All right, y'all.. here's the long-threatened film essay I've been ominously talking about for weeks now. ;) Yes, it lays out the staggeringly enormous amounts of evidence for JKR's massive control over the content of the films. GREAT amounts of research and sneaking into the Vanderbilt library went into this. (Infinite thanks to ShutUpMalfoy for so graciously leading me into the hallowed halls of that Academy of the Old South.) And even infinite-r thanks to Creamtea for beta-ing and ruthlessly excising long, meandering film criticism blathering. Why is this Chapter 5 of her "Fall of H/G" theory? When y'all read Part II of this essay, it will make a lot more sense. That's the part that agonizingly dissects what all this means for H/G, H/L, and yes, D/G. The first part, however, lays the foundations. Flames will be used to roast fourteenth-century incunabula in the Malfoy library, while I cackle incoherently about just how much research the flamers have NOT done. But I have, because that's what I do. Warning: perilous logic lies ahead....
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Chasing Canon: J. K. Rowling’s Unprecedented Creative
Control Over Hollywood, and What It Really Means
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In terms of the Harry Potter fandom, ‘canon’ has been traditionally defined as the body of written works directly produced by the author, J. K. Rowling, as well as the literal words of her actual interview statements as published or broadcast. As anyone can promptly glean from a quick perusal of any fansite, canon is also the wellspring from which our myriad speculations flow. We can argue endlessly about differing interpretations of this canon, but what is and remains immutable is the source material itself. Defined in this way, the question of what is (and is not) considered canon material seems very simple. But is it?
There is another source of information about the Potterverse besides J.K. Rowling’s direct writings and statements, and universal confusion has always reigned in the fandom about how to deal with this source and define its nature. It is the visual body of work adapted from the books. While this has occasionally been taken to include Mary GranPre’s illustrations, it will here be defined exclusively and solely as the five films that have been produced by the Warner Bros. studios-- Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. (The abbreviations SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, and OotP will be used when referring to the films. To avoid confusion, they will be differentiated from the book titles in always being italicized.)
And yet, what are the films? What relationship do they really bear to the books? When we see certain aspects of plot, narrative, and character interactions emphasized while others are downplayed—both to a degree that was necessarily nearly so clear in the source material—what do these changes mean? The release date of OotP is essentially one week before the release of the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So if we see changes from the source material in the fifth film, are we justified in reading them as hints and foreshadowings for what is to come in the seventh book? In short, do the films represent a kind of canon—or are they only some sort of cinematic fanfic? Is expanding the fandom definition of canon to somehow include the films an action justified by the available evidence?
That is the question that will be explored in this essay. However, we will not only muse on possibilities; we will search for answers. And we will find that both direct and circumstantial evidence for a definite answer is startlingly strong—and that the answer is unquestionably a “yes”.
“When all is said and done, "canon” could perhaps be best and most accurately defined simply as material over which the author maintains control. So the central question is whether or not J. K. Rowling can be proven to have had considerable control over the content of the films from the very beginning. If she has, then we can justifiably apply some sort of canon definition to the films; if she has not, then we can’t. And what we find is that J.K. Rowling’s case represents a shocking departure in virtually every detail from the Hollywood norm (which is outlined in a separate and lengthy footnote to this essay for those readers who would like to see more detailed evidence of what the norm has actually always been.)
No matter where we look, we find evidence that Rowling has had a staggeringly large amount of creative control all along, and that this is shown in a multitude of provable ways, both in terms of factual news events, and in logical deduction from the actual content of the finished cinematic product. This phenomenon is not only unusual; its degree is probably also unprecedented. And it has been noted as such by the popular press, the scholarly press, the business press, the academic press, the film criticism press, and finally the film industry press. In short, as we shall see, my hypothesis that J.K. Rowling has continuously had remarkable creative control over the film adaptations of her books can be proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt. We will see that book content has been changed for the films only in order to streamline certain elements to meet the demands of cinematic narrative. However, no book content that actually materially affects plot, characterization, theme, or the relationships between characters has been changed for any of the films—except for two very specific, and recurring, instances. In one of the two cases, scenes, dialog, and character’s behavior have all been repeatedly changed in each film; in the second case, none of this had the opportunity to happen until the fifth film, when, from all reports, it most decidedly has. None of this has occurred in ways that in and of themselves shortened length or streamlined cinematic narrative, and so it could not have been required for the same reasons that the standard minor changes were required. Because of Rowling’s control, this means that the two major recurring changes cannot have been made without Rowling’s consent. As some people believe, this may well have some extraordinary implications for the content of her seventh and final book in the Potter series.
However, we have a long way to go before we can justifiably arrive at any of these rather shocking conclusions. First, let’s look at the evidence for the main hypothesis that comes out of the adaptation and filmmaking processes themselves. What is the history of the book-to-film process, starting with and concentrating on SS, and what can it show us?
To begin with, J.K. Rowling held out until she received a studio offer that included the creative control over film adaptations that she simply refused to do without, and she was already very unusual at the time (1998) even in having done this. Few authors are able to resist the pull of easy money when studios do offer to buy book rights immediately, rather than only purchasing an option. When Philip Pullman sold the rights to The Golden Compass to Northern Lights, he retained no creative control precisely because “it was at a time when I thought it might be the only money I made on the book.”(Kean) J.K. Rowling took a vastly different path. A large part of the reason was undoubtedly because by the time Warner Brothers bought the rights to the first four books (yes, only the first four, and this will be a very important point later on,) it was 1998, and SS/PS was already a bestseller. However, it also took remarkable determination on her part to make the choices that she did when it came to control over her work.
In the author’s own words: “We were inundated with offers from film companies and I said no to all of them—even Warner. But they kept coming back… The vital thing for me was that it should be true to the book. Obviously, there are some things that won’t work on screen, but I didn’t want the plot to change much at all.” (Conversations With J.K. Rowling.) Indeed, Warner Bros. did “keep coming back,” and as we know, she did decide to sell the rights to the first four books, and an option on the fifth, in 1998. The exact details of author’s contracts with studios are jealously guarded secrets. However, there is every reason to believe that without an iron-clad assurance of creative control, Rowling would never have sold the rights at all. Every piece of available evidence leads us to this conclusion. Therefore, it is safe to say that Rowling’s contract did, and does, specifically include such a clause, although we will likely never know its exact wording. One thing we do know is that Rowling has been an executive producer of the films since SS, and that in a legal sense, this is a very specific—and very large-- role. However, there is a great deal of evidence that her control went beyond the realm normally allotted to even executive producers. As we will later see, Warner had every reason to continue allowing this in later films, as well.
Indeed, all news sources unanimously agree on this central point. To pick only a few of the avalanche of available quotes: “The author’s unwillingness to compromise was also shown in negotiations over the first film… She initially rejected a number of offers from studios desperate to take on the books ….Ultimately, she changed her mind only because of Warner’s commitment to the books and, perhaps, because they allowed her an unprecedented level of control.” (O’Donnell) “The decision to allow a film wasn’t about money or power, but rather a desire to maintain the books’ integrity…. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has cast a spell on Hollywood that rivals any wielded by the boy wizard. Authors are notoriously rebuffed by filmmakers and studio bosses eager to reshuffle storylines or change characters to fit their own creative or marketing vision. But Warner Bros. was eager to please the British writer, envisioning her Harry Potter series as a franchise of seven movies that could generate billions of dollars over the next decade. Rowling initially balked at all movie offers, and eventually parlayed that reluctance into power that may be unprecedented for an author.” (Simpson) “Warner Brothers acceded to Rowling a level of creative control that not even Anne Rice held when her first book was filmed.” (Nettles) Or, in short: “Of course, we all know who was really responsible [for the success of the films], J.K. Dopey Hollywood types may quarrel about ‘creative rights,’ but you’ve reminded everyone about ownership rights. You are not simply the author, J.K, you’re the proprietor.” (Bart)
And finally, this: “She [Rowling] is strong, she’s opinionated, she’s clear, she’s passionate,” said SS producer David Heyman. “We wanted to be good to her book. We wanted her involvement.” (Simpson) And whether the producers actually wanted her involvement or not, they certainly had it in spades.
According to all reports, J.K. Rowling had (and has always continued to have) considerable input—and in some cases, final input-- into choices regarding directors, cast, setting, set design, and script. “Author J.K. Rowling exerted an unprecedented degree of control over the film version of ‘Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone’… Rowling, who served as an executive producer, had a huge say in casting, production design, and which episodes from the book turned up in Steve Kloves’ screenplay... Rowling read every draft of the script and sat in on production meetings.” (Lumenick) “The author had input on virtually every aspect of the production, from the choice of director to the casting and scenery designs,” agrees Simpson. Most importantly of all, Rowling has always directed the scriptwriter in the writing of the scripts for each film (whether we are talking about Steve Kloves or Michael Goldenberg) in order to make sure that he didn’t and doesn’t write anything that will contradict what is coming in later books, and the process began with SS. Indeed, this level of control is well illustrated by her quote from 2003 in a co-interview with Kloves: “Because it's incredibly annoying of me when he says "Well shall we cut that", or "I wanted to do this" and I say, "Well no... because, you know, in book six, something will happen and you'll need that in" or "that will contradict something that happens" (Mzimba).
One of the most interesting ways in which the importance of this point has been shown lies in the recent Goldenberg interview hoax, as posted on April 9th on Mugglenet. It claimed to contain comments and observations made by Goldenberg to a UCLA film student in a private interview after a guest lecture, and included statements such as “J.K. Rowling was not happy with some of the omissions that were made that may "come back to haunt the next film adaptations,” and “he (Goldenberg) revealed that Rowling, in an email, seriously suggested that after she finished Book 7 she should probably take reign as co-screenwriter and/or become a serious player in the screenwriting process.” This certainly would seem to derail the entire idea that Rowling had control over the script of OotP. There is only one problem with that scenario, however. The article was a complete hoax from beginning to end. A genuine interview with Goldenberg surfaced one day later, in which he denied any input into, or knowledge of, the faked interview (as Warner Bros. itself had already done. Indeed, a cursory examination of Goldenberg’s lecture schedule shows that he had not given any talks at UCLA—or any other Los Angeles colleges—since October.) Goldenberg’s comments could not have been more different in the genuine interview, as we will see in more detail in the second part of this essay.
There are three fascinating aspects of the hoax that are worth pointing out now, however. First of all, the very fact that it was planned and carried out shows that the importance of the films—in a way, even the canon-ness of the films-- is, indeed, acknowledged in the fandom. The swiftness of Warner’s official denial also shows that a major studio takes this fandom seriously. And lastly, the information from the genuine interview shows that J.K. Rowling’s control over the content of the scripts for these films is as remarkable as it ever was.
Actually, this is where it is very useful to examine Alice Walker’s case in detail within the body of this essay itself, because she provides such a fascinating case for study by way of contrast. Walker was very reluctant to sell the film rights to her Pulitzer-winning novel The Color Purple in the early 1980’s, although Warner wanted to buy them. In fact, she seriously considered bypassing the standard studio system altogether and allowing an independent film production company and an independent director to film her work (ultimately, this is more or less what she did decide to do with Prahtiba Parmar and the Warrior Marks project.) She did finally sell the rights to Warner. The studio and director (Steven Spielberg) did give her a level of control that few authors had ever had up to that point (1983) over the adaptation of her work, including frequent consultations on the script, set design, costumes, casting, and even editing. However, her critical analysis of the adaptation process (The Same River Twice) shows that it still cannot be said that she had anything like true creative control. She finally came to terms with what had been done to her book in the filming process, but one retains a strong sense from reading The Same River Twice that she fervently wishes for a great many things to have been different, including the director.
About fifteen years later, Steven Spielberg showed a great deal of interest in directing SS for Warner. Reportedly, he wanted to change a large number of things, including combining elements from SS/PS and CoS into one movie, casting Haley Joel Osment as Harry, re-envisioning the film in an American setting, and perhaps turning it into a CGI cartoon a la Toy Story. Obviously, none of this happened, and analyzing why gives us a fascinating understanding of the vast differences between Walker’s and Rowling’s experiences. According to all reports, Rowling simply vetoed any and all of these changes. She insisted on live action, an all-British cast, and absolutely no butchering of the story. (Simpson, O’Donnell, Guest.) Rowling has always been extremely coy on the subject of whether she put her foot down in this way, and the studio, of course, has been completely mum. However, we know that she was an executive producer for SS (which is a fact well worth repeating,) and that veto power over directors is one of the powers that executive producers can indeed possess. So from all available information, Rowling stood up to one of the most famous directors that the film industry has ever seen—and won. In some ways, this is a more amazing victory than the control over scripts.
As we know, Chris Columbus stepped in for both SS and CoS, and Rowling accepted him without demur. As she herself said, “The first time I met Chris, he promised me two things: that he would remain as faithful to the book as he possibly could within the constraints of film and that he would have all British cast. And, he kept both promises.” (Rowling) As O’Donnell rather snidely notes, “Columbus was a lot more open to Rowling’s suggestions than Spielberg or any other first-rank director used to autonomy probably would have been.” He happily consulted her on set design. He asked her to draw him a picture of the exact location of Harry’s scar. (There has been some discussion regarding the fact that this location is not where Rowling originally sketched it for the books long before film rights were sold; however, she herself, from all accounts, is the one who decided to change the location for the films.) (Simpson) Columbus appears to have actually presented her with casting decisions, which is simply unheard of in the film industry. Directors don’t do this for authors, and they may not even do it for ordinary executive producers. Rowling herself blandly admits that Columbus asked her if there was “anybody I thought would be good and I said 'RobbieColtraneForHagrid' in one breath.” (However, all evidence indicates that her influence over the films extended light-years beyond this modest appraisal!) As Columbus said, perhaps a bit defensively, “It’s a very simple, logical theory. If the books are so popular with people, why would you change them?” (O’Donnell)
On that note, let us move on to the evidence from the films themselves, the final product of what was adapted. Why change them, indeed? Warner could not come up with an answer that was good enough to lead them to do so, and they did not. Of course, not every trivial incident in SS/PS was completely reproduced in its film counterpart, because that was not the degree or nature of creative control that Rowling had fought so hard to retain. Warner did not simply hire a DP to point a camera at Jim Dale or Stephen Fry sitting in a chair and reading the books aloud onscreen. Yet we see clearly by actually examining the films themselves that the only changes have been remarkably minor ones, made in order to adapt prose narrative to the mostbasic requirements of visual narrative. One review of SS sums the issues up perfectly: “Never before has a novelist had such complete control over an adaptation, and she has used her power to protect her readers’ sensibilities. Professor Quirrell’s turban may be a different color, Peeves the poltergeist (played by Rik Mayall) may be on the cutting room floor, some songs have been chopped and the more literate jokes don’t make it, but, for once, carpers won’t be able to say that the book and the film are completely different. With Rowling controlling the casting, too, everyone… steps seamlessly from the page onto the screen.” (Jardine)
In fact, Wikipedia maintains a complete and accurate list of precisely what details were changed in each film. For the time being, we will concentrate on SS, although evidence from the other films will be brought in for the second part of this essay. The remarkable thing we see when we read this list is how unbelievably minor these changes are when compared to the average adaptation (one of the two major changes, which involved characters, did appear here to some degree, and it will be discussed much later in Section II of this essay.) Some members of Dudley’s gang are eliminated, as is Madam Malkin, Peeves, two of the named centaurs, Professor Binns, and so forth. A hamburger restaurant near Paddington Station appears in the book, but not in the film. When the Dursleys leave Privet Drive to escape the horde of owls delivering Harry his Hogwarts letter, they travel to a hotel before going to a hut on a rock out in the sea in the book, but the hotel is skipped in the film. Harry meets Draco in Madame Malkin’s dress shop in the book; the two do not meet until they get to school in the film. Firenze has dark hair and dark skin rather than being blond and blue-eyed, as he is described in the book. And so on, and so forth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_book_and_film_versions_of_Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher%27s_Stone)
Only from the point of view of film—not of the book fandom—can we see how remarkable this really is (which is why I really recommend reading that footnote in order to understand the sorts of changes that are made in a normal book-to-film adaptation, and the minimal to no influence of nearly any other authors of an original work over the adaptation process.) In fact, film reviewers hardly seemed to know how to take the sort of adaptation that SS was. Although reviews tended on the whole to be more positive than not, a rather puzzled tone reigned supreme in them.
“Where the film falls short in not (for once in the history of much loved novels) as a version of the book, but as a film. So much has been crammed in, that for those who haven’t read it… the plot may prove baffling.” (Jardine) “The completed movie suggest the filmmakers took her ‘suggestions’ (sic) religiously enough that they ended up making a risk-adverse, strictly by-the-book adaptation rather than a classic.”
In fact, the most important piece of information revealing Rowling’s level of control had nothing to do with the actual content of the film. Her control over the adaptation of her work was tremendous, but certain
aspects of it have been seen before. However, she also wielded considerable influence in an area where no author hasever before held the slightest bit of power. As BBC news noted: “In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in
the race to tie-in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.” (Forbes) She also vetoed the direct use of Harry’s film character on fast food boxes. Coca-Cola was Warner’s main marketing tie-in with the first film, so this means that Rowling was affecting the marketing moves of a major corporation. If the entire fandom truly understood how unimaginable this kind of control really is on the part of an author, how literally unique its scope, then there would be no need for this essay to be written. There would, instead, already be universal understanding and acceptance of its argument.
In the area of meeting Rowling’s standards for faithfulness to her book, SS formed a prototype for the later films, and what is true of it is also true of them. While this will be examined in more detail in Part II of this essay, it is worthwhile to take a quick look at just how unusual observers knew this to be. It was thought at the time of the release of the second film(CoS) that Rowling’s control might slip because of fading popularity in the near future. As Richard Perks, a senior analyst at Mintel Retail Intelligence, said “There is a risk of overkill with Harry Potter, and the hype is remarkably strong. There has to be some law of diminishing returns.” In 2004, Forbes magazine darkly predicted “But Pottermania may be too fantastic to last.” If any of this had ever come to pass, it’s possible that it might have led to some sort of diminishing of Rowling’s control over the films. However, as we all know, it’s rather an understatement to say that none of it happened. So other and far more talented directors stuck just as closely to the later books as Columbus had done. (O’Donnell, Watson-Brown.)
Regarding the filmed version of OotP, however, there is one more aspect worth pointing out in the first part of this essay. As the fandom now knows, an article was briefly posted on April 9th that claimed to be written by a UCLA film student who had supposedly talked with Michael Goldenberg, OotP’s scriptwriter. Goldenberg’s reported comments, which included such gems as “J.K. Rowling was not happy with some of the omissions that were made that may "come back to haunt the next film adaptations,’” stirred brief controversy in the fandom. This article certainly seemed to indicate that Rowling had somehow lost control over the filming process, and was also very unhappy with the specific changes that had been made. The only problem was that the article was a complete hoax from beginning to end. Goldenberg gave a genuine interview to Melissa Anelli two days later in which he expressed exactly the opposite views in statements such as: “[Rowling’s suggestions were] immediately put into the script. Tiny little things, for the most part, we could not have asked for more in terms of a collaborator” and “we really do want to make a movie that she's thrilled with. I mean, nobody wants that more than we do. So, it almost didn't need to be said, you know? It's just the baseline we're all starting from.” This puts the ingenuous “tiny little things” comment into correct perspective. Rowling has established such control by this point that she could more than afford to be gracious; she had already fought her battles and acted the Iron Lady. Her view of where the entire narrative is headed is simply “the baseline we’re all starting from.”
In addition, he made this comment: “Jo and I actually spoke about that [the adaptation process.] It was interesting, in that our processes are kind of the opposite, in a way. The joy of the books is that you can stop. You can just linger and pay attention to all of these wonderful details, and spend as much time as you want just immersing yourself in this world. But in the film, you really are translating it into another language.” In so doing, Goldenberg proves that both he and Rowling understand very well that cutting details and richness and embroidery in the book-to-film process does not change the basic narrative, themes, plot, characterization, or relationships between the characters. This point will be taken up in much more detail in Part II.
However, it worth emphasizing here that the producer (David Heyman) and the scriptwriter have both gone to a lot of trouble to publicly express their views on the fact that certain elements from the book simply had to be cut. Their comments are remarkably painstaking and detailed, very carefully explaining why specific changes had to be made. To see how extraordinary this is, all we need to do is to compare it with the attitudes surrounding the changes made in the average book-to-film adaptation. The producer in particular would normally never even have dreamed of actually giving interviews to point out how hard they worked at keeping to the source material, how regrettably necessary it was to cut a few things, how much effort and energy went into keeping to the theme and plot of the book, etc., etc., etc. The very fact that this has happened repeatedly shows just how anxious Warner is to keep Rowling happy, and to stick as closely as possible to her original work.
At the time of the first film, however, everything had not yet reached this level of graciousness. There was a great deal of commentary in the press about how Rowling was “making things difficult” for Warner. (Guest) So a central question remains: why did the studio—and its parent corporation-- put up with this process, so incredibly different from the way that books are and always have been adapted to film? This is a question that must be answered if we are going to accept the fact that this level of creative control by an author really did exist.
It can best be summed up by an article in Variety, the industry press. It described SS’s first screening in New York, which was introduced by Richard Parsons, COO of AOL Time Warner. This was not an artistic event in any sense of the word, but an utterly corporate. The author, a film industry insider, states that SS was such a milestone precisely because it “helped to reinvent.. the ‘tentpole,’” or a film that is part of a series that automatically, by its very nature, contains a great number of sequels (as Lord of the Rings did.) Whatever these films mean in artistic terms, this is what they mean to the studios, and to the megacorporations that own them: dazzling cash cows.(Bart)
This point becomes even clearer if we begin to follow the money:
[i]SS[/i]: $317.576,000
[i]PoA[/i]: $249.539
[i]CoS[/i]: $261.980,000
[i]GoF[/i]: $290.013,000
In other words, well over a billion dollars have been grossed to date just from U.S. domestic theater release of the Potter films. This does not count foreign release, and all of the films have made about 2/3rd’s of their total gross overseas. This does not count DVD sales. This does not count any type of merchandising tie-ins at all—from action figures to games to Halloween costumes to Draco’s wand to Hermione’s Yule Ball earrings to Harry-shaped cake pans. (All Time Top Grossing) Indeed, Forbes magazine laid it out quite a bit more clearly. “The first two flicks have grossed $2 billion worldwide at the box office, fetching another $500 million in video, DVD and rental sales….Of course, Harry Potter is a toy-merchandising machine, helping Mattel unload an estimated $150 million worth of Potter paraphernalia so far. Video games by Electronic Arts generate even more. The half-pint wizard is emblazoned on Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aids, cologne, even gross-out Jelly Belly beans infused with such Hogwarts flavors as earwax, dirt and booger.” (Forbes)
As Tibbets and Welsch note, “For motion pictures in America… the only failure is commercial failure.” And by that standard, Rowling has created dazzling success. No matter how radically different from the norm her adaptation process has been, it has made large amounts of money for the studio and the parent corporation, and any amount of authorial control will be tolerated if that is the result. So Warner continued to allow the freakish process to happen, and it has kept happening in the subsequent movies. Later directors were more gifted than Columbus, and more skillful at creating a final film that had truly artistic and cinematic qualities, but the reality of Rowling’s unprecedented creative control is still the same. For once, the result is precisely what sells. The films that Warner has made from the original HP novels don’t need to be “made more accessible” by being made more cinematic. The books themselves represent a literary phenomenon so unique that the closest possible things to literal renditions of them on film are exactly what the audience pays to see.
But there is still a central question here that remains unanswered, and that is exactly why JKR was able to keep the creative control she had fought so hard to win. The point is not only to gain this control in the first place, but to be able to keep it. And there is one very curious piece of information on which this entire phenomenon turns. When Warner first acquired the rights to produce 'Harry Potter' movies from J.K. Rowling, they only bought the first four films, with a "first look" option on this fifth in the 7-part series. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808475611 Greg’s Previews.) If they had known how phenomenally successful the series would really turn out to be, they would certainly have fought harder for all of the rights—but at the time, they did not. So as time went by, there was every reason in the world to placate J.K. Rowling by giving her anything she wanted, both in control over films that were currently being made, and in contract negotiations for her level of control over future ones. Otherwise they could very easily lose their stupendous income source for the last two films (not to mention the tremendous value of future work from her.). And so the studio found that it was completely worthwhile for their bottom line to do this. In a total reversal of the normal rules, the studio, investors, and corporation actually made more money by giving the author what she wanted and staying faithful to the book.
And so we have reached the conclusion of this portion of the essay. We have seen massive amounts of evidence for the hypothesis that Rowling has consistently had unprecedented control over the contents of the film adaptations of her books. So for all the reasons that we have seen in the first part of the essay, that contention has been proven—not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond any doubt that can be based in reason and logic. While minor details may and do differ from book to film, plot, narrative, characterization, and relationships have not changed and do not change—unless Rowling wants them to do so. To indulge in considerable paraphrase of Mathew 18:18,
whatever things Rowling bound in the books are bound in the films, and whatever things she released from the books have been released from the films. The films are not the books, but neither are they separate from the books in the way that any normal film adaptation may be said to be. Because of this, it is not a question of bringing the films into canon, but rather of expanding the definition of canon to include them.
Of course, this begs an immediate question: since there are differences between book and film, how do we decide which are significant and which are not? Are some of those differences important enough to foreshadow the developments that we may see in DH, the final book in the series? In a print canon which has yet to be completed, these questions certainly have special weight. However, it is definitely possible to come up with answers based on evidence, and that is what we will do in the second part of this essay.
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Footnote 1:
However, this answer is a vast departure from the Hollywood norm. Indeed, we will get a different answer to this question if it posed in relation to probably any other book-to-film adaptation in the hundred-year history of mainstream studio filmmaking itself; it is only a question of how large a degree of difference there is. This is vital to understand, because only in the context of the norm can we appreciate how revolutionary J.K. Rowling’s creative control truly is, and how unprecedented her situation vis a vis the Warner studio. In fact, the intricacies of this situation relate not only to the unique set of facts surrounding the Harry Potter books and their author, but also to the changing nature of the fight for corporate profits in a world where the public’s entertainment dollar is spent in a far more fragmented way than ever before.
Before dealing with any of these questions, however, we must first understand what the Hollywood norm has traditionally been. J.K. Rowling’s radical departure from it cannot be appreciated without first knowing exactly what “it” is. Which factors define the most common translation of book to film? How faithful is the average adaptation? Which parts of the original book are retained, and which discarded? Why is this done? And most importantly of all, where does the original author stand in this entire process? What type and degree of control, if any, do they normally retain?
The answer to this last question has certainly varied throughout Hollywood history. There can be no doubt, however, that the most common answer is “very little” to “none,” and this has consistently been the case from the very earliest days of cinema. Book-to-film adaptations have always been incredibly popular precisely because they use source material with which the audience is already familiar, and the work of developing plot and characters has already been done. However, few tasks present less of a challenge than proving how minimal the original author’s control virtually always is over any and all aspects of a film adaptation—unless we are talking about J.K. Rowling
As Danuta Kean notes, “Hollywood is not kind to writers. If you are the author of a novel adapted to film, the experience can be even more brutal... Often, what makes it to screen bears little resemblance to the original.” (Kean) Normally, what is sold is only an option to a producer to develop the book for a fixed period of time, not the rights to do so, although rights certainly have been sold first. If the option is exercised, the financial rewards for the original author can be considerable, but he or she has always quickly found that it is almost always impossible to retain even the smallest degree of creative control over the adaptation that results. If the rights do end up selling, which means the book will almost certainly make it to screen, studios normally exercise iron control. It’s hard to even begin to pick and choose from all the specific examples that prove this point.
However, the 1987 filmed version of John Updike’s novel The Witches of Eastwick is considered to be a classic case for many reasons. The rights were purchased from Updike, and that was literally the end of his involvement with the production. The original plot, theme, narrative, and characterizations were all vastly changed. As Updike himself said, “The movie bears, all reports agree, little resemblance to my text.” (Updike) The director, George Miller, never even read the original book. Jack Nicholson’s over-the-top Beelzebub, in particular, had very little to do with Updike’s character in the novel.
All of this is remarkable only in how utterly typical it is, but one aspect that was quite unique was the fact that it drove John Updike to write a piece reflecting on the nature of film adaptations in the New York Times in the summer of 1987, and it is more than worth examining his analysis of the entire issue. “Movie makers, like creative spirits everywhere, must be free; they owe nothing to the authors of books they adapt except the money they have agreed to pay them,” he flatly states (Updike) He draws the lines between film and book, and not only as separate entities, since they can hardly be otherwise (and this is an important point, since J.K. Rowling herself has made the “separate entitites” statement about HP adaptions.) He makes it clear that cinema and literature are entirely separate realities that may have nothing at all to do with one another beyond a common title and a bit of shared source material, which is quite a different thing to say. “The text is always there, for the ideal reader to stumble upon, to enter, to reanimate. The text is almost infinitely patient, snugly gathering its dust on the shelf; until the continental drift of language turns its English as obscure as Chaucer's, the text remains readily recoverable and potentially as alive as on the day it was scribbled,” he rather loftily writes. However, all of this is really only to say that the book exists separately from its film adaptation no matter how vastly it is changed in that adaptation, and that this vast change is the norm.
And the list goes on ad infinitum. As Updike himself notes, 1907’s Ben Hur not only played havoc with every aspect of Lew Wallace’s original novel, the producers tried to get away without even acknowledging Wallace’s original copyright. The resemblance that D.W. Griffith’s 1913 Birth of a Nation bore to Thomas Hart Dixon’s novel The Klansman existed chiefly because Griffith and Dixon shared so much political ideology, as did the white population of America at that time (unfortunately.) The Great Gatsby, Ulysses, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Remembrance of Things Past, Being There, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Scarlet Letter, Mildred Pierce, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, even Gone With the Wind-- only a few moment’s thought summons up a panoply of film adaptations throughout history that were changed from the original source material in order to suit actors, directors, producers, studios, and investors.
Specific examples are almost literally unending. Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities is considered to be a classic example of a disastrous book-to-film adaptation in which the original author played no part. (Tibbetts and Welsch) The heirs of J.R.R. Tolkien sold the rights to The Lord of the Rings in the 1970’s, and had no creative control at all over Peter Jackson’s version. Robert K. Massie wrote bitterly about his experience with the film adaptation of his historical novel, Nicholas and Alexandra. “After I had signed my contract with him, Sam Spiegel [the producer] had disappeared from our lives. We heard rumors that this or that actor or actress was being hired; we read in the papers that three directors had been fired. People at cocktail parties knew more about what was in the script than we did.” (Massie) Philip Pullman sold the rights to the first book in the His Dark Materials series without retaining any creative control whatsoever. As Danuta Kean tellingly notes, “Writers should expect darlings to be killed, stories simplified and plot twists changed to make them accessible to the widest audience…. If a storyline does not play well in Des Moines or Detroit, it will be ditched and only the J. K. Rowlings and Dan Browns have the power to stop them.” (And even Dan Brown did not have anything like the sort of creative control over The Da Vinci Code that J.K. Rowling has had over her works.)
In a way, every film adaptation ever made from a book other than those by J.K. Rowling could be used as an example here. Of course, there certainly have been examples of a very limited number of authors with a greater degree of control over the way in which their works are adapted to film. But the most notable aspect of even these rare cases is the degree to which the creative control is still limited. The making of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is a wonderful case study in this regard. However, her situation will be discussed in detail a little later, when we see which critical elements of J.K. Rowling’s adaptation experience were the same as—and which were radically different from-- Walker’s experience with the same studio about fifteen years earlier. Michael Crichton has served on a producer on several films adapted from his novels, for instance, but he still had very little say over their specific aspects, including the content of the scripts. Director Wayne Wang worked with Amy Tan in adapting The Joy Luck Club, but Tan was still, at the end of the day, only an advisor.
And if we start thinking of extremely recent examples, such as Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising or Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terebithia, we would do well to remember that these occasions arose after J.K. Rowling had broken the glass ceiling for novelists in Hollywood.
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Works Cited and Consulted
“All Time Top 100 Grossing Films.” http://www.movieweb.com/movies/boxoffice/alltime.php
“Author Called the Shots on Flick.” Lou Lumenick. New York Post. New York, N.Y.: Nov. 18, 2001. p. 003.
“Coke backs Harry Potter literacy drive.” BBC News, 09 October 2001. Accessed 26 July 2006.
“False Report Regarding OotP Scriptwriter Michael Goldenberg.” Posted April 10, 2007 at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#article:9689
“Film adaptations: Shoot to kill.” Danuta Kean, The Times October 15, 2005.
“First Review of Order of the Phoenix, from Chicago Screening.” Melissa Anelli - March 4, 2007, 11:08 pm. http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/?articleID=9592
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808475611 Greg’s Previews.
“Harry Potter: the Storm Breaks.” John G. Nettles. http://www.popmatters.com/features/011115-harrypotter.shtml, accessed 3/31/07
“Harry Potter and the children who can turn to him for solace”:[1 edition.] Linda Watson-Brown. The Scotsman. Edinburgh (UK): Dec 8, 2000. p. 15.
“Harry Potter and the secret of translating book to film.” Cassandra Jardine. The Daily Telegraph. London (UK): Nov. 7, 2001. p. 23.
“Heyman Talks Potter V Cuts.” Patrick Lee, posted April 11 at http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=41032
“Hit film adaptations for young audiences a 'mixed blessing' expert says”Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor. http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/06/0302kidfilms.html, accessed 3/26/07
“Introducing Michael Goldenberg: The OotP_ Scribe on the Harry Potter films, franchise, and fandom.” Posted April 10, 2007. http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#article:9691. Note: This was the genuine interview.
J.K. Rowling And The Billion-Dollar Empire. Julie Watson and Tomas Kellner. Forbes Magazine. New York, New York: 02.26.04. Author’s Note: This article may also be found online at: http://www.forbes.com/2004/02/26/cx_jw_0226rowlingbill04.html
JK Rowling's World Book Day Chat, March 4, 2004. Transcript from http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm, accessed 3/31/07.
“Keeping her grip on Harry”:[Final Edition.] Frank O’Donnell. The Scotsman. Edinburgh (UK): Nov 5, 2002. p. 7.
Massie, Suzanne and Robert K. Journey. Alfred A. Knopf; New York, 1975.
Mzimba, Lizo, moderator. Chamber of Secrets DVD interview with Steve Kloves and J.K. Rowling, February 2003. http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2003/0302-newsround-mzimba.htm
“New OOTP details from Michael Goldenberg.” Posted April 9th at http://www.mugglenet.com/app/news/full_story/774. Note: this was the hoax article.
“Rowling used leverage to control Potter film”:[Final Edition] Bruce L. Simpson. The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont: Nov 15, 2001. pg. E.4
“Seen the Movie? Read the Book!” John Updike, The New York Times, June 28, 1987, Late City Final Edition.
Tibbetts, John C., and James M. Welsch.The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film, Second Edition. Facts on File Press: UCA, 2006.
Walker, Alice. The same river twice : honoring the difficult : a meditation of life, spirit, art, and the making of the film, The color purple, ten years later. Accord, MA : Wheeler Publishing, 1996.
“What hath Rowling wrought?” Peter Bart. Variety. New York: Nov. 26-Dec 2, 2001. Vol 385, Iss. 2, p. 5(1 pp.)
“Who Owns Daniel Radcliffe: Harry Potter and the Curse of Child Fame.” Katy Guest. The Independent on Sunday. London (UK): Mar 4, 2007. p. 54.
Wordnet, a lexical database for the English language. Cognitive Science Laboratory. Princeton University, 221 Nassau St. Princeton, NJ http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=canon
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Chasing Canon: J. K. Rowling’s Unprecedented Creative
Control Over Hollywood, and What It Really Means
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In terms of the Harry Potter fandom, ‘canon’ has been traditionally defined as the body of written works directly produced by the author, J. K. Rowling, as well as the literal words of her actual interview statements as published or broadcast. As anyone can promptly glean from a quick perusal of any fansite, canon is also the wellspring from which our myriad speculations flow. We can argue endlessly about differing interpretations of this canon, but what is and remains immutable is the source material itself. Defined in this way, the question of what is (and is not) considered canon material seems very simple. But is it?
There is another source of information about the Potterverse besides J.K. Rowling’s direct writings and statements, and universal confusion has always reigned in the fandom about how to deal with this source and define its nature. It is the visual body of work adapted from the books. While this has occasionally been taken to include Mary GranPre’s illustrations, it will here be defined exclusively and solely as the five films that have been produced by the Warner Bros. studios-- Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. (The abbreviations SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, and OotP will be used when referring to the films. To avoid confusion, they will be differentiated from the book titles in always being italicized.)
And yet, what are the films? What relationship do they really bear to the books? When we see certain aspects of plot, narrative, and character interactions emphasized while others are downplayed—both to a degree that was necessarily nearly so clear in the source material—what do these changes mean? The release date of OotP is essentially one week before the release of the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So if we see changes from the source material in the fifth film, are we justified in reading them as hints and foreshadowings for what is to come in the seventh book? In short, do the films represent a kind of canon—or are they only some sort of cinematic fanfic? Is expanding the fandom definition of canon to somehow include the films an action justified by the available evidence?
That is the question that will be explored in this essay. However, we will not only muse on possibilities; we will search for answers. And we will find that both direct and circumstantial evidence for a definite answer is startlingly strong—and that the answer is unquestionably a “yes”.
“When all is said and done, "canon” could perhaps be best and most accurately defined simply as material over which the author maintains control. So the central question is whether or not J. K. Rowling can be proven to have had considerable control over the content of the films from the very beginning. If she has, then we can justifiably apply some sort of canon definition to the films; if she has not, then we can’t. And what we find is that J.K. Rowling’s case represents a shocking departure in virtually every detail from the Hollywood norm (which is outlined in a separate and lengthy footnote to this essay for those readers who would like to see more detailed evidence of what the norm has actually always been.)
No matter where we look, we find evidence that Rowling has had a staggeringly large amount of creative control all along, and that this is shown in a multitude of provable ways, both in terms of factual news events, and in logical deduction from the actual content of the finished cinematic product. This phenomenon is not only unusual; its degree is probably also unprecedented. And it has been noted as such by the popular press, the scholarly press, the business press, the academic press, the film criticism press, and finally the film industry press. In short, as we shall see, my hypothesis that J.K. Rowling has continuously had remarkable creative control over the film adaptations of her books can be proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt. We will see that book content has been changed for the films only in order to streamline certain elements to meet the demands of cinematic narrative. However, no book content that actually materially affects plot, characterization, theme, or the relationships between characters has been changed for any of the films—except for two very specific, and recurring, instances. In one of the two cases, scenes, dialog, and character’s behavior have all been repeatedly changed in each film; in the second case, none of this had the opportunity to happen until the fifth film, when, from all reports, it most decidedly has. None of this has occurred in ways that in and of themselves shortened length or streamlined cinematic narrative, and so it could not have been required for the same reasons that the standard minor changes were required. Because of Rowling’s control, this means that the two major recurring changes cannot have been made without Rowling’s consent. As some people believe, this may well have some extraordinary implications for the content of her seventh and final book in the Potter series.
However, we have a long way to go before we can justifiably arrive at any of these rather shocking conclusions. First, let’s look at the evidence for the main hypothesis that comes out of the adaptation and filmmaking processes themselves. What is the history of the book-to-film process, starting with and concentrating on SS, and what can it show us?
To begin with, J.K. Rowling held out until she received a studio offer that included the creative control over film adaptations that she simply refused to do without, and she was already very unusual at the time (1998) even in having done this. Few authors are able to resist the pull of easy money when studios do offer to buy book rights immediately, rather than only purchasing an option. When Philip Pullman sold the rights to The Golden Compass to Northern Lights, he retained no creative control precisely because “it was at a time when I thought it might be the only money I made on the book.”(Kean) J.K. Rowling took a vastly different path. A large part of the reason was undoubtedly because by the time Warner Brothers bought the rights to the first four books (yes, only the first four, and this will be a very important point later on,) it was 1998, and SS/PS was already a bestseller. However, it also took remarkable determination on her part to make the choices that she did when it came to control over her work.
In the author’s own words: “We were inundated with offers from film companies and I said no to all of them—even Warner. But they kept coming back… The vital thing for me was that it should be true to the book. Obviously, there are some things that won’t work on screen, but I didn’t want the plot to change much at all.” (Conversations With J.K. Rowling.) Indeed, Warner Bros. did “keep coming back,” and as we know, she did decide to sell the rights to the first four books, and an option on the fifth, in 1998. The exact details of author’s contracts with studios are jealously guarded secrets. However, there is every reason to believe that without an iron-clad assurance of creative control, Rowling would never have sold the rights at all. Every piece of available evidence leads us to this conclusion. Therefore, it is safe to say that Rowling’s contract did, and does, specifically include such a clause, although we will likely never know its exact wording. One thing we do know is that Rowling has been an executive producer of the films since SS, and that in a legal sense, this is a very specific—and very large-- role. However, there is a great deal of evidence that her control went beyond the realm normally allotted to even executive producers. As we will later see, Warner had every reason to continue allowing this in later films, as well.
Indeed, all news sources unanimously agree on this central point. To pick only a few of the avalanche of available quotes: “The author’s unwillingness to compromise was also shown in negotiations over the first film… She initially rejected a number of offers from studios desperate to take on the books ….Ultimately, she changed her mind only because of Warner’s commitment to the books and, perhaps, because they allowed her an unprecedented level of control.” (O’Donnell) “The decision to allow a film wasn’t about money or power, but rather a desire to maintain the books’ integrity…. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has cast a spell on Hollywood that rivals any wielded by the boy wizard. Authors are notoriously rebuffed by filmmakers and studio bosses eager to reshuffle storylines or change characters to fit their own creative or marketing vision. But Warner Bros. was eager to please the British writer, envisioning her Harry Potter series as a franchise of seven movies that could generate billions of dollars over the next decade. Rowling initially balked at all movie offers, and eventually parlayed that reluctance into power that may be unprecedented for an author.” (Simpson) “Warner Brothers acceded to Rowling a level of creative control that not even Anne Rice held when her first book was filmed.” (Nettles) Or, in short: “Of course, we all know who was really responsible [for the success of the films], J.K. Dopey Hollywood types may quarrel about ‘creative rights,’ but you’ve reminded everyone about ownership rights. You are not simply the author, J.K, you’re the proprietor.” (Bart)
And finally, this: “She [Rowling] is strong, she’s opinionated, she’s clear, she’s passionate,” said SS producer David Heyman. “We wanted to be good to her book. We wanted her involvement.” (Simpson) And whether the producers actually wanted her involvement or not, they certainly had it in spades.
According to all reports, J.K. Rowling had (and has always continued to have) considerable input—and in some cases, final input-- into choices regarding directors, cast, setting, set design, and script. “Author J.K. Rowling exerted an unprecedented degree of control over the film version of ‘Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone’… Rowling, who served as an executive producer, had a huge say in casting, production design, and which episodes from the book turned up in Steve Kloves’ screenplay... Rowling read every draft of the script and sat in on production meetings.” (Lumenick) “The author had input on virtually every aspect of the production, from the choice of director to the casting and scenery designs,” agrees Simpson. Most importantly of all, Rowling has always directed the scriptwriter in the writing of the scripts for each film (whether we are talking about Steve Kloves or Michael Goldenberg) in order to make sure that he didn’t and doesn’t write anything that will contradict what is coming in later books, and the process began with SS. Indeed, this level of control is well illustrated by her quote from 2003 in a co-interview with Kloves: “Because it's incredibly annoying of me when he says "Well shall we cut that", or "I wanted to do this" and I say, "Well no... because, you know, in book six, something will happen and you'll need that in" or "that will contradict something that happens" (Mzimba).
One of the most interesting ways in which the importance of this point has been shown lies in the recent Goldenberg interview hoax, as posted on April 9th on Mugglenet. It claimed to contain comments and observations made by Goldenberg to a UCLA film student in a private interview after a guest lecture, and included statements such as “J.K. Rowling was not happy with some of the omissions that were made that may "come back to haunt the next film adaptations,” and “he (Goldenberg) revealed that Rowling, in an email, seriously suggested that after she finished Book 7 she should probably take reign as co-screenwriter and/or become a serious player in the screenwriting process.” This certainly would seem to derail the entire idea that Rowling had control over the script of OotP. There is only one problem with that scenario, however. The article was a complete hoax from beginning to end. A genuine interview with Goldenberg surfaced one day later, in which he denied any input into, or knowledge of, the faked interview (as Warner Bros. itself had already done. Indeed, a cursory examination of Goldenberg’s lecture schedule shows that he had not given any talks at UCLA—or any other Los Angeles colleges—since October.) Goldenberg’s comments could not have been more different in the genuine interview, as we will see in more detail in the second part of this essay.
There are three fascinating aspects of the hoax that are worth pointing out now, however. First of all, the very fact that it was planned and carried out shows that the importance of the films—in a way, even the canon-ness of the films-- is, indeed, acknowledged in the fandom. The swiftness of Warner’s official denial also shows that a major studio takes this fandom seriously. And lastly, the information from the genuine interview shows that J.K. Rowling’s control over the content of the scripts for these films is as remarkable as it ever was.
Actually, this is where it is very useful to examine Alice Walker’s case in detail within the body of this essay itself, because she provides such a fascinating case for study by way of contrast. Walker was very reluctant to sell the film rights to her Pulitzer-winning novel The Color Purple in the early 1980’s, although Warner wanted to buy them. In fact, she seriously considered bypassing the standard studio system altogether and allowing an independent film production company and an independent director to film her work (ultimately, this is more or less what she did decide to do with Prahtiba Parmar and the Warrior Marks project.) She did finally sell the rights to Warner. The studio and director (Steven Spielberg) did give her a level of control that few authors had ever had up to that point (1983) over the adaptation of her work, including frequent consultations on the script, set design, costumes, casting, and even editing. However, her critical analysis of the adaptation process (The Same River Twice) shows that it still cannot be said that she had anything like true creative control. She finally came to terms with what had been done to her book in the filming process, but one retains a strong sense from reading The Same River Twice that she fervently wishes for a great many things to have been different, including the director.
About fifteen years later, Steven Spielberg showed a great deal of interest in directing SS for Warner. Reportedly, he wanted to change a large number of things, including combining elements from SS/PS and CoS into one movie, casting Haley Joel Osment as Harry, re-envisioning the film in an American setting, and perhaps turning it into a CGI cartoon a la Toy Story. Obviously, none of this happened, and analyzing why gives us a fascinating understanding of the vast differences between Walker’s and Rowling’s experiences. According to all reports, Rowling simply vetoed any and all of these changes. She insisted on live action, an all-British cast, and absolutely no butchering of the story. (Simpson, O’Donnell, Guest.) Rowling has always been extremely coy on the subject of whether she put her foot down in this way, and the studio, of course, has been completely mum. However, we know that she was an executive producer for SS (which is a fact well worth repeating,) and that veto power over directors is one of the powers that executive producers can indeed possess. So from all available information, Rowling stood up to one of the most famous directors that the film industry has ever seen—and won. In some ways, this is a more amazing victory than the control over scripts.
As we know, Chris Columbus stepped in for both SS and CoS, and Rowling accepted him without demur. As she herself said, “The first time I met Chris, he promised me two things: that he would remain as faithful to the book as he possibly could within the constraints of film and that he would have all British cast. And, he kept both promises.” (Rowling) As O’Donnell rather snidely notes, “Columbus was a lot more open to Rowling’s suggestions than Spielberg or any other first-rank director used to autonomy probably would have been.” He happily consulted her on set design. He asked her to draw him a picture of the exact location of Harry’s scar. (There has been some discussion regarding the fact that this location is not where Rowling originally sketched it for the books long before film rights were sold; however, she herself, from all accounts, is the one who decided to change the location for the films.) (Simpson) Columbus appears to have actually presented her with casting decisions, which is simply unheard of in the film industry. Directors don’t do this for authors, and they may not even do it for ordinary executive producers. Rowling herself blandly admits that Columbus asked her if there was “anybody I thought would be good and I said 'RobbieColtraneForHagrid' in one breath.” (However, all evidence indicates that her influence over the films extended light-years beyond this modest appraisal!) As Columbus said, perhaps a bit defensively, “It’s a very simple, logical theory. If the books are so popular with people, why would you change them?” (O’Donnell)
On that note, let us move on to the evidence from the films themselves, the final product of what was adapted. Why change them, indeed? Warner could not come up with an answer that was good enough to lead them to do so, and they did not. Of course, not every trivial incident in SS/PS was completely reproduced in its film counterpart, because that was not the degree or nature of creative control that Rowling had fought so hard to retain. Warner did not simply hire a DP to point a camera at Jim Dale or Stephen Fry sitting in a chair and reading the books aloud onscreen. Yet we see clearly by actually examining the films themselves that the only changes have been remarkably minor ones, made in order to adapt prose narrative to the mostbasic requirements of visual narrative. One review of SS sums the issues up perfectly: “Never before has a novelist had such complete control over an adaptation, and she has used her power to protect her readers’ sensibilities. Professor Quirrell’s turban may be a different color, Peeves the poltergeist (played by Rik Mayall) may be on the cutting room floor, some songs have been chopped and the more literate jokes don’t make it, but, for once, carpers won’t be able to say that the book and the film are completely different. With Rowling controlling the casting, too, everyone… steps seamlessly from the page onto the screen.” (Jardine)
In fact, Wikipedia maintains a complete and accurate list of precisely what details were changed in each film. For the time being, we will concentrate on SS, although evidence from the other films will be brought in for the second part of this essay. The remarkable thing we see when we read this list is how unbelievably minor these changes are when compared to the average adaptation (one of the two major changes, which involved characters, did appear here to some degree, and it will be discussed much later in Section II of this essay.) Some members of Dudley’s gang are eliminated, as is Madam Malkin, Peeves, two of the named centaurs, Professor Binns, and so forth. A hamburger restaurant near Paddington Station appears in the book, but not in the film. When the Dursleys leave Privet Drive to escape the horde of owls delivering Harry his Hogwarts letter, they travel to a hotel before going to a hut on a rock out in the sea in the book, but the hotel is skipped in the film. Harry meets Draco in Madame Malkin’s dress shop in the book; the two do not meet until they get to school in the film. Firenze has dark hair and dark skin rather than being blond and blue-eyed, as he is described in the book. And so on, and so forth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_book_and_film_versions_of_Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher%27s_Stone)
Only from the point of view of film—not of the book fandom—can we see how remarkable this really is (which is why I really recommend reading that footnote in order to understand the sorts of changes that are made in a normal book-to-film adaptation, and the minimal to no influence of nearly any other authors of an original work over the adaptation process.) In fact, film reviewers hardly seemed to know how to take the sort of adaptation that SS was. Although reviews tended on the whole to be more positive than not, a rather puzzled tone reigned supreme in them.
“Where the film falls short in not (for once in the history of much loved novels) as a version of the book, but as a film. So much has been crammed in, that for those who haven’t read it… the plot may prove baffling.” (Jardine) “The completed movie suggest the filmmakers took her ‘suggestions’ (sic) religiously enough that they ended up making a risk-adverse, strictly by-the-book adaptation rather than a classic.”
In fact, the most important piece of information revealing Rowling’s level of control had nothing to do with the actual content of the film. Her control over the adaptation of her work was tremendous, but certain
aspects of it have been seen before. However, she also wielded considerable influence in an area where no author hasever before held the slightest bit of power. As BBC news noted: “In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in
the race to tie-in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.” (Forbes) She also vetoed the direct use of Harry’s film character on fast food boxes. Coca-Cola was Warner’s main marketing tie-in with the first film, so this means that Rowling was affecting the marketing moves of a major corporation. If the entire fandom truly understood how unimaginable this kind of control really is on the part of an author, how literally unique its scope, then there would be no need for this essay to be written. There would, instead, already be universal understanding and acceptance of its argument.
In the area of meeting Rowling’s standards for faithfulness to her book, SS formed a prototype for the later films, and what is true of it is also true of them. While this will be examined in more detail in Part II of this essay, it is worthwhile to take a quick look at just how unusual observers knew this to be. It was thought at the time of the release of the second film(CoS) that Rowling’s control might slip because of fading popularity in the near future. As Richard Perks, a senior analyst at Mintel Retail Intelligence, said “There is a risk of overkill with Harry Potter, and the hype is remarkably strong. There has to be some law of diminishing returns.” In 2004, Forbes magazine darkly predicted “But Pottermania may be too fantastic to last.” If any of this had ever come to pass, it’s possible that it might have led to some sort of diminishing of Rowling’s control over the films. However, as we all know, it’s rather an understatement to say that none of it happened. So other and far more talented directors stuck just as closely to the later books as Columbus had done. (O’Donnell, Watson-Brown.)
Regarding the filmed version of OotP, however, there is one more aspect worth pointing out in the first part of this essay. As the fandom now knows, an article was briefly posted on April 9th that claimed to be written by a UCLA film student who had supposedly talked with Michael Goldenberg, OotP’s scriptwriter. Goldenberg’s reported comments, which included such gems as “J.K. Rowling was not happy with some of the omissions that were made that may "come back to haunt the next film adaptations,’” stirred brief controversy in the fandom. This article certainly seemed to indicate that Rowling had somehow lost control over the filming process, and was also very unhappy with the specific changes that had been made. The only problem was that the article was a complete hoax from beginning to end. Goldenberg gave a genuine interview to Melissa Anelli two days later in which he expressed exactly the opposite views in statements such as: “[Rowling’s suggestions were] immediately put into the script. Tiny little things, for the most part, we could not have asked for more in terms of a collaborator” and “we really do want to make a movie that she's thrilled with. I mean, nobody wants that more than we do. So, it almost didn't need to be said, you know? It's just the baseline we're all starting from.” This puts the ingenuous “tiny little things” comment into correct perspective. Rowling has established such control by this point that she could more than afford to be gracious; she had already fought her battles and acted the Iron Lady. Her view of where the entire narrative is headed is simply “the baseline we’re all starting from.”
In addition, he made this comment: “Jo and I actually spoke about that [the adaptation process.] It was interesting, in that our processes are kind of the opposite, in a way. The joy of the books is that you can stop. You can just linger and pay attention to all of these wonderful details, and spend as much time as you want just immersing yourself in this world. But in the film, you really are translating it into another language.” In so doing, Goldenberg proves that both he and Rowling understand very well that cutting details and richness and embroidery in the book-to-film process does not change the basic narrative, themes, plot, characterization, or relationships between the characters. This point will be taken up in much more detail in Part II.
However, it worth emphasizing here that the producer (David Heyman) and the scriptwriter have both gone to a lot of trouble to publicly express their views on the fact that certain elements from the book simply had to be cut. Their comments are remarkably painstaking and detailed, very carefully explaining why specific changes had to be made. To see how extraordinary this is, all we need to do is to compare it with the attitudes surrounding the changes made in the average book-to-film adaptation. The producer in particular would normally never even have dreamed of actually giving interviews to point out how hard they worked at keeping to the source material, how regrettably necessary it was to cut a few things, how much effort and energy went into keeping to the theme and plot of the book, etc., etc., etc. The very fact that this has happened repeatedly shows just how anxious Warner is to keep Rowling happy, and to stick as closely as possible to her original work.
At the time of the first film, however, everything had not yet reached this level of graciousness. There was a great deal of commentary in the press about how Rowling was “making things difficult” for Warner. (Guest) So a central question remains: why did the studio—and its parent corporation-- put up with this process, so incredibly different from the way that books are and always have been adapted to film? This is a question that must be answered if we are going to accept the fact that this level of creative control by an author really did exist.
It can best be summed up by an article in Variety, the industry press. It described SS’s first screening in New York, which was introduced by Richard Parsons, COO of AOL Time Warner. This was not an artistic event in any sense of the word, but an utterly corporate. The author, a film industry insider, states that SS was such a milestone precisely because it “helped to reinvent.. the ‘tentpole,’” or a film that is part of a series that automatically, by its very nature, contains a great number of sequels (as Lord of the Rings did.) Whatever these films mean in artistic terms, this is what they mean to the studios, and to the megacorporations that own them: dazzling cash cows.(Bart)
This point becomes even clearer if we begin to follow the money:
[i]SS[/i]: $317.576,000
[i]PoA[/i]: $249.539
[i]CoS[/i]: $261.980,000
[i]GoF[/i]: $290.013,000
In other words, well over a billion dollars have been grossed to date just from U.S. domestic theater release of the Potter films. This does not count foreign release, and all of the films have made about 2/3rd’s of their total gross overseas. This does not count DVD sales. This does not count any type of merchandising tie-ins at all—from action figures to games to Halloween costumes to Draco’s wand to Hermione’s Yule Ball earrings to Harry-shaped cake pans. (All Time Top Grossing) Indeed, Forbes magazine laid it out quite a bit more clearly. “The first two flicks have grossed $2 billion worldwide at the box office, fetching another $500 million in video, DVD and rental sales….Of course, Harry Potter is a toy-merchandising machine, helping Mattel unload an estimated $150 million worth of Potter paraphernalia so far. Video games by Electronic Arts generate even more. The half-pint wizard is emblazoned on Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aids, cologne, even gross-out Jelly Belly beans infused with such Hogwarts flavors as earwax, dirt and booger.” (Forbes)
As Tibbets and Welsch note, “For motion pictures in America… the only failure is commercial failure.” And by that standard, Rowling has created dazzling success. No matter how radically different from the norm her adaptation process has been, it has made large amounts of money for the studio and the parent corporation, and any amount of authorial control will be tolerated if that is the result. So Warner continued to allow the freakish process to happen, and it has kept happening in the subsequent movies. Later directors were more gifted than Columbus, and more skillful at creating a final film that had truly artistic and cinematic qualities, but the reality of Rowling’s unprecedented creative control is still the same. For once, the result is precisely what sells. The films that Warner has made from the original HP novels don’t need to be “made more accessible” by being made more cinematic. The books themselves represent a literary phenomenon so unique that the closest possible things to literal renditions of them on film are exactly what the audience pays to see.
But there is still a central question here that remains unanswered, and that is exactly why JKR was able to keep the creative control she had fought so hard to win. The point is not only to gain this control in the first place, but to be able to keep it. And there is one very curious piece of information on which this entire phenomenon turns. When Warner first acquired the rights to produce 'Harry Potter' movies from J.K. Rowling, they only bought the first four films, with a "first look" option on this fifth in the 7-part series. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808475611 Greg’s Previews.) If they had known how phenomenally successful the series would really turn out to be, they would certainly have fought harder for all of the rights—but at the time, they did not. So as time went by, there was every reason in the world to placate J.K. Rowling by giving her anything she wanted, both in control over films that were currently being made, and in contract negotiations for her level of control over future ones. Otherwise they could very easily lose their stupendous income source for the last two films (not to mention the tremendous value of future work from her.). And so the studio found that it was completely worthwhile for their bottom line to do this. In a total reversal of the normal rules, the studio, investors, and corporation actually made more money by giving the author what she wanted and staying faithful to the book.
And so we have reached the conclusion of this portion of the essay. We have seen massive amounts of evidence for the hypothesis that Rowling has consistently had unprecedented control over the contents of the film adaptations of her books. So for all the reasons that we have seen in the first part of the essay, that contention has been proven—not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond any doubt that can be based in reason and logic. While minor details may and do differ from book to film, plot, narrative, characterization, and relationships have not changed and do not change—unless Rowling wants them to do so. To indulge in considerable paraphrase of Mathew 18:18,
whatever things Rowling bound in the books are bound in the films, and whatever things she released from the books have been released from the films. The films are not the books, but neither are they separate from the books in the way that any normal film adaptation may be said to be. Because of this, it is not a question of bringing the films into canon, but rather of expanding the definition of canon to include them.
Of course, this begs an immediate question: since there are differences between book and film, how do we decide which are significant and which are not? Are some of those differences important enough to foreshadow the developments that we may see in DH, the final book in the series? In a print canon which has yet to be completed, these questions certainly have special weight. However, it is definitely possible to come up with answers based on evidence, and that is what we will do in the second part of this essay.
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Footnote 1:
However, this answer is a vast departure from the Hollywood norm. Indeed, we will get a different answer to this question if it posed in relation to probably any other book-to-film adaptation in the hundred-year history of mainstream studio filmmaking itself; it is only a question of how large a degree of difference there is. This is vital to understand, because only in the context of the norm can we appreciate how revolutionary J.K. Rowling’s creative control truly is, and how unprecedented her situation vis a vis the Warner studio. In fact, the intricacies of this situation relate not only to the unique set of facts surrounding the Harry Potter books and their author, but also to the changing nature of the fight for corporate profits in a world where the public’s entertainment dollar is spent in a far more fragmented way than ever before.
Before dealing with any of these questions, however, we must first understand what the Hollywood norm has traditionally been. J.K. Rowling’s radical departure from it cannot be appreciated without first knowing exactly what “it” is. Which factors define the most common translation of book to film? How faithful is the average adaptation? Which parts of the original book are retained, and which discarded? Why is this done? And most importantly of all, where does the original author stand in this entire process? What type and degree of control, if any, do they normally retain?
The answer to this last question has certainly varied throughout Hollywood history. There can be no doubt, however, that the most common answer is “very little” to “none,” and this has consistently been the case from the very earliest days of cinema. Book-to-film adaptations have always been incredibly popular precisely because they use source material with which the audience is already familiar, and the work of developing plot and characters has already been done. However, few tasks present less of a challenge than proving how minimal the original author’s control virtually always is over any and all aspects of a film adaptation—unless we are talking about J.K. Rowling
As Danuta Kean notes, “Hollywood is not kind to writers. If you are the author of a novel adapted to film, the experience can be even more brutal... Often, what makes it to screen bears little resemblance to the original.” (Kean) Normally, what is sold is only an option to a producer to develop the book for a fixed period of time, not the rights to do so, although rights certainly have been sold first. If the option is exercised, the financial rewards for the original author can be considerable, but he or she has always quickly found that it is almost always impossible to retain even the smallest degree of creative control over the adaptation that results. If the rights do end up selling, which means the book will almost certainly make it to screen, studios normally exercise iron control. It’s hard to even begin to pick and choose from all the specific examples that prove this point.
However, the 1987 filmed version of John Updike’s novel The Witches of Eastwick is considered to be a classic case for many reasons. The rights were purchased from Updike, and that was literally the end of his involvement with the production. The original plot, theme, narrative, and characterizations were all vastly changed. As Updike himself said, “The movie bears, all reports agree, little resemblance to my text.” (Updike) The director, George Miller, never even read the original book. Jack Nicholson’s over-the-top Beelzebub, in particular, had very little to do with Updike’s character in the novel.
All of this is remarkable only in how utterly typical it is, but one aspect that was quite unique was the fact that it drove John Updike to write a piece reflecting on the nature of film adaptations in the New York Times in the summer of 1987, and it is more than worth examining his analysis of the entire issue. “Movie makers, like creative spirits everywhere, must be free; they owe nothing to the authors of books they adapt except the money they have agreed to pay them,” he flatly states (Updike) He draws the lines between film and book, and not only as separate entities, since they can hardly be otherwise (and this is an important point, since J.K. Rowling herself has made the “separate entitites” statement about HP adaptions.) He makes it clear that cinema and literature are entirely separate realities that may have nothing at all to do with one another beyond a common title and a bit of shared source material, which is quite a different thing to say. “The text is always there, for the ideal reader to stumble upon, to enter, to reanimate. The text is almost infinitely patient, snugly gathering its dust on the shelf; until the continental drift of language turns its English as obscure as Chaucer's, the text remains readily recoverable and potentially as alive as on the day it was scribbled,” he rather loftily writes. However, all of this is really only to say that the book exists separately from its film adaptation no matter how vastly it is changed in that adaptation, and that this vast change is the norm.
And the list goes on ad infinitum. As Updike himself notes, 1907’s Ben Hur not only played havoc with every aspect of Lew Wallace’s original novel, the producers tried to get away without even acknowledging Wallace’s original copyright. The resemblance that D.W. Griffith’s 1913 Birth of a Nation bore to Thomas Hart Dixon’s novel The Klansman existed chiefly because Griffith and Dixon shared so much political ideology, as did the white population of America at that time (unfortunately.) The Great Gatsby, Ulysses, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Remembrance of Things Past, Being There, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Scarlet Letter, Mildred Pierce, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, even Gone With the Wind-- only a few moment’s thought summons up a panoply of film adaptations throughout history that were changed from the original source material in order to suit actors, directors, producers, studios, and investors.
Specific examples are almost literally unending. Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities is considered to be a classic example of a disastrous book-to-film adaptation in which the original author played no part. (Tibbetts and Welsch) The heirs of J.R.R. Tolkien sold the rights to The Lord of the Rings in the 1970’s, and had no creative control at all over Peter Jackson’s version. Robert K. Massie wrote bitterly about his experience with the film adaptation of his historical novel, Nicholas and Alexandra. “After I had signed my contract with him, Sam Spiegel [the producer] had disappeared from our lives. We heard rumors that this or that actor or actress was being hired; we read in the papers that three directors had been fired. People at cocktail parties knew more about what was in the script than we did.” (Massie) Philip Pullman sold the rights to the first book in the His Dark Materials series without retaining any creative control whatsoever. As Danuta Kean tellingly notes, “Writers should expect darlings to be killed, stories simplified and plot twists changed to make them accessible to the widest audience…. If a storyline does not play well in Des Moines or Detroit, it will be ditched and only the J. K. Rowlings and Dan Browns have the power to stop them.” (And even Dan Brown did not have anything like the sort of creative control over The Da Vinci Code that J.K. Rowling has had over her works.)
In a way, every film adaptation ever made from a book other than those by J.K. Rowling could be used as an example here. Of course, there certainly have been examples of a very limited number of authors with a greater degree of control over the way in which their works are adapted to film. But the most notable aspect of even these rare cases is the degree to which the creative control is still limited. The making of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is a wonderful case study in this regard. However, her situation will be discussed in detail a little later, when we see which critical elements of J.K. Rowling’s adaptation experience were the same as—and which were radically different from-- Walker’s experience with the same studio about fifteen years earlier. Michael Crichton has served on a producer on several films adapted from his novels, for instance, but he still had very little say over their specific aspects, including the content of the scripts. Director Wayne Wang worked with Amy Tan in adapting The Joy Luck Club, but Tan was still, at the end of the day, only an advisor.
And if we start thinking of extremely recent examples, such as Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising or Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terebithia, we would do well to remember that these occasions arose after J.K. Rowling had broken the glass ceiling for novelists in Hollywood.
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Works Cited and Consulted
“All Time Top 100 Grossing Films.” http://www.movieweb.com/movies/boxoffice/alltime.php
“Author Called the Shots on Flick.” Lou Lumenick. New York Post. New York, N.Y.: Nov. 18, 2001. p. 003.
“Coke backs Harry Potter literacy drive.” BBC News, 09 October 2001. Accessed 26 July 2006.
“False Report Regarding OotP Scriptwriter Michael Goldenberg.” Posted April 10, 2007 at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#article:9689
“Film adaptations: Shoot to kill.” Danuta Kean, The Times October 15, 2005.
“First Review of Order of the Phoenix, from Chicago Screening.” Melissa Anelli - March 4, 2007, 11:08 pm. http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/?articleID=9592
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808475611 Greg’s Previews.
“Harry Potter: the Storm Breaks.” John G. Nettles. http://www.popmatters.com/features/011115-harrypotter.shtml, accessed 3/31/07
“Harry Potter and the children who can turn to him for solace”:[1 edition.] Linda Watson-Brown. The Scotsman. Edinburgh (UK): Dec 8, 2000. p. 15.
“Harry Potter and the secret of translating book to film.” Cassandra Jardine. The Daily Telegraph. London (UK): Nov. 7, 2001. p. 23.
“Heyman Talks Potter V Cuts.” Patrick Lee, posted April 11 at http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=41032
“Hit film adaptations for young audiences a 'mixed blessing' expert says”Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor. http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/06/0302kidfilms.html, accessed 3/26/07
“Introducing Michael Goldenberg: The OotP_ Scribe on the Harry Potter films, franchise, and fandom.” Posted April 10, 2007. http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#article:9691. Note: This was the genuine interview.
J.K. Rowling And The Billion-Dollar Empire. Julie Watson and Tomas Kellner. Forbes Magazine. New York, New York: 02.26.04. Author’s Note: This article may also be found online at: http://www.forbes.com/2004/02/26/cx_jw_0226rowlingbill04.html
JK Rowling's World Book Day Chat, March 4, 2004. Transcript from http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm, accessed 3/31/07.
“Keeping her grip on Harry”:[Final Edition.] Frank O’Donnell. The Scotsman. Edinburgh (UK): Nov 5, 2002. p. 7.
Massie, Suzanne and Robert K. Journey. Alfred A. Knopf; New York, 1975.
Mzimba, Lizo, moderator. Chamber of Secrets DVD interview with Steve Kloves and J.K. Rowling, February 2003. http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2003/0302-newsround-mzimba.htm
“New OOTP details from Michael Goldenberg.” Posted April 9th at http://www.mugglenet.com/app/news/full_story/774. Note: this was the hoax article.
“Rowling used leverage to control Potter film”:[Final Edition] Bruce L. Simpson. The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont: Nov 15, 2001. pg. E.4
“Seen the Movie? Read the Book!” John Updike, The New York Times, June 28, 1987, Late City Final Edition.
Tibbetts, John C., and James M. Welsch.The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film, Second Edition. Facts on File Press: UCA, 2006.
Walker, Alice. The same river twice : honoring the difficult : a meditation of life, spirit, art, and the making of the film, The color purple, ten years later. Accord, MA : Wheeler Publishing, 1996.
“What hath Rowling wrought?” Peter Bart. Variety. New York: Nov. 26-Dec 2, 2001. Vol 385, Iss. 2, p. 5(1 pp.)
“Who Owns Daniel Radcliffe: Harry Potter and the Curse of Child Fame.” Katy Guest. The Independent on Sunday. London (UK): Mar 4, 2007. p. 54.
Wordnet, a lexical database for the English language. Cognitive Science Laboratory. Princeton University, 221 Nassau St. Princeton, NJ http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=canon
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