Adapting a Novel to the Screen: A brief history of La Peau blanche, so far...
by Joël Champetier
 

1) The Novel La Peau blanche (White Skin) was published in 1997, at Alire. It is my personal take on the "urban-romantic-postmodern-blur-the-line-between-SF-and-fantasy" sub-genre. A young man from France, Thierry, comes to Montreal to study Quebecois literature at Université du Québec. He shares an apartment with Henri, a happy-go-lucky student born in Quebec but with Haitian ancestors. Although he is black, he talks and thinks like a "real"  Quebecois.

Thierry falls in love with Claire, a beautiful red-haired young women he meets at the university. Their passion is intense and carnal, but Claire remains elusive and mysterious. She finally reveals her secret: she is sick with cancer--she will start chemotherapy soon. But the treatments don't go as planned. After all, who ever said that Claire was human? (Eerie music begins...)The novel was favorably revieved--the first time that one of my novels was revieved in major newspapers like La Presse. Ironically, it is also my worst- selling novel ever! It is hard to pinpoint why. Difficult to pigeonhole? Too racy for schools? My observation is that most readers didn't care much about the iconoclastic subtext and postmodern posturing and related to the humor and the romantic story.

2) The movie deal

I was asked: "How did you convince somebody to adapt your novel to the screen?" I didn't. Daniel Roby, a young producer and cinematographer, read the book and phoned me. He said he loved the story and wanted to make a movie with it. I said cool. I didn't jumped for joy, since I didn't have a clue if that guy was for real. We met. He struck me as a no-nonsense guy who really knew what he was talking about. He didn't bullshit me: making a movie was a long and difficult road, with no guaranties of success. I knew the guy was for real when a) he bought the rights from the publisher and b) he showed me a promo tape of his work as a cinematographer, very slick and pro stuff.

3) The adaptation

Daniel Roby asked a few screenwriters if they would be interested in adapting the novel. They read it and said they didn't think it had potential. So Daniel asked me if I would be interested in co-wroting it with him. I said, "Man, I thought you would never ask!" (Irony: one of the girls working on the movie told me with a twisted smile that her boyfriend was one of the screenwriters who turned down the offer.)

Adapting the novel was very interesting, and whatever happens with the movie, this will stand as a formative experience. It may seems uncool that Daniel asked other screenwriters before asking me, but Daniel told me he has had bad experience with novelists. Most of them don't understood the difference between a script and a novel. A novel is the work. A script is the blue-print of a work in another medium. The story is driven exclusively by images, dialogues, structure and music. There is no narration. Such a simple concept is hard for most novelists to grasp. A voice-over narrative (unless it is ironic, as in The Big Lebowsky), is almost always a sign that the script has problems.

The bulk of the screenplay was written in 1999, and polished in 2000. We had a tiny grant from Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles ($8000 to be split among Daniel, me, the publisher and a pro screenwriter who was appointed by SODEC to counsel us). We played with the story, changed characters, injected a policeman in the story... Man, did we try to fit in that damned policeman! It didn't work, and in the end the screenplay is very close to the novel.

4) Financing

I had nothing to do with financing the movie, and this is a good thing since paperwork makes me foam at the mouth. You also have to meet a lot of people and be your own publicist--another thing I am not good at.

Daniel sent the screenplay to several producers. Everything you read about producers is true: they don't have time to read the screenplay of the movies they are financing! Well, most of them. Some read the thing and said, "Ho- hum, I'm at page 5 and I don't already know everything about the story, I don't know where it is going, why am I reading this? Who are those people? Guards, take them away!"

At that point, God, in It's infinite wisdom, sent us The Sixth Sense, a slow movie were you didn't knew in the first minutes what would happen the rest of the movie, and still, was a smashing success. We would say: "It's like The Sixth Sense." It helped catch the attention of producers, but still, we were going nowhere fast. Years were passing by. I had time to write and publish two novels!

So Daniel founded his producing company. Tons and tons of paperwork, again. At the first try, SODEC and Telefilm Canada didn't agree to finance the film, but it was okay, this is the way the game is played. Finally, in 2002, the financing was accepted by Telefilm Canada, and eventually by SODEC. There is a slightly unreal twist to this happy ending: when we started this project, the normal budget for such a independent movie was fixed at $1 million (Canadian). About two years ago, Telefilm Canada lowered that maximum to $750,000. Everything else went up in the movie business, except Telefilm Canada's independent movie financing! Which means that the tight budget for the movie was now ultra-tight. We could not afford any delays, or bad luck, or overtime while filming the movie. What a relief to see that Daniel Roby and the crew were able to pull it through difficult weather conditions.

5) Postproduction

Editing and postproduction should be completed this summer, but the movie will probably not hit the screens before winter 2004. This is a tricky move. An independent French-Canadian movie is a very small fish in a pool controlled by very big American sharks. Most Quebecois movie are barely distributed and disappear instantly from the screens. Our distributor is Film Seville, who does a pretty nice job of marketing with independent and foreign movies like Talk to her, by Almodovar. The owner, who actually read the script, is a big supporter of the project, and suggested dubbing the movie into English. But of course, he is waiting to see the final cut before putting money were his mouth is.

So that's all for today. The ride has been fine for now!