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American Knees to Americanese
On film adaptations and being a "dictator in exile"
By Shawn Wong, Special to
IMDiversity
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Author/professor
Shawn Wong |
Seattle - May 1, 2006 - Having someone make your novel into a movie is like being
in exile. Essentially someone takes your country (in this case your book) and
creates another story based on the story you wrote (or the country you once
led). A novelist is like a dictator—I wrote every word and I created all the
characters. A producer and director and dozens of crew people create a whole
other command and control infrastructure for the same story. But, for me, it
was a good kind of exile.
American Knees was published in 1995 by Simon &
Schuster (reissued by the University of Washington Press in 2005) and shortly
after its publication, producer Lisa Onodera bought the film rights to the novel
and asked me to write the screenplay. I wrote the screenplay (with Jeffery and
Janis Chan) and then Lisa spent the next nine years searching for financing.
Finally, financing appeared and the film went into production. A bloodless coup
was staged, a director was hired (Eric Byler, who wrote his own adaptation of my
novel), and I was given the title of associate producer, which is like putting me
on a corporate jet, flying me out of the country to an non-extraditable South
American country and parking my ass on a beautiful beach with a satchel full of
highly sought after American dollars, a drink, and Salma Hayek. Well, maybe I
went too far, this is an independent movie—I got paid to stay at home and watch
my movie being made whenever I felt like it. No Salma Hayek.
The interesting thing about this exile is that I loved
it. Writing a novel is a solitary endeavor and making a movie is entirely
collaborative. Why did I like the process of making the movie? Everyone
involved in the project read and loved my novel. You have to love people like
that! They understood the book and they wanted to commit time, money, and
reputations to making the film version of my story. What’s not to like about
that scenario?
In addition, everyone involved in making production decisions
was Asian American. I didn’t have to educate anyone to the issues and
subtleties in the story. No one was taking my story and turning some of the
characters into other ethnicities or drastically changing the story, and it was
important to those producing the movie that the movie be tied to the novel.
In the end, director Eric Byler paid me the greatest
complement when he used all of my characters from the novel and didn’t change
them. Certainly the movie focuses on just a small part of the book, but the
parts Byler chose to be part of the movie are actually the parts of the book
that are the emotional center of the novel. That he found and concentrated his
interpretation on those parts is fascinating to me. The emotional center of the
novel is also the most autobiographical in terms of where that emotion comes
from.
The first time I saw a scene from Americanese, the film version of my
novel, was in a screening room where Byler and the cinematographer, Stacy
Koyama, were watching the dailies (footage shot the day before with no sound).
Intellectually, I thought my role as author of the book was to be entirely
objective and make a notation in my head as to what came from the book and what
didn’t come directly from the book. When I wandered into the pitch black
screening room, I didn’t know who was in the room. The film started and I knew
instantly which scene from the novel was on the screen in front of me.
My next reaction was unexpected. My eyes started to well up with
tears. I remembered the exact moment in my life when I wrote that
particular scene in the book. Even though the fictional story was just
that—fiction—the writing moment and what real life and real emotion was
behind that scene came back to me. It was the same experience on the
set. Even though the fictional characters are not me, there are
certainly parts of me in all of the characters, and watching the actors
play parts of me, saying lines of dialogue I’ve uttered in my life, is a
very surreal experience. My first reaction is to place that line of
dialogue back into its real life context. Now having watched the movie
several times, with and without an audience, that feeling of the
autobiographical emotional center of my story never goes away when I see
the scenes fleshed out.
I love every minute of Americanese for the introspection it
allows me. A story told ten years ago comes back in a different form
and in a different context, as it should be. It’s a luxurious and
extravagant feeling seeing my writing interpreted by others even as I
reinterpret the work for myself.
Other Recent Readings of Interest
Shawn Wong is also the author of the novel
Homebase,
and editor or co-editor of six anthologies of literature. He lives in Seattle
and is a professor of English at the University of Washington.
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