I spent the better part of a day last week reading the transcripts and watching the videos of online interviews with Fantastic Beast actors, the director, the producer, and the principal screenwriter, The Presence. I stopped counting after the first fifty articles. My notes, essentially cut and paste extractions of the parts of each interview I thought memorable, ran to just shy of 7,000 words. Please note: I have never bothered to read any interviews with the stars of the eight Harry Potter movies or with the various directors, producers, or screenwriters involved with those blockbuster projects.
I did this for Fantastic Beasts not because I have lost my mind, or, at least I hope that is not the reason for or a consequence of this largely demeaning exercise. I spent a precious day searching and surfing the pablum of discussions between journalists assigned to the entertainment beat and celebrities using those journalists to create greater interest in their product because I wanted to understand J. K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
In the not so distant past, if I wanted a greater understanding of Rowling’s work, I re-read the text she wrote. With her Harry Potter adventures and Cormoran Strike mysteries that has proven to be a successful method: read, reflect, re-read, discuss with thoughtful readers, write about, reflect, re-read, chart, et cetera.
But with Fantastic Beasts that method won’t work. Yes, we have a text that purports to be “The Original Screenplay.” It is not, however, the Rowling screenplay used to shoot the film or in which she tells her story. It does not include the six deleted scenes we have been told about (I assume there are more). It does not include the explanations and information available only in exhibits and in the number of movie tie-in books that have been published for the Wizarding World fandom to purchase in the Christmas gift-giving season. There are at last count five revelations with important ramifications that have been discovered by fans in the last two weeks alone and Rowling is making almost daily supplements to what we know on her revitalized jkrowling.com website.
Interpreting a movie is a different thing than reading a book. I have said that before in the context of the difference between the imaginative and sense experiences one has in a book and at the movies. It is true as well because of the significantly different artistry and techniques involved in delivering such antipodal experiences. Here I mean something else.
Reading a book and understanding it for the most part is me and the text as published and, sadly, too often as augmented by continued revelations of the author. ‘Reading a movie,’ especially a blockbuster movie involving hundreds of millions of dollars, I’m learning is a scramble to assemble the text, a definitive text, from the inputs and changes made to the screenwriter’s text by the many collaborators and decision makers involved in making the sausage, not to mention the designers, prop makers, and tie-in books writers.
Today I want to start a five part series on ‘Interpreting Fantastic Beasts’ with a review of all we’ve been told to date about Rowling’s writing process as a new screenwriter. In the next four posts, I hope to look at the filmmakers’ story about Rowling’s efforts, the six cuts we know they made to the original screenplay, the five tie-in story revelations fandom has discovered thus far as well as Rowling’s addenda, and, to conclude, a ‘So What?’ review of what we’ve learned and what it means in understanding and speculating about the five film series.
It starts after the jump!
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