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CITY OF GOD AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION By Tom McCurrie
Fernando Meirelles had one word to describe himself at a Q & A session for his film CITY OF GOD: "stupid." He spent all the money he earned over fifteen years of making commercials (around 2.9 million) to finance the film himself. Now that's pretty dumb. I mean, he's violated the cardinal rule: never spend your own money to make a movie. Then again, spending your own money gives you creative control (especially as a writer), and when that creative control earns your pic four Oscar nominations (for Direction, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Editing), you begin to realize this guy Meirelles isn't so dumb after all.
Director Meirelles had plenty of other things to say at the Q & A, courtesy of Creative Screenwriting Magazine. This is especially true of the screenplay, which came about in an unusual way. CITY OF GOD is based on the novel by Paulo Lins, which describes the often-hellish existence in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, or drug-infested slums. Lins grew up in the City of God favela and spent eight years researching the project. What resulted was a 700-page tome that spanned three decades, sported 352 characters and contained more than 100 different stories.
How do you adapt a book so unwieldy to the screen? As Meirelles says: "I believed less in a dramatic sequence with a beginning, middle and end, and more in the sum of the various stories, which juxtaposed, would bring us to our desired result, which was to recreate the feeling found in the book," most especially the unflinching violence and grinding poverty of the favelas. But since "the book [was] very episodic [, with] no structure at all," Meirelles and his screenwriter Braulio Mantovani had to give the adaptation some sense of order. So they came up with "the idea of splitting the story into three different times": the 60s when City of God was still a livable housing project, the 70s when drugs began to take hold, and finally the 80s when anarchy, violence and the drug wars crushed whatever hope the favelas had left. They also decided to center the story on Rocket, Lins' alter ego. As the only character to make it out of the favelas with his dreams intact, Rocket would be a sympathetic tour guide through the often-brutal world of the slums.
Of course, Meirelles doesn't overdo the structure, either. The movie frequently jumps between characters, situations and time periods in the blink of an eye. It also stops in its tracks when a character is introduced, playfully flashing back to show us how that character got to be that way. (In a wonderful sequence, it does the same thing with an apartment.) All this narrative derring-do gives the film an energy -- and an unpredictability -- that keeps the material from getting too grim.
Though the first draft was banged out in two months, there were another eleven by the time CITY was completed. Changes were made before, during and after filming. Some were made for length. After all, reading a 700-page book in the comfort of your own home is one thing; sitting in a theatre watching an eight-hour movie is something else. As Meirelles says, "We eliminated plots and characters or brought two or three characters into one" to keep the film at 130 minutes.
But the changes were also due to Meirelles' quest for authenticity. As a "middle-class guy from San Paulo," Meirelles had no first-hand knowledge of the favelas himself. So he was particularly determined to get "this inside point of view" whenever possible. This meant casting non-pros from the favelas to play many of the young gangsters. It also meant not treating the script like Gospel; if these kids didn't think certain scenes were real enough, they were tossed. "Some situations were cut out because we didn't get any feedback from the kids," Meirelles explains. "If they didn't react to the irony of something being said it was because it was out of their universe and was not worth insisting on -- it was cut." Things were added as well -- when a former gang member explained they always prayed before going out to attack someone, Meirelles included it. This authenticity makes an already powerful story even more devastating.
To Meirelles, "Brazil is like two different countries...there's [the favelas] and there's the official Brazil, [the] middle-class Brazil. And both Brazils, they don't connect." So Meirelles made CITY OF GOD "to show the other part of Brazil [to official] Brazilian society," to show "the wasting of lives" that occurs on a daily basis in the slums. This way maybe one part of Brazil could help the other, making it one country instead of two separate and unequal ones. Let's hope the heartbreaking CITY OF GOD helps achieve that goal.
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The flick that received the most votes for Top Film of 2003 was MYSTIC RIVER. Actually, LOST IN TRANSLATION received more E-mails, but that was for Worst Film (you guys really didn't like this movie, did you?). Thanks to all who took part!
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to [email protected].
(Note: For all those who missed my past reviews, they're now archived on Hollywoodlitsales.com. Just click the link on the main page and it'll take you to the Inner Sanctum. Love them or Hate them at your leisure!)
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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