In our latest Film Studies series, filmmaker and educator Patricia Gruben – founder of the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters – unpacks different approaches to writing for the screen, focusing here on adaptation from literary sources.
The 1992 novel by celebrated Scottish author Alasdair Gray is a cheerful parody of the Frankenstein story and of Victorian scientific treatises in this feminist allegory of a young woman with (literally) the brain of a child who learns to use both her sexual powers and her intellect to gain independence in a patriarchal society. Director Yorgos Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara remain true to the novel’s intent while creating a carnival of imagery, sound and a wild performance by Emma Stone to end our series with a 19th century romantic horror-comedy a far cry from the world of Jane Austen.
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Patricia Gruben is a filmmaker and former associate professor of film at Simon Fraser University, as well as founder and long-time director of Praxis Centre for Screenwriters (now the Screenwriters Lab at the Whistler Film Festival.) Her films have been screened at TIFF, VIFF, Sundance and the New York Film Festival, and her writing on film has appeared in international academic and popular journals. Her new feature film Heart of Gold will be released in 2025.
2:00 pm
2:30 pm
Patricia Gruben
Yorgos Lanthimos
Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott
USA
2023
English
Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival; Best Actress, Academy Awards
Book Tickets
Monday March 10
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Tony McNamara
Cinematography
Robbie Ryan
Editor
Yorgos Mavropsaridis
Original Music
Jerskin Fendrix
Production Design
Shona Heath, James Price
Also in This Series
Throne of Blood
In this week's Film Studies talk, filmmaker and educator Patricia Gruben considers how Shakespeare's dramas have been translated to feudal Japan (in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood), New York gangs in the 1950s, and to occupied Kashmir, among other examples.
The Hours
Patricia Gruben leads us on an investigation into translating interior monologue to the screen, taking the case study of how Virginia Woolf inspired the Academy Award winning film The Hours by way of Michael Cunningham's best-selling novel.
Full Metal Jacket
Kubrick's famous Vietnam war film was inspired by two sources, Gustav Hasford's semi-autobiographical novella The Short-Timers, and Dispatches, a nonfiction account by Michael Herr. Both writers worked separately on the script, which Kubrick consolidated.
