Adopting Books & Screenplays

 

I decided to include a chapter on adapting both books and screenplays. My first experience with adapting a book happened about twenty years ago with a non-fiction book called Who Killed Janet Smith by Vancouver writer Ed Starkins. The book had been painstakingly researched and attempted to unravel a mysterious murder in 1020's Vancouver.

Janet Smith was a Scottish girl who worked for an English family in the upper class of Shaughnessy. One day she was shot dead in the basment. A Chinese "houseboy" was blamed, arrested and taken to jail.

I read the book and got totally into it, it was very much like Robert Towne's Chinatown which was loosely based on rich corrupt leaders . We made a deal and I started work. The book had several attempts by other writers but none were able to come out with a store that worked for everyone.

The biggest problem was that the story played out over several years and with a huge cast of characters.

This was my first attempt ad adapting a true life story and I had no real idea as how to do it. I found a few books on adaptation but they really didn't inspire me. I went to see Ed and we talked more and even passing the house that Janet died. I imagined the house, even now still a family lived there.

One thing was okay that the story wasn't made it. And I was here where it happened. Then I had an idea. Janet's grave was nearby, overlooking the city and I decided to visit here. I sat at her aging gravestone in the perpetual soft rain common to Vancouver and waited for something.

An idea came to me, an eerie one. Making sure nobody was watching me I asked a dead girl to tell me who killed her.

The idea came slowly, I realized I was getting obsessive over Janet and it occurred to me that obsession was the key. I had walked the streets and even talked to the last feew people who actually remembered the murder. I even heard stories of Janet's ghost that walked down the hallway of another mansion down the street.

Then something became clear, Janet's beautiful face was looking back at me from the book cover in my hands and I was the one who was obsessed. And that would become the central semi-fictional character of the story. 

That character, me, would tell us the story of Janet Smith.