What many people fail to appreciate
about a book is the importance of its title. A good title might sound cool, like the chorus to a catchy pop
song, but a great title will leave you at the end, going “ohhhh.” In Michael
Cunningham’s novel, The Hours, I found myself doing just that. Very
simply, his title addresses two major elements of the novel. First, it speaks
to the way in which the story is told, over the course of just one day… or
twelve hours. Then, “the hours” also reminds us that time is as much a
character in this novel as Clarissa or Laura or Virginia. From these three
different perspectives, we simultaneously learn how each of these women come to
understand their own use of their time, and question if it’s all worthwhile.
There’s a lot of weight on a title, and I think The Hours carries it
beautifully, all in the hips. A title has to grab the reader’s attention, be
easily remembered, and speak to the content of the book. In many ways, “the
hours” does this for Michael Cunningham.
For those of you who noticed,
recently I changed the title of this blog. I felt that I needed this title to
be more punny, clever. Obviously, I settled on You Had Me at “Fade In”
because I wanted the title of my blog to speak to its content in a very
Cunningham style, and thought a movie quote connection would be the best way to
do so. While playing with some other movie quotes, here are some other title
options I came up with that didn’t exactly make the cut…
·
The
Big Picture
·
You
Had Me at the Fade In
·
You’re
Gonna need a longer script
·
If
im a writer youre a writer
·
I’ll
be back – with a script
·
Life
is like a stack of screenplays, never know what you’re gonna read
·
Writer
is as writer does
·
Just
keep writing, just keep writing
·
Little
Gold Man Named Oscar
·
Why
So Serious… about screenplays?
·
May
the writing be with you
·
Live
long and write screenplays
·
You’ve
got a writer in me
·
Hasta
la vista, screenwriter
·
You
can’t handle the screenplay
·
There’s
no place like the movies
·
Show
me the screenplay
·
You’re
a mean, lean, screenwriting machine!
·
Houston,
we have a screenplay
·
Dude,
where’s my screenplay?
·
Big
Girls Don’t Cry in Movies
·
KEEP
CALM AND SCREENWRITE
·
Write,
Forest, write!
·
I
see dead screenplays
·
Keep
your friends close, but your screenwriter closer.
·
Say
hello to my little script!
·
A
screenplay, shaken, not stirred.
·
Carpe
diem, seize the script!
·
The
first rule of screenwriting is that you don’t talk about screenwriting
·
Nobody
puts a screenwriter in a corner
·
I
love the smell of screenplays in the morning
·
I
think this is the beginning of a beautiful screenplay
·
How
d’ya like dem screenplays?
·
Never
let the fear of screenwriting keep you from playing the game
·
Be
the screenwriter you wish to see in the world
·
Screenwriting
is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans
Not only did The Hours make me
think about titles, but it also made me think about how movies are adapted to
screen. After reading and then watching Atonement by Ian McEwan, I feel
like some of the page-to-screen transitions are a bit more predictable this
time. If I were to place a bet on how director Stephen Daldry morphed
Cunningham’s story, I would place my money on the following:
The director will keep the braided
narrations in the film because it will keep the audience’s attention in what
could very easily, if done wrong, become a boring plot. Daldry will decide not
to clue us in, with text on the screen differentiating the three perspectives,
because he will want the beginning to be slightly disorienting. Therefore, our
time watching the film will be sorting everything out for ourselves, making us
a part of the experience. The transitions from one narration to the other will
instead occur around a certain object. For example, an object that keeps
reappearing throughout the novel is a bouquet of yellow roses. Clarissa, in
present day, buys a bunch of these to put in her vase for Richard’s party,
while Laura Brown, in 1949, makes yellow roses out of frosting for her
husband’s birthday cake. A scene in the movie might flip from Clarissa’s
perspective to Laura’s perspective with the use of this common theme.
As we get closer and closer to the end,
the scenes from each perspective will get shorter and shorter, similar to the
movie, American Beauty. This will help build up to the climax and get
the viewer’s heart thumping.
If I were in the mood to take a bigger
risk, I’d bet that the movie is going to show Laura Brown’s attempted suicide
when the book did not. I think that Stephen Daldry will want to create more
action in the film, and so he will invent this scene in order to do so. By
incorporating Laura’s suicide, Daldry will also be able to connect that to the
suicide of Virginia Woolf that is described in the prologue. Due to the nature
of this story, I would bet that Daldry will try to connect the three
perspectives in any way that he can so that the audience will see the relevance
in every plot point. Daldry will create Laura’s suicide scene to connect
Virginia’s time to her time, but also to present day, when her son commits
suicide in the very end of the novel.
Speaking of big bets, I think Daldry will
slowly reveal Richard’s connection to Laura Brown just as Cunningham in the
novel. He will keep this element of the story because it will similarly engage
the audience and create that “ohhhh” moment once again.
While these are primarily bets that I
would make with nonexistent adversaries, I would also keep these things in mind
if I were adapting this book into a movie. When taking a written story and
plastering it onto the big screen, you want to try to maintain all of the
important themes in the novel, and portray them in an entertaining way. In the
same way that Cunningham takes a “trivial” day and makes it into an exhilarating
story, I would want to bring The Hours to life on screen.
MOVIES WATCHED: 7
SCREENPLAY PAGES WRITTEN: 18
NOVEL PAGES WRITTEN: 60
PAGES LEFT IN MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR
PECULIAR
CHILDREN: 170
THE HOURS: COMPLETED
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