Directors adapting their own source material

Share your Criticker Collections with the rest of the community!
iconogassed
Posts: 919
7281 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2008 4:41 pm

Directors adapting their own source material

Post by iconogassed »

https://www.criticker.com/films/?filter=e47578

As in the author of a novel or story or play etc. writes and directs its film adaptation (though I would be interested to know if there are any instances of the original author letting another writer adapt before directing the film themselves).

Source is a novel unless otherwise noted:

Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1960)
America America (Elia Kazan, 1963)
Destroy, She Said (Marguerite Duras, 1969)
India Song (Duras, 1975) [from her play, in turn based on her novel Le Vice-Consul]
Baxter, Vera Baxter (Duras, 1977)
Bleak Moments (Mike Leigh, 1971) [play]
Abigail's Party (Leigh, 1978) [play]
92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane, 1975)
The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty, 1979)
The Hothouse (Harold Pinter, 1982) [play] (Pinter did this many times with stuff that isn't on IMDb)
Party Time (Pinter, 1992) [play]
Maximum Overdrive (Stephen King, 1986) [short story "Trucks"]
Tough Guys Don't Dance (Norman Mailer, 1987)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard, 1990) [play]
Oleanna (David Mamet, 1994) [play]
What Happened Was (Tom Noonan, 1994) [play]
The Wife (Noonan, 1995) [play "Wifey"]
In the Company of Men (Neil Labute, 1997) [play]
The Shape of Things (Neil Labute, 2003) [play]
I'm Losing You (Bruce Wagner, 1998)
Women in Film (Bruce Wagner, 2001)
Melvin Goes to Dinner (Michael Bleiden, 2003) [play]
The Hottest State (Ethan Hawke, 2004)
Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008) [play]
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Steven Chbosky, 2012)

Some observations:

Mailer and King make for an interesting comparison. Two famous authors with several ~1000 pagers to their credit, one a gassy titan of American letters, the other the model of the hyper-prolific genre "hack", each release their first film—Mailer's was 1968's improvised Wild 90—to atrocious reviews. A cocaine-comedown King is humbled and vows never to direct again; Mailer shamelessly ploughs ahead with two more films that also get mostly savaged, culminating in Maidstone's infamous finale. Both Maximum Overdrive and Tough Guys Don't Dance have also seen their 'popularity' explode thanks to the internet, the latter of course notoriously so.*

There is also Thomas McGuane, another writer in the Mailer-Hemingway-brooding-masculinity mode (though his books are slimmer and funnier), and who, like King, immediately swore off directing after one go. I haven't seen the film of 92 in the Shade to judge, but the novel is hilarious and the writing is phenomenal. (Though it's not experimental, if you are at all fond of experimental American fiction of the era, especially Pynchon, I recommend it.)

Going into the 90s, many male playwrights: Mamet, Labute, Noonan, Stoppard, and to an extent Shawn and Gregory in their work with Malle and others. Shawn also co-starred in Noonan's excellent The Wife, which, along with What Happened Was... is by far the best argument I've seen in favour of such an endeavour. Oleanna would be the worst.

John Sayles had already published a novel and a book of stories years before his first film, and a good amount since then, but has yet to adapt any. Michael Crichton never did, either—all of his films, including Westworld, were original screenplays. Though I assume all of them were novelized at some point.

Arguably, many essay or diary films qualify, like Chantal Akerman's News From Home, 'adapted' from letters she exchanged with her mother. But, caprice reigns...

* I wonder if Mailer's the only writer with both a Pulitzer and an internet meme to his credit. Actually two Pulitzers. And almost two memes...)

iconogassed
Posts: 919
7281 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2008 4:41 pm

Re: Directors adapting their own source material

Post by iconogassed »

Of course I leave off Captain Happy

Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman, 1951, short story "Mari")
The Seventh Seal (1957, play)
After the Rehearsal (1984, play)
In the Presence of a Clown (1997, play)

Also Mishima's Yûkoku/Patriotism (1966, from his great story) an anomaly among anomalies in its graphic rehearsal of his own death by seppuku four years later

And on the subject of queer titans I am tempted to include Terence Davies' 'Trilogy' which features substantial overlap with his not-too-good novel Hallelujah Now, but it's more a case of drawing from the same autobiographical well... (and of course it's not credited)

CosmicMonkey
Posts: 594
1271 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:52 pm

Re: Directors adapting their own source material

Post by CosmicMonkey »

Does Frank Miller co-directing the film adaptations of Sin City count?

Or what about Marjane Satrapi co-directing Persepolis?

Also Micheal Crichton did actually direct a TV-Movie Pursuit, based on the novel Binary, which was written by him but published under the pseudonym John Lange.

iconogassed
Posts: 919
7281 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2008 4:41 pm

Re: Directors adapting their own source material

Post by iconogassed »

CosmicMonkey wrote:Does Frank Miller co-directing the film adaptations of Sin City count?

Or what about Marjane Satrapi co-directing Persepolis?

Definitely, added. And thanks for the Crichton catch!

Post Reply