Well Nuts: Now I Need to Read the Spiderwick Chronicles…Thanks John Sayles
My son is wrapping up his spring break today, and as part of that I took Thursday and Friday off to spend time with him. We went to Six Flags on Thursday and then on Friday I took him and his cousin to see The Spiderwick Chronicles at the local discount movie house.
I was pleasantly surprised by the movie, assuming it would be typical Nickelodeon light fare. In all honesty, I was bewildered to find it was a partially examination of the toll a marriage headed toward divorce can have on the children. I don’t know if the books deal with this at all (and so now I will have to read at least one of the books to see if there’s a hint of this…).
But really threw me was when the end credits rolled around–one of the film’s three screenwriters was John Sayles. I might be wrong, but I’m going to give the family drama element credit to Sayles. I’m not the only one to be caught off-guard by Sayles’ presence in the film–as evidenced by Sean Adler’s February 2008 Q&A with the film’s director, Mark Waters, at the MTV movies blog:
“MTV: I saw a name in the credits — John Sayles. John Sayles?!
MW: We have to remember John Sayles started his career doing movies like “Piranha” and werewolf movies for Roger Corman. He’s got this real fun fantasy horror side to his sensibility. I think he did rewrite work on “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” He’s got that part of him that loves working on these movies. The big thing that John did was he said, “Let’s take on all five books of this series and tell a complete story as opposed to trying to make a piecemeal.” He kind of was able to sift through that and find a general story structure, as well as ground it in the sense of a very real family going through some very real difficulties.”
I’ve always had a healthy respect for Sayles, be it for films like Lone Star or Passion Fish, but now looking back at his career, I really am kicking myself for failing to see 1994’s The Secret of Roan Inish yet. Well, off to Netflix to remedy that oversight.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
The broken marriage stuff is taken directly from the book (although one of the film’s scenes takes it into a darker direction). The 5-part book series is much more deliberately paced and has more of a “Hardy Boys” quality.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:34 am
I’m so lucky to have a well-read arts critic for a friend. Thanks for the insight, Curt.