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"Friends and Lovers" Project Update
submitted by: Lisa D.
source: Black Issues Book Review
Date: January 10, 2001
Background on "Friends and Lovers" project From August 2000 issue:
Optioning a book is the first step in getting the book to a movie. Leah Hunter, of Whitney Houston's company Brownhouse Productions says, "the process can be tedious." Someone in the company likes the book and begins the process of acquiring the rights to the story and the characters via agents and attorneys. After the deal is the adaptation. The company's development executives make a "wish list" of writers they feel can cinematically capture the mood and themes of the story. Authors do not have much input, although Terry McMillan had a definite say in the way her novel [Waiting To Exhale] was brought to the screen.
Brownhouse recently acquired the rights to the Eric Jerome Dickey novel, Friends and Lovers. In an unusually fast process -- a short meeting with the author and Dickey's agent and the deal was done. Dickey has little input in the adapting process but says he does get to contribute his thoughts on the script. He is realistic about the fact that changes have to be made to his story, and that many scenes will have to be cut. "Because this is a work of fiction, and not a biography, things can be changed," Dickey says. He compares this process to parenting a child: "You raise it, do your best and see what happens when they become adults."
Adapting
April Claytor, who is black, is adapting Friends. Claytor is no stranger to adapting books to screenplays, having Live at Five and Long Distance Life by Marita Golden as credits. "In movies you want to focus on one character, unlike in a novel where three or even four can be central to the story," Claytor says. "After reading the novel, it is up to the adaptor to choose the character that will now be the backbone of the story and make the story theirs." She has free license and feels it is a huge responsibility. "Someone has spent a great deal of time creating this book and I come along and refashion the story. In the book you just have the writer's point of view. I want to be careful with my interpretation." At the same time, she realizes that she is writing for a different medium and tries to approach Friends as a new piece, separate from the novel.
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