. And we will not be ready for something half as good as, say, Greta Gerwig's Little Women or Nia DaCosta's Hedda. As for the two halves of the adaptation of the musical Wicked, well, I've never wished harder for a mid-screening tornado warning, but into each movie-going life, a little bleh must fall. Thanks to Dave Kajanek, our guest this week. His adaptation of The Riders, directed by Edward Berger, will be out next year.

1:21:48Michael Phillips:The movie record is produced by Joe Dessau and Michael Phillips. What do you know? Adam Kempinar and Sam Van Halgren produced the show on what you'd call an executive level from their executive suites in Iowa and Wisconsin, respectively. You know what, dammit? Fire up your email machine and shoot me some of your most and least loved page-to-screen adaptations at movieracket at filmspotting.net. I'm Michael Phillips. This is a Film Spotting production. California, here I come. Right back where I started from Where flowers of flowers bloom in the sun Each morning at dawning Birdies singin' everything A sun-kissed mist said don't be late The Hulu original series Furious is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

1:22:41Michael Phillips:Starring Emmy Rossum as Alice Black, Furious follows a rookie FBI agent on the hunt for Catherine, played by Lola Petticrew, a mysterious and calculating female serial killer. While Alice upholds justice, Catherine kills for it, terrorizing the rich and powerful men of New York in her pursuit of vengeance. With secrets that change everything, Alice discovers there's a thin line between hunter and prey. Watch the Hulu original series, Furious, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. App vacations where your story starts. The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations.

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