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By, Jacob Krueger

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Chuck, Rocky & The Art of Adaptation

Podcast Transcript:

 

This week we are going to be looking at Chuck by Jeff Feuerzeig, Jerry Stahl, Michael Cristofer and Liev Schreiber.  

 

What is really interesting about Chuck is that hidden underneath this little character driven drama is actually an adaptation of three different stories.

 

The first is the true life story of Chuck Wepner’s life; Chuck Wepner was a down and out fighter who went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali. And many people believe, although Sylvester Stallone has denied it, that Chuck Wepner’s life was actually the inspiration for Rocky.

 

At the same time, it is also an adaptation of the Rocky film. It is a reimagining of Rocky-- what if you looked at Rocky not as a hero’s journey but as the story of an anti-hero? What if you stripped all of Sylvester Stallone’s American dream sugar coating off of Rocky and turned it into a story about a guy who keeps on turning lemonade back into lemons?

 

And at the same time, it’s also an adaptation of a third film: an old movie from 1962 called Requiem for a Heavyweight.

 

 

 

So here, we have this unassuming character driven, independent feeling little film, that looks like just a simple biopic, but under the surface, there is actually something very complicated going on.

An interesting thing about adaptation and revision is that people think of them as different, but I think of them as actually in many ways the same.

In an adaptation we take something that isn't yet a movie Whether it is a true life story like the true life story of Chuck Wepner, a novel, a poem, a short story, a dream that you had, an experience from your own life, the story of your grandmother-- it is taking this thing that isn't yet in the form of a movie and translating it into a form that is a movie.

 

Similarly, I believe revision does exactly the same thing. When you are revising a script what you are actually doing is taking an early draft that isn't yet a movie-- and the way we know it isn't yet a movie is that if it was already a movie, you would have stopped writing it-- So, you are taking a screenplay, a draft of a screenplay, something that is in early stage of development that isn't yet translated into movie terms and you are translating it into movie terms.

 

And there is also a third kind of adaptation, which we are seeing now more than ever in Hollywood, which is a remake of old movies. And a remake of old movies works along the same principle, which is basically to say, “Hey we are going to do this again because it was awesome the first time.”

 

But if we do it exactly like the first one, it is probably not going to play. At the very best, we are going to do a slightly worse version of a great movie.

 

 

 

So what is our take on it now? How do we translate this thing that isn't a movie today-- because it has already been made-- into something that feels relevant and new and fresh today?”

 

And, of course, this also happens to us often when we realize that something that we are writing already either has been made or is about to be made-- when you realize that your story isn't taking things far enough,  or when you finally get your script out into the industry and you start to get feedback like, "Oh I have read a lot of scripts like this...” that is also a time that we are doing an adaptation.

 

We are taking something that maybe once was viable as a script, but in the current market isn't and we are translating it into something that is viable-- something that is new an...