Then it happened; The four degrees of narrative separation : exploring the process of adaptation through biolographical texts

• Main Author: Graour, Kristina
• Other Authors: Smit, Alexia Jayne
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2015
• Subjects: Film and Media
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13252

Includes bibliographical references. === To write critically about any given text is very different to writing critically about the process of that text’s creation. Given that this essay will deal closely with representations of the self, perhaps it is not out of place for me to open with an autobiographical confession: while I greatly enjoy the former, relishing opportunities to analyse both literary and filmic texts, I have no such fond feelings for the latter, especially when the situation calls for a critical analysis of my own writing process. The task seems to intrude on a sacred space that I imagine most writers value greatly, a time when what will eventually become the ‘finished product’ is still in formation, is still incomplete. Due to the very nature of the process, it is a time when everything is still in flux, when ideas are still seeking their final form. Therefore, subjecting this tenuous process to critical examination seems somewhat like a betrayal of its nature, a desire to fix in meaning that which has no such absolute meaning. As a result, I have strategically avoided such undertakings in the past as much as possible. It then comes as a surprise to me that after completing the screenplay for Then It Happened, I have the desire to do just that. The reason, I believe, is revealing. It is not the aforementioned final product (the screenplay) that has inspired the ideas that will be discussed in this essay, but the process of creating it, for it is the process that brought me into contact with the three incarnations of the biographical narrative that will be discussed below: autobiography, biography and the biopic (in the form of both the screenplay and the final film). If I have done my job as a storyteller relatively well, then – hopefully – upon reading the screenplay, the reader will receive it as one coherent narrative, with a unity of purpose and style. They will not see it as a collage, composed out of several key sources, namely, Frank Capra’s autobiography The Name Above the Title, Joseph McBride’s biography of Capra, The Catastrophe of Success, as well as six other biographies of the key players: Harry Cohn, Robert Riskin, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The reader might – again, hopefully – glean the sense that a significant amount of research has gone into the screenplay, and from this might infer that multiple sources have been used, but the story should not feel in any way disjointed or 2 fragmented. The purpose of this essay, then, will be precisely to take this story apart and to reveal the collage. In this critical analysis of my writing process, I would like to reverse that very process: instead of stitching together the information gathered through my research, attempting to make the connections invisible, I will magnify those very seams and examine the act of their creation. For I believe that these seams can inform the way that we think about the processes of writing, reading, adaptation as well as the intimate connections between the three, ultimately revealing the importance of narrative in our lives. I will begin, in sections one and two, by examining the forms of autobiography and biography in their own right as well as in their relationships to one another. These sections of the essay will be used to establish a foundation on which the discussion of key questions may be based – questions about subjectivity, interpretation, adaptation and fidelity. Then, in sections three and four, I will look more closely at my own writing process and its intersection with the autobiographical and biographical writings of others. Here I will examine the biopic genre and connect it with reflections on theories of adaptation, furthering this discussion by exploring alternate ways in which both my screenplay, as well as biopics in general, may be read in relation to the contested issue of fidelity.