Adaptations: Lost in translation

Stephen Dalton, The Times, London As Norman Mailer once observed: "There is a particular type of really bad novel that makes a great motion picture." And vice versa, he might have added, citing Hollywood's generally lacklustre treatment of his own books.Whatever his personal gripes, Mailer was voicing a common perception in film and publishing circles: the more "literary"a novel, the more difficult its transition from page to screen. Cult books are especially problematic, with their typical reliance on tonal and textual trickery over easily digestible, linear plot. A fiercely partisan fanbase with high expectations also makes them difficult prospects, making the term "unfilmable" almost a badge of honour. One allegedly "unfilmable" novel that has survived translation to celluloid relatively intact is Patrick Süskind's 1986 bestseller Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. The grotesque tale of Grenouille, an 18th-century psychopath who kills young girls in the hope of stealing their scent, Perfume turned Süskind into a millionaire recluse. For 15 years he resisted all interest in his macabre fable from superstar actors and directors.Stanley Kubrick read and enjoyed Perfume, but pronounced it unfilmable. Even so, there was a stampede of suitors when the screen rights finally came up for auction in 2001. Ridley Scott and Tim Burton both staked a claim. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio were mooted in a Miramax package deal, while Johnny Depp and Julian Schnabel also expressed a joint interest. But it was the flamboyant German producer Bernd Eichinger who finally forced Süskind's hand with an outlandish ultimatum."The deal was monumental, €10 million," recalls Andrew Birkin, who co-wrote the Perfume screenplay with Eichinger and the director Tom Tykwer. "What finally changed Süskind's mind was Bernd getting on a plane to Zurich, walking into his agent's office and saying: ‘Tell Patrick he's got half an hour to decide whether he wants €10 million. Take it or leave it, but I won't be repeating the offer' ."

Even with this record-breaking price tag, higher even than the reported $6 million that Columbia paid for Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Süskind agreed to Eichinger's offer only on the strict condition that he would not be personally involved. "I guess he had spent five years writing it and another 15 years living through the fame hell that it gave him, so I can understand that," says Tykwer. "He was very polite and wished us good luck, but was definite about being left alone."In a bizarre twist, before he relented on Perfume, Süskind wrote Helmut Dietl's 1997 film Rossini, a black comedy about a painfully shy author who refuses to sell the film rights to his cult bestseller. Life then imitated art four years later when Tykwer and Birkin chanced across the novelist in a Munich restaurant.

"The funny thing is, I met him in the same restaurant where that film was set," Tykwer laughs. "It's all based on true events. The guy playing the producer is based on Bernd, the guy playing the writer is obviously based on Patrick, and, of course, the novel they are trying to buy is meant to be Perfume."

Clearing the rights to Perfume was just the first step. Next came the more difficult task of adapting a novel composed largely of richly described smells, perhaps its most "unfilmable"element.

"Everybody asked how can you do that smell thing,"Tykwer sighs. "But the book doesn't smell either, so that can't be our problem. Obviously the masterful use of language in the book led to the feeling that you experience smells while reading it."

More problematic, Tykwer admits, was turning a repulsive literary anti-hero into a broadly sympathetic leading man. Ultimately, the screenwriters agreed to make Grenouille more of an emotionally damaged victim than in the novel, but thankfully without softening his psychotic edge.

"There is a lot of shaky ground when you have a hero who is serial killer," says Tykwer. "In the novel the author makes the audience stay with him all the way through to the bitter ending. Of course, our goal was to achieve exactly the same. But sometimes in literature you can get away with more than you can in cinema."

Perfume's tortuous journey from page to screen looks like a breeze compared with some other cult novels still waiting in the wings - John Kennedy Toole's oddball comic classic A Confederacy of Dunces, for example, which earned the Pulitzer
Prize when first published in 1980, 11 years after its author's suicide. The producer Scott Kramer bought the rights before publication, but then spent fruitless decades trying to get it made.John Belushi and John Candy were keen to star at various stages. Harold Ramis and Steven Soderbergh wanted to direct. Stephen Fry even wrote an adaptation.

Will Ferrell is the latest star name reportedly attached, but lawsuits and shifting alliances appear to have stalled the project indefinitely. "It had the cachet of being an ‘important' novel," a weary Kramer told The Hollywood Reporter recently. "And ‘important' novels don't become great movies."

Equally convoluted tales of woe have kept Donna Tartt's sensational 1992 debut The Secret History and D. M. Thomas's 1981 psychodrama The White Hotel from reaching the screen. Stars and studios dithered, and audience interest cooled.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22872-2498627,00.html