Congratulations, Blair — you’re our grand prize winner!

Last month, Matt de la Pena and Filmmaker Brin Hill allowed us a glimpse into the process of taking de la Pena’s BALL DON’T LIE from page to screen. In Part 2, we find out what the collaborators think makes an adaptation great, how this filmmaking process has changed they way they think and work, and what this talented pair want to give YOU — so read on, and enjoy!

What’s going on with BDL now? Now that the film has been made — what’s worked, what’s been difficult or challenging, and what have you learned?

BRIN::The film is now releasing in the fall instead of the top of the summer because several new dynamic promotional opportunities presented themselves to us and we wanted the time to maximize each of them. One of these is the chance to visit high schools. Matt and I went on a tour of Los Angeles public schools in May to talk about writing and directing and found this to be an amazing way to interface with our core, taste-making audience directly. We guest-taught classes on the process of adapting the book to the screen and spoke to a couple thousand kids over the course of a week. With Matt’s latest book, WE WERE HERE, dropping in the fall and Matt hitting the road to promote it, we realized that this is an amazing opportunity for kids to meet Matt, read his latest book, and then perhaps discover BALL DON’T LIE as well. We’ve been blessed with the passion and zeal that librarians and educators have for BALL DON’T LIE and their collective desire for students to embrace it. With movie studios spending more and more money on fewer and fewer titles, this passion from fans of the book, basketball fans in general, and those who think our film is important from a social perspective, has really helped us dig an awareness trench into the morass of the big-budgeted film and book promotions that dominate.

MATT: I’m a little surprised BALL DON’T LIE the novel is still alive and kicking almost four years after its pub date. I believe this is the advantage of the YA market. I’ve heard so many horror stories about quality adult novels, that for whatever reason don’t get a whole lot of publicity, disappearing from bookstore shelves within months of publication. Debut literary adult novels can have a real short shelf life unless they win awards.. From what I’ve learned, adult novels are all about the buzz generated around the pub date. If there’s no buzz, the book is abandoned by the publisher (unless it’s a heavy-hitting author). Literary YA novels, on the other hand, aren’t so dependent on pub date buzz. Publishers allow for a slower build. The institutional market (schools and libraries) play a pivotal role in the book’s success. BDL is still doing well because so many libraries have purchased copies. And since the publication of the paperback last year, a bunch of high school and college English instructors are buying class sets to teach (which is so cool!). I’m in no way saying BDL is flirting with any bestselling lists, but it’s still alive, it’s still in people’s hands, Random House is still pushing it, and I’m not sure if an author could ask for anything more. And now that the movie version is coming out . . . who knows? Maybe even more people will seek out the book. Random House is really trying to take advantage of the momentum.

What are some of your favourite book-to-film projects, and what makes them work?

MATT: Man, I might need to lean on Brin for this question. I haven’t seen enough movies. REQUIEM FOR A DREAM comes to mind. I love Hubert Selby Jr. and the film was as gritty and dark as the novel. I loved it. I kind of liked NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN in both mediums. The novel is really striped down (I heard McCarthy wrote it as a screenplay first) so it plays great as a film. There was one glaring omission – a long conversation between the protagonist and the girl hitchhiker he picks up just before the end. I loved this scene in the book because we finally get to know the character, right before he’s taken away from us. But I don’t think there was time in the film. It was still really strong, though. Why do I have this feeling Brin is rolling his eyes at my cinematic ignorance. He’s probably going to site some obscure French adaptation from the 1940’s. I need to watch more films. Can somebody make me a list? I’ll drop every title right into my Netflix cue, I promise!

BRIN: Oddly, my favorite adaptation is not an obscure French novel turned into French film, but is a classic – To Kill A Mockingbird. Gregory Peck’s version of Atticus Finch is simply one of the best performances of the 20th Century. The dignity of that film and book is something that I really admire. Simple, elegant, intelligent storytelling – sometimes that’s all we want/need. Robert Mulligan is one of those directors that always put you in solid hands that folks never really talk about. Check out The Nickel Ride, Summer of ’42 and The Great Impostor. Fear Strikes Out is one of the better baseball films of all time as well – also based on a book. The Elmer Bernstein scores in both FEAR STRIKES OUT and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD are brilliant as well. On a completely different note, I absolutely love OUT OF SIGHT. Soderbergh captured the spirit of Elmore Leonard so well in that film. The pace, the heat, the humor is all spot on. One other that I really like is CLOCKERS – just like how different the styles of the book and film are. I love Richard Price’s ear for the real and I love how Spike Lee told that story. I think it’s one of Spike’s more underrated films – there’s such a wonderful use of Brooklyn, of the camera and of music in that film. It’s by far the best adaptation of Price that I’ve seen. Someone should adapt LUSH LIFE – could be a really subversive film.

Matt, In the earlier interview, you said “I’m not sure how much of what I was writing even shouted “book!” while I was writing the initial draft. This was my first novel and I was suffering from a serious case of “impostor syndrome.” Who was I to think I could write an entire novel? And a novel that actually sold? Crazy talk. Luckily the obsessive part of me beat out the skeptical part and after about a year I had the makings of an actual book. Of course, it wasn’t until the revision stage that I figure out what the book was actually about.” How have those feelings changed (or not) now that your 3rd book is about to be published? And you mentioned that you ‘got’ the book in revision — did you discover that the book was “about” anything else during the filmmaking process? Have there been reactions to the book and film that have struck or surprised you?

MATT: I believe in myself a little more, yes. And I guess I have more tools in the toolbox. But it still shocks me whenever somebody writes an email to tell me they’ve read one of my books. It’s probably because as a novelist you spend so much time alone in a room, without human contact, without affection, devastatingly lonely. You almost forget that you’re writing something that hopefully actual people will want to check out. But I have a theory about myself. I’m best when I don’t think about big ticket stuff like readers and sales and reviews and awards and marriage (yes, commitment is freaky, too). I’m best when I see things in tiny pieces. Okay, today I’m going to have character A talk to character B on the Venice pier and then something’s gonna happen. Hmmm, what should happen? Something. Making a film is a totally different deal (from what I observed). Brin was talking to people all the time. I bet he’s grown tired of people.

I have another theory. The reason most authors refuse to discuss the theme of their own book is because they’re unwilling to articulate their simple-minded vision. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a school and some student has raised her hand and rattled off some brilliant take on what my book is “about.” I’m always like, “Yeah, you guys all hear that. My book’s really about, you know, what she said.” But you do have your own ideas. I usually zero in on what the heck I’m trying to do after I’m done with the first draft of a book. The movie was a totally different experience for me. I got to see Brin visually render HIS take on what the story “means.” Like I said last time around, there’s a quick montage scene where you see Sticky in front of every single foster house he’s stayed at during the story that blows me away. Brin visually captured (in about five seconds) what I was trying to say before I even wrote the first line. It’s the reason I chose this character and story in the first place.

Brin, you said “For me, this source material was an opportunity to go home and make an honest film – a film about an LA and a character that normally doesn’t get told. That opportunity absolutely excited me.” and later “One major hurdle was taking a character that is so abused by the system that he spins inside himself and lives in an extremely internal manner…We gambled on the notion that the ills Sticky’s suffered, the difficult system he endured, and getting to see him overcome some of those woes would allow us to win the audience over and buy some time with a character that kind of lives in a turtle’s shell. I’m always pleasantly surprised and pleased when the audience vocally roots for Sticky in a harrowing scene toward the end of the film.” Can you elaborate on the techniques and details that you used to externalize such an internal story? What did you do to evoke such a particular mood? What elements of the novel’s setting/sense of place were essential to you and how did you translate them to the screen?

BRIN:: With Sticky being so inside his own head, both rooted in the painful memories of his past and in an inability to control those memories and therefore try to control things through OCD-like behavior, we elected to approach the memories that plague him with dynamic visual choices that could help peel back the layers of his past. In the first minute of the film, we see inside his brain, giving the audience a glimpse of a guarded secret and we know instantly that he spends a lot of time working on keeping these memories locked away. We then assigned different colors and grain to define where we are in his timeline. The further recessed the memory and the more painful it is, the more grain it has – it’s almost like he’s sorting through home movies, only they are home movies in his mind. This also helps us set a visual mood both for happy and somber memories because it allows us to play with colors that helped to evoke some of those ideas. We also used a technique called a 45˚ shutter that is often seen in sports and/or war films that gives action a jittery look to accent Sticky’s struggle with his OCD-like behavior. We wanted the audience to experience some sense of the frustration and discomfort that he has with it.

The essential elements of the book that I know I needed in the film to capture the authenticity of time and place were first and foremost, the guys in the gym. Casting was paramount to this. While many of the faces in Lincoln Rec are recognizable, I think they do an amazing job of feeling real and blending in with their performances. Secondly, I know I needed to capture the beach in a real way. So all the locations that I imagined in reading the book were the locations we shot: The overpass across PCH, the tunnel, the lifeguard stations, the pier, Surf liquor store, the Venice graffiti wall, and the Venice Beach Courts. Lastly, I knew we needed a sense of Lincoln Blvd being the artery that pumps life behind the different sides of Venice. That is a sub-current in Matt’s book that I believe he doesn’t even realize he created, but is so honest to Venice. Lincoln is that city’s lifeblood and I knew I wanted the audience to feel it without drawing attention to it.

How has this project changed the way that you work?

MATT: Whenever I brainstorm book ideas these days, I always make sure to include a female character in her mid twenties so Dania Ramirez can play the role in the movie version and I can be on set on the days she shoots and hopefully work up the courage to ask her to marry me this time (when it comes to her it’s not so freaky). During the filming of BDL I was too shy to even speak to her. I get so bummed just thinking about it. Man.

I also try to keep my writing as visual as possible. Not because I dream of everything ending up on the big screen. I just think it keeps you in the mindset of showing rather than telling. And I love visual scene writing. I like watching characters and listening to them talk.

BRIN:: BALL DON’T LIE has really made me a better editor. I find that I edit myself more now in treatment form than I did before this project. I ask myself: Do I really need this scene or will it just end up eating valuable shoot time and then exist only on the deleted scenes of the DVD? We had so much fat that I thought we needed because I loved the book so much that we have a whole other movie twice as long sitting in the vault. That’s a really important lesson in doing anything creative – don’t be precious. BALL DON’T LIE taught me a lot of things about filmmaking, but that was the most important lesson I learned.

And, yes, writing roles for great actors like Dania Ramirez is important, Matt.

And now, the goodies for three lucky readers! Our grand prize winner will receive a signed ARC of Matt’s latest novel, WE WERE HERE, along with signed copies of MEXICAN WHITEBOY and BALL DON’T LIE, plus a BALL DON’T LIE t-shirt. Five more winners will receive a BALL DON’T LIE t-shirt. (All shirts in size L or XL.). Leave a comment on this entry by JULY 17; winners will be selected at random. (U.S./Canadian winners only, must be at least 16 years of age.)

About the Author

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is the daughter of a Jamaican mother and Nigerian father, and married to a man of Croatian descent. So, that’s what’s up with the name. She’s worked as a freelance writer and contributing editor at various magazines, and has developed educational materials geared to educators and students. Olugbemisola has worked extensively in youth development, at community organizations and New York City schools. She was twice awarded a public service fellowship by the Echoing Green foundation to work on a creative arts and literacy project with adolescent girls. She received her M.A. in Educational Communication and Technology, with a concentration in Adolescent Literacy and English Education, her B.Sc. from Cornell University, and is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. “I spent a number of my younger years in different communities across the globe. I attended public, private,’international’, and religious schools. These experiences have had lasting benefits as I was exposed to many languages, traditions, customs – new and thrilling worlds. And each move brought with it both an opportunity and a struggle surrounding identity, which is a recurring theme in my work.” She lives in New York City where she is also an enthusiastic if not particularly skilled crafter.  Read more about how to book or contact Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich.

Related posts:

1. Faves on a Friday: From Page to Screen
2. Faves on a Friday: The Unforgettables
3. Faves on a Friday: Lessons Learned
4. Faves on a Friday: Music To Book By
5. Five Faves on Friday with Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich