Hypable spoke with Wonderstruck author and screenwriter Brian Selznick ahead of a screening of his book’s adaptation to find out more about how he was involved in the process.
‘Wonderstruck’ movie review
When you watch the trailer for Wonderstruck, you are greeted with an initially melancholy storyline. Ben doesn’t know who his father was and is now dealing with his mother’s death when he’s struck by lightning and is rendered deaf. He runs away from home to find out more about his dad and why he wasn’t a part of his life.
Intercut with that, is the story of Rose, told in black and white. She misses her mother and rejects the prim-and-proper life handed over to her by her father. She also escapes to New York, where she finds the stage and ultimately in the presence of her favorite silent film actress.
Both stories speak of heartbreak and tragedy, but ultimately of overcoming life’s obstacles. Wonderstruck is a movie full of trials and tribulations, but ultimately leaves you with a sense of hope.
Despite starring Academy Award-winning actress Julianne Moore, the true stars of this film are Ben and Rose, portrayed by Oakes Fegley and Millicent Simmonds, respectively. Fegley adeptly navigates Ben’s transition from an individual who can hear to one who has gone deaf, encompassing all the confusion, terror, and frustration that goes with it. Meanwhile, Simmonds, a deaf actor, is so expressive, you’ll never be in doubt about what she’s thinking or feeling.
The other standout in Wonderstruck is the sound editing and the soundtrack. Though the movie’s two main characters are deaf, the film is not without sound. The transition between Ben’s world, so full of color and noise, to Rose’s world, in silent black and white, is jarring for only a moment before you find yourself easily slipping between the two.
Ben’s world comes with sound because, even though he can no longer hear it, that’s what he grew up with. The traffic and the voices and the hustle-and-bustle of everyday life fade in and out to give you a sense of his disorientation. The stark difference between his world and Rose’s silent one serves to remind you that she lives in another time and place.
As our interview with author and screenwriter Brian Selznick will show, the script is an unconventional one, flipping between timelines in order to show both the similarities and differences between our two main characters and where they come from. The writing is tight, however, and comes with more than one good twist, ultimately ending up in a place where these two stories intersect.
Wonderstruck is both a book worth reading and a film worth seeing.
Exclusive interview with ‘Wonderstruck’ author and screenwriter Brian Selznick
Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times
My first question is, how long did it take between first being approached to adapt your book into the movie versus this point now?
The book was published in 2011, and right after it was published, Sandy Powell, the costume designer from Hugo, was staying in my apartment in San Diego on an air mattress in my studio the day after the Oscars. As you do. This is a totally normal average story. And I flew to Norway that day for the Norwegian premiere of Hugo, and Sandy went to San Diego with my husband to hang out. She saw a copy of Wonderstruck on the shelf in my studio and she pulled it off the shelf. She read it that night, and the next day she said this should be a movie for Todd Haynes. And so that idea was in the fall of 2011. Now it’s 2017. So there was six years from the idea ’til now.
It’s not that I didn’t take her seriously — because she’s worked with Todd, they’re very good friends and you know she gets things done — but it still seemed like a real long shot. He was still making Carol at the time. He had never made a movie for young people, so Sandy encouraged me to just start writing a screenplay. And John Logan, who wrote the screenplay for Hugo, took me under his wing. I became friends with him. And so I secretly wrote this screenplay at night. I didn’t tell anybody.
Just in case, right?
Well, it was actually John who said don’t tell anybody because this is a weird screenplay. It’s got a weird structure, it’s a weird story, you don’t want other people forcing it into something more commercial. Just make it the way you want it to be. So when I finished that draft, when John told me he thought it was good enough to show people, I gave it to Sandy and Sandy passed it along to Todd. And by that point Todd was editing Carol, and was just about done. After he read it, he said he wanted to make it. And so that was probably three years ago? Maybe two or three years ago. And we filmed last summer. So it feels like it happened pretty quickly. That’s a long answer to your question.
That was a good answer! What sort of similarities and differences have you noticed between your experience with ‘Hugo’ getting adapted and this one?
S: I had nothing to do with the adaptation of Hugo. I signed that contract, gave it to the producers, and I was done. I was very, very lucky because it was given to Martin Scorsese and I knew — it was meant for Martin Scorsese — but one doesn’t sign a contract with Martin Scorsese. One signs a contract with the producer. And so for a while, Scorsese had to leave the project because there was a writers strike and the script wasn’t done. So he went to do a different movie, and a different director came on for a little while, but eventually that director left. And miraculously Scorsese came back. And I was able to get a set visit. I went to London and saw the studio where they filmed. And it was very, very exciting and it was very clear from the beginning that they were using my book very closely. Scorsese loved the book. I became friends with Scorsese’s assistant — Tommaso — on the set. And Tommaso said one of his main jobs was getting people copies of my book on the set. Because Scorsese kept pointing to things and saying, “Do this.” And so I was very removed from the process. But Scorsese made sure that everyone used my book very, very closely. So I didn’t collaborate, but my book did.
And for Wonderstruck my experience has been entirely different. Because I wrote the screenplay, and because I hit it off with Todd very early, I was present for the entire pre-production, I rewrote the script based on some of Todd’s notes — some things that he wanted to add in — nothing major, but a few little things that he felt were important that I thought were great ideas. And then I was there all during pre-production and I was on set almost every day that they filmed. But once they started filming, I really stepped back because it’s Todd’s movie. It really is a director’s art form. And I didn’t want Todd to feel like I was breathing down his neck or judging him or anything. Plus, he’s been one of my favorite directors since 1991 when Poison came out. So I was just excited to see Todd Haynes’ work. And to be on a set designed by Mark Friedberg and to see Sandy Powell’s costumes, except now I knew everybody and I had become friends with Mark and was friends with Sandy and so it was like watching all of these brilliant people who were also your friends making something that was inspired by what you wrote. So it was a very very different experience — and the scale was different — Hugo was a much bigger scale movie: budget wise, sets, and costumes. Like there was just more of everything. But in terms of quality, and in terms of care, and in terms of thought and love? They were exactly the same. And so it was a thrill to see that kind of quality goes into making this story come to life.
And with adapting any sort of book, obviously there’s always going to be a challenge in getting every detail into the movie — because you really can’t. A huge 500-page novel is different from a two-hour movie. Is there anything that you had to cut that really kind of hurt you to cut or was there anything that you also maybe added in, like you were just talking about, that really felt like it belonged in the movie?
Oh, it was a nightmare cutting everything. It was a horrible, painful nightmare. And the main notes that I got from John Logan while I was writing the screenplay was make it shorter. Make everything more concise. So in the book, if Ben is in the museum for a week or two with Jamie, John would say make it happen in one night. And if Ben has four clues as to who his father would be, John would say pick one. And his first note to me was cut the first 50 pages of the screenplay in half. And so every line, every word that I had to cut was like daggers. But once I made the cuts, I saw how it made the screenplay better. I saw how it tightened up the story and it kept things moving. So the payoff was that it made it feel better as a screenplay. As a movie.
And then, yes. There were things that were added in. Like in the book, I think we know that Ben and his cousin Janet have a conversation — we read a few lines of what they say to each other but mostly I think I just described the conversation, they talked about this or that — but in the screenplay you actually have to have all the dialogue that they say to each other. So the scene between them is a little bit more involved than it is in the book. What else did I add in? There were a few visual details that I added in that I think work really well, for what needed to happen. But in the end, you know the main arc of the story and the real sense of the characters has remained the same from book to film.
A sort of broader question: What is it about book adaptations that keeps Hollywood going? Because I feel like, especially nowadays, so many books are being adapted into movies — for better or for worse. But what do you think it is about it that makes Hollywood excited?
Well, I guess we come up with stories. You need good stories. And no matter what you’re making, it really, for me, comes down to the story. And so it seems natural to turn to books as a source for inspiration. But I think adaptations that work find a way to make the story in the book feel like they were meant to be on screen. And of course we’ve all read books where you have a sense that the author wishes it was a movie? And so you feel like you were kind of reading a stepping stone. So it maybe affects the quality of the book. And maybe it’s an okay book and it turns into an okay movie, but a really good book will — even if it’s a book about movies, like Hugo and even Wonderstruck, as they both have movies in them, but they’re both designed very much to be books. And I actually thought both of them were unadaptable while I was working on the books themselves.
Surprise!
Surprise! Yes, big surprise! But you know, at the end of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the book itself in your hand becomes part of the plot. And so I thought that couldn’t be adapted. And John Logan, who did the screenplay, figured out how to make it work. He took a book that celebrates the history of films and movies, but it’s ultimately about the importance of books, and he made it into a movie that celebrates books and writing and libraries and bookstores, but it’s ultimately about the importance of film. So without changing very much of the plot, he changed the entire intention of the story. Which is why I think it works so beautifully on screen. So, you know, a lot of people make books, a lot of writers write stories because that’s how we work. We put words on paper. And I also draw, so part of my stories are told visually, and that becomes part of how the stories are crafted. But movies are a visual medium and so it feels like a natural progression in a lot of ways to see stories that begin between the pages, between the covers of a book, open up and turn into movies.
What would you say is your single biggest take away from working on this film?
That’s an interesting question. You know, I’ve been lucky in my two adaptations because I got to watch Martin Scorsese make a movie and I got to watch Todd Haynes make a movie. And because I was much more involved in the process with Wonderstruck, I got to see more of Todd working. And watching Todd as he interacted with each of the people who were the heads of the different departments, the way he would talk to each of them in a language that they all understood. He would talk to the composer, Carter Burwell, almost like a musician himself. He would talk to Sandy Powell with an understanding of costumes that was very complete. He would talk to Ed Lachman as a cinematographer in many ways about what he saw the camera possibilities could be. He would share older movies with everybody so that they were all on the same page about what they wanted to look at as references. And everybody talked about — to me — how much they respected Todd and that they wanted to do their best work for Todd.
So it was, in a lot of ways, really about expertise and leadership that I was really moved by. Because Todd, he’s a brilliant artist, he’s a brilliant thinker, he’s academic — he’s a really academic thinker — but he’s also very emotional and is able to get across the emotions of a story. He’s also really, really a brilliant leader. And watching him lead this so carefully and thoughtfully, and watching everybody work with him, was something that was very, very inspiring for me.
And also the way he embraced the deaf community early on. It was very important to me to bring in the deaf community as part of this from the very beginning — he committed to hiring a deaf actress for young Rose. And the fact that we found Millicent Simmonds, this 12-year-old deaf girl who’s never acted before, is incredible. You’re going to be blown away by her. Wait ’til you see her. I had the idea to hire six deaf actors as hearing people in the silent movie section — because in the silent movie era there were deaf actors hired a lot because they were very expressive and they didn’t need language to tell a story, which is what you needed in a silent movie era — so we have an homage to that, which is very meaningful. We have a deaf musician playing on the soundtrack: Dame Evelyn Glennie, who’s a percussionist. We had a sign language class for the crew before we began filming, so that each department could learn signs. Like Sandy Powell learned how to say, “Hello, and nice to meet you. Take your clothes off!” So the deaf actors were really astounded to be met in their native language by a three-time Oscar winner like Sandy. And that also came from Todd’s leadership. He embraced that and reached out to everybody so everybody would feel comfortable working with the deaf actors, and the interpreters, and the hearing actors all together.
My final question is, what can you tell us about any upcoming projects you might be working on?
Well, in March my husband Dr. David Serlin and I have written a book together. For a slightly younger audience. It’s called Baby Monkey Private Eye, and it’s about a baby monkey who is a private eye. In case that wasn’t clear.
Very on the nose.
S: Yeah. As you can see, it’s incredibly cute. And so he’s a monkey that solves crimes and solving crimes is very, very easy for him, so that happens quickly, so most of the book is him trying to get his pants on. It’s very, very hard for him to get his pants on. It’s a 200 page beginning reader. It’s got five chapters, five different stories, but very, very few words. So there’s lots of repetition. The kids can start learning to read the words themselves. But it’s also a fun read-aloud. So I’ve got that. I’m working on a musical adaptation of my first book, The Houdini Box. I’m writing my first lyrics for that, which is really fun. And, um, a bunch of other things. I’ve begun another illustrated novel. Like Wonderstruck. So yeah, there’s a lot of things going on.