Hello, and welcome to Adaptation Station. Each week we will look at novels and short stories and articles and movies and television—some great, some not so much—as we work towards figuring out what makes a great adaptation. It is a pleasure to have you on board.
First, what’s an adaptation? According to dictionary.com, ‘adaptation’ is a noun meaning: ‘any alteration in the structure or function of an organism or any of its parts that results from natural selection and by which the organism becomes better fitted to survive and multiply in its environment’.
Okay, that’s not at all what I was looking for.
Let’s check in with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, you know, the people who do the Oscars. (Much more trustworthy than dictionary.com)
Screenplays are considered adapted when based on pre-existing work. Now, there are a couple of ways for this to count.
Based on a book. (That’s probably most people’s first thought, but don’t worry, it gets more complicated.)
Based on characters. (Simple enough, that’s things like Superman or Batman. It also covers series like Transformers, based on a toy line, or Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, based on a video game. You get the idea.)
Also, any sequel is automatically considered an adapted screenplay by the Academy.
There are a handful of reasons why producers mine pre-existing material for movies and television shows and we’ll get to that soon enough. For now, we’ll stick with the basics. Either the original book is in the public domain (Frankenstein), and it’s free to adapt, or it is such a powerhouse of intellectual property (Harry Potter), it’s worth the very large sums of money to buy the rights because it will make the producers and studios even more gigantic amounts of money in the end.
Alright, got all that?
The first piece of media I wanted to look is The Perfect Couple, a limited series on Netflix based on the 2018 novel by Elin Hilderbrand. Over the past few weeks, people have been asking me if I’ve watched. Yes, and I have thoughts.
Let’s start with the log lines for the source material and the adaptation.
The book is described as “a novel about the many ways family can fill our lives with love…if they don’t kill us first,” while the series is marketed as “when a lavish wedding ends in disaster before it can even begin, with a body discovered just hours before the ceremony, everyone in the wedding party is a suspect.” Already, we can see that the series is going to be a different take on the story.
Elin Hilderbrand’s last five books have debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Which makes it all the more surprising that despite her first novel releasing in 1999, The Perfect Couple is the first of her 34 (!) books to be adapted. Sure, there have been options over the years, but The Perfect Couple is the first to get that coveted green light.
Why?
The easy answer is because of a 1986 rom-com starring John Cusack and Demi Moore called One Crazy Summer. This (pretty bad) movie was filmed on Nantucket and basically shut down the entire island for the summer and left a bad taste in locals’ mouths. Even with the generous Massachusetts Film Incentive Tax Credit, no one would be filming on the island.
This leads to what I call: The Nantucket Problem.
Nantucket is an insurmountably specific place, both in reality and in the imagination. It conjures up a fantasy of what summer in New England can be, a wealthy enclave where everything is perfect—even when people are murdered. This is the secret sauce to Hilderbrand’s books. She is a highly-skilled writer, especially when it comes to food, but more than half the draw of her books and why she has been dubbed “the Queen of Beach Reads” is the escapism and the thrill of Nantucket.
Hilderbrand is quoted, regarding differences between the show and the book, “The spirit of The Perfect Couple will be alive. That’s the most important thing.” It’s a mature viewpoint for an author. Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
One of the great joys for Hilder-babes is picking up on the Nantucket-specific references in her writing, from beloved restaurants to singular shops to hidden spots to watch the sunset. With the exception of Downyflake Donuts (which doesn’t get mentioned by name until over halfway through the runtime of the series) and a blink and you’ll miss it cameo of the exterior of one of the island’s two independent bookstores, none of that made the leap from book to screen. Forgive this terrible pun, but everyone needed to get on the same page.
The Perfect Couple struggles as an adaptation because of a translation problem. The book is relatively serious. The script is a comedy. The show is a drama. The tone swings wildly from scene-to-scene and let’s not even get started on the opening dance number. (I would like to take this moment to compliment Dakota Fanning and her on-screen spouse Jack Reynor as the only people in front of or behind the camera who understood the assignment.) Director Susanne Bier lives in redundant close ups and medium shots, making it hard to see the scope of the setting. There are a limited number of locations, perhaps handcuffed by budget, but therein lies the Nantucket Problem. Books don’t have budgets. If it’s too expensive to film on-location, it is highly possible all of the locations made to emulate where you wanted to be will cheapen the look of the entire production. Skilled directors and producers can work their way around this, but it makes their job infinitely more difficult.
We can talk about the failures of directing and acting, but the real issue is Nantucket is made out to be a wasp’s nest. In real life, there are problems, to be sure, but Nantucket is a wonderful place. People of many different ethnicities and tax brackets have made lives, raised children, and, yes, even bought houses on this tiny glacial deposit 30 miles out to sea. All of the life is sucked out of the island, and outside of two police officers and one teenage girl, there are no locals, and there is no year-round community. Even the police are relegated to a basement office with no windows (a budget decision, to be sure, and a questionable one). In her vainglorious attempt to be critical of the über wealthy, Bier turns Nantucket into something it is not, something sinister. And that, not the character or plot changes, is where the limited series fails its source material.
Hilderbrand’s books make you want to drop everything and fly to Nantucket. This adaptation will have you rushing to the Hy-Line office, begging for a ticket on the next ferry off.