Tayari's Blog: Screenplay?

This is just not the sort of thing a person expects to happen. Writing screenplays is difficult. I spent a month at Yaddo working on one and I couldn't get past page thirty. So, you can imagine that I was sort of perplexed that someone would take the time to adapt my novel without any sort of contractual agreement between us.

Well, I warmed my flannel jammies in the dryer, put them on and climbed in bed with this mysterious manuscript.

I'm not really going to use this space to say whether the screenplay was bad or good. That's really not the point.

Instead, I want to write about the experience of reading a work that is mine, in a way, but then decidedly NOT mine.

The person who wrote the screenplay, stayed close to my novel. I recognized my own phrases on the descriptions. The dialogue, for the most part, was lifted directly from my own work.

Keep in mind that the average screen play in 120 pages. LEAVING ATLANTA clocks in at 243. The screenwriter had to decide what to keep and what to lose. S/he also had to figure out the best way to handle the narrative high-wire act that characterizes my writing in that particular work.

In way, it was like listening to a tape recording of my own voice. I know how I sound in my head, but reading the screenplay was like hearing how I sound to the world.