The Experience Effect

One thing that drives me nuts is book readers who refuse to evaluate movies adapted from their beloved tomes as separate works.

Instead of critiquing these movies based solely on their own successes and failures, these people obsessively compare them to the books, often viewing any deviation from the source material as a negative, even if it manages to improve the story.

That’s no way to judge art, in my opinion. When I see a Harry Potter or a Hunger Games book reader being dismissive of the movies those books spawned – movies that are well received, for the record – I’m dubious of their opinion. Have they actually watched the movies with an unbiased eye? Or do they just not like them because they’re not exactly like the books?

I have never been one of these people. Whenever I’ve watched a Harry Potter or Hunger Games movie, or even “Game of Thrones” on TV, I’ve done so without the burden of book knowledge. I haven’t read any of those books. Because of this, I can assess their screen adaptations fairly, without temptation to engage in comparison.

Well, recently, I became one of these people.

I found myself intrigued by the movie adaptation of John Green’s “Paper Towns.” I had enjoyed “The Fault in Our Stars,” the first movie to be based off one of his works, so this second movie had my interest piqued.

As I looked into what the book was about, my interest level soared. The story is about, in part, paper towns, which are fake towns placed on maps by cartographers to catch plagiarists, and a paper town – Agloe, NY – that became real when someone saw it on a map, opened a general store there, and named the business after what he thought was an actual place.

The whole tale reminded me of my efforts to find Saturn, IN, a place my GPS informed me was mere miles away from my house, but I could find virtually no mention of online. A “pixel town,” if you will.

(My girlfriend and I did end up finding Saturn. It’s an unincorporated community along a country road that consists of a church – the aptly named Saturn Christian Church – a cemetery, and a few houses. However, how a place in rural Indiana came to be named after the sixth planet in our solar system (or a Roman god, if you prefer) remains a mystery.)

Me in Saturn. It exists!

Add in the fact that Green used the book to explore the male fascination with Manic Pixie Dream Girls, “Paper Towns” appeared to be a surprisingly thoughtful entry in a modern young adult literature landscape that’s littered with derivative post-apocalyptic fare.

(I also happen to love that Green, who could’ve lived anywhere he wanted, chose to make Indianapolis his home. It’s good to be a Hoosier!)

So, I went out one evening and bought a copy of “Paper Towns” at a Barnes & Noble, located in an outdoor mall not far from my house. Over the course of the next several weeks, I looked forward to cracking the book open each night before going to bed, reading as its protagonist, high school senior Quentin Jacobsen, searched for his longtime crush, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who had run away from their hometown, Orlando.

The movie adaptation’s opening weekend came and went and I was still reading. The more time passed from its release date, the more nervous I got about potentially missing it. I started reading the book at work, too, over my lunch breaks. The afternoon reading sessions helped me knock it out and the day I finished the book at work, I checked to see when the movie was playing that night. I selected a 10 p.m. show time and invited one of my co-hosts from the movie podcast I’m on to come join me.

Cara Delevingne and Nat Wolff in “Paper Towns.”

I went into the movie determined to fulfill my mandate of evaluating it as a separate work from the book. My chief concern was whether or not it worked as a movie – not if it was an entirely faithful adaptation of Green’s text.

However, something funny happened: I found that as the movie progressed, I was making a mental list of all the ways it deviated from the book. Once the end credits started to roll, I immediately began contemplating how I felt about these changes.

Without getting too deep into it, some of the alterations were positive, others negative. In both versions of “Paper Towns,” Quentin and his friends go on a road trip to track Margo down and they’re under a time crunch. The movie’s ticking clock is better and a character accompanies Quentin and Co. on the trip who does not accompany them in the book and that change is an improvement, too.

However, while the book’s ending is philosophical and somber, the movie’s conclusion is simplistic and upbeat, which I disliked. Additionally, Quentin’s quest to pinpoint Margo’s whereabouts lasts longer in the book than it does in the movie. When he finally deduces where she is in the book, it’s a moment that feels earned, whereas in the movie it does not.

Other changes – combining scenes, shortening them, etc. – were all tweaks I could get behind in the interests of making a movie that wasn’t three hours long.

(Something I appreciated, in particular, about the whole experience: Seeing characters and places and moments from the book come alive on screen. There’s something pretty cool about that, even if the way some of those things were rendered on screen didn’t perfectly sync up with how I’d imagined them in my head.)

Jefferson Pointe at dusk.

It was past midnight as my friend and I exited the movie theater and parted ways. The theater is located in the same outdoor mall as the Barnes & Noble I purchased my copy of “Paper Towns” at weeks earlier. I could see the bookstore as I walked back to my car and I couldn’t help but feel as if things had come full circle.

I’ve been coming to this mall for years. I’m pretty sure the first movie I saw at its theater was Vin Diesel actioner “xXx” as a 14-year-old during the summer between middle school and high school. The mall itself boasts many shops and is encircled by a Walmart, Best Buy and various other stores and restaurants. It’s a hub of activity.

But not on that August night. As my friend disappeared from view, I was completely alone. My steps slowed and I took a moment to let it soak in. Here I was, at a place I’ve seen bustling with people for years, and I had it all to myself. It was so beautifully discordant.

I continued walking back to my car, mostly in silence, the only sound coming from sprinklers intermittently flickering to life, watering patches of grass in that great concrete expanse.

My experience watching the movie and my experience after it are strangely similar. With both events, something I’d experienced in the past affected the way I processed something in the present. The way I watched the movie was a result of my decision to read its source material, just as my appreciation of the mall’s emptiness hinged on my awareness of its chronic busyness. Experience informs experience.

Upon further review, expecting book readers to check their opinions at the door when watching movie adaptations is flawed, because doing so is kind of impossible.

This is true of books and also of life.