Plays are different from movies, Part 2

So, you remember back in December I was talking about how plays are different from movies? Well, I just saw August: Osage County. It was apparently a successful play (though I'd never heard of it, but I wouldn't, so don't use me as a gauge) so someone paid the playwright to make a screenplay out of it. What we got was a play on film with a bunch of actors you recognize.


In Adaptations we talked about taking the nugget of a story - the thing about it that makes you want to tell it - and then telling it in a new way for the new medium. I don't think they particularly tried to do that here. I bet it's a good play. I bet with this cast it would be a fantastic play. But the movie is just a play that they filmed. Someone somewhere criticized Meryl Streep's performance as being over the top, but I think that's just because it's a play and plays are not subtle.

We had a very interactive audience. There was a bit of "wait who's he related to?" kind of talking. (And why do the talkers always sit next to me? There were 100 empty seats, and I have to give up my arm rest to someone who then has to have everything explained? I have bad movie karma.) But mostly it's that someone gave a good speech and everyone clapped. And once that ice was broken the audience was very responsive. I think that's a sign of how much like a play it felt.

I read somewhere that the play is pretty much entirely set around the dining room table and so one of the things they did for the film was try to break out of the house a little bit. Ultimately, you can take a conversation out of a house, but it's still just people talking. It wasn't bad, but for the 30 minutes or so we did spend at the dining room table I was mostly just thinking about what a nightmare it must have been to shoot. So ultimately I wasn't thinking about what they were talking about. That's a bad sign.

So yeah, if it's on your list of things to see, I wouldn't say don't go, just make sure you've seen everything else on your list first. Or who knows, maybe you'll love it.