Here are some excerpts from a piece recently published by Veritasse Magazine. The piece is about the mechanics of the process behind book to film productions, using The Da Vinci Code as a test case. I am not sure what their copyright rules are, so here are some select paragraphs:


Harold and the Purple Crayon was always my favorite book as a child. Literally about how a little boy named Harold draws himself through a series of dreamy perils into bed, the book is elegant, simple, and hypnotic. It is so simple that it actually begins right on the front cover, where Harold is already poised with his purple crayon to rush headlong through the book and its wordless narrative. Like all good children’s books, Harold had me hooked before it even left the shelf. Though it may seem immature, this method of book selection tailors my literary tastes to this day. It is what directed me to things like 1971 edition of Swiss Family Robinson, the 1959 edition of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, and on one fateful day, the irresistible minimalism of the old Penguin edition of Catcher in the Rye.


The publishing industry is keenly aware of the fact that the first thing we see of a book is its cover, and the eye of the average bookshop browser can instantly identify at least four different genres from the distance of 10 feet: romance novel, techno-thriller, chick-lit, DIY handbook. The Penguin Classic, the Library of America, these book covers are a badge of honor. Such volumes are most effective when strategically tossed on the edge of a Starbuck’s table, instantly marking it as the territory of someone “in the know.” With great reason, graphic designers will speak reverently of such names like Germano Facetti, innovated Penguin designer, or Fred Troller who introduced Swiss modernism to bookish Americans, and other pioneering book cover artists who wrestled with serifs, tangled with font sizes, and effectively branded literary tastes for generations of publishing. These days, it is no accident that the hand of a housewife in the supermarket, or her husband in the airport, will gravitate towards a particular title.


It is only relatively recently that a hybrid has appeared, an aberrant branch in the evolving art of book cover design. These are what the industry calls “tie-in” covers, what happens to a book after it has been adapted into a film. It is the reason why the alluring artwork on Louis Sachar’s Holes was replaced by a bland ensemble of actors peering across the title. Seabiscuit traded its timeless photo of Red Pollard for something matching the DVD cover of its adaptation. Or for a while, Jack Nicholson’s mug replaced the groundbreaking design of the original cover of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The reason for such aesthetic tragedies is simple: the recognition factor involved with these new covers turns aging classics into new bestsellers. It signals the end of a transition in which a book has ceased to simply be a book, but part of a multi-media package built around an original storyline.


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In Spike Jonze’s delightfully irreverent film Adaptation, we get an insider’s glimpse into the process of film adaptation. In a direct mimicry of the actual struggle of screenwriter Charlie Kaufmann to adapt The Orchid Thief, the film chronicles the efforts of a fictional “Charlie Kaufmann” in adapting the same title. As the The Orchid Thief is more about orchids than anything else, the real life Kaufmann turns to a wild assortment of plot twists and intrigues that plague the story of his onscreen counterpart in order to bring the book to life. What we are left with in this film about the making of a literary adaptation is the sense of struggle inherent to the process. Literary adaptation is more than just the process of transitioning a story from words to images, it is about the conflicting narratives of author and screenwriter and the reproduction of the reading experience in an entirely different aesthetic vocabulary.


I wish Akiva Goldsman, The Da Vinci Code screenwriter, would have had this same struggle in scripting this film. There is no sense at all that what we have in The Da Vinci Code is the result of a long process of wrestling words into images. As already noted, this is not entirely Goldsman’s or Howard’s fault. It is ironic that a book about the vitality and creativity of words, images, and religious symbols in history is so shallow from a literary point of view that it does not lend itself to an adaptation that taps into films provocative capabilities. C.S. Lewis once quipped that Satan’s best ploy was to convince the world that he is silly, just a cad. Likewise, this film will enjoy its mediocre status. Riddled with fantastic historical error, Dan Brown’s preposterous reasoning assaults both the dignified presence of Christ in early Christian theology and his unabated historical influence. The filmed adaptation of his reasoning, however, can really only be charged with the sin of bland sensationalism.


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There seems to be a fairly simple decision making process in place for the publication of these transitional book covers. Allison Barrow of Transworld Publishing, responsible for the British publication of The Da Vinci Code, shared with us the following logic: “Generally if we have already published a book, and we perceive that the subsequent film is going to make a major impact, then we would adapt a cover to reflect the imagery from the film.” If by “major impact” she means that the film does well in the box office, then The Da Vinci Code certainly fits the bill. As the book cover designers pointed out above, it makes sense then that the related cover would bank on the instant recognizability of the film’s major stars.


This poses a precarious relationship between filmed adaptation and their related book covers, and all this discussion of book cover design provides a convenient analogy for the relationship between books and film. There is a sense in which flawed literary adaptations share in the mistake made by their related book covers. Just as these new covers highlight a shallow, marketable image of the film’s storyline, some adapted films fail to transpose the compelling artistry and ambiguity of a given text to the screen. Likewise, just as good book covers serve as an instant point of contact between a reader and a novel, so do good filmed adaptations become imaginative representations of the thematic concerns of a literary classic. Showing rather than telling, they in some way become a symbol or reminder of the reading experience.