Chuck, Rocky & The Art of Adaptation

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] 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 and fresh within the genre.   And Chuck is an interesting example of this, because I know I asked myself when I was going to see Chuck, “do I really want to see this movie? After all, I have already seen Rocky?” And simply selling this movie as the true story of the guy who inspired Rocky doesn’t really make me want to go see it. Because my first thought is “Well, I have already seen this story. And okay maybe I saw the more Hollywood version of this story, but is this film actually going to take me someplace that I haven't already gone?”   Fortunately, once I sat down in the theatre, I learned that this movie was going to take me to a much more interesting place.   Part of the reason the film takes me there is because of the extraordinary performance by the cast.   Liev Schreiber is absolutely wonderful as Chuck Wepner. It is worth going to see the movie just for his performance. If you’ve seen Manchester by the Sea, and you’ve seen the performance that Casey Affleck won the Academy Award for, you should definitely go see Chuck. Because Liev Schreiber is doing in Chuck what Casey Affleck is trying to do in Manchester by the Sea-- playing this troubled, deeply internal character and bringing a layer to the movie that it would not have had without him.   Similarly, it has really great performances by Elizabeth Moss as Chuck’s wife, Phyliss, and by Naomi Watts as Linda, a local bartender who plays a really large role in his life.   So how do you make a movie about a guy that we have already seen a movie about? And at the same time how do you take that character and put him through essentially the same movements that the character in Requiem for a Heavyweight goes through, and make it feel like a new movie?     Well, the first step is to know what your movie is really about: to know why you are telling this story.   Why does this story matter in a world where some people have already seen Requiem for a Heavyweight? And in the world has seen Rocky.   And the writers and the director make a very strong choice: we are going to go into Chuck but we aren’t going to go into him with that wide-eyed enthusiasm with which we follow Rocky. We aren’t going to see Chuck primarily as an embodiment of the American dream.   We aren’t going to have epic battle sequences, we aren’t going to tune this guy up and turn him into this incredible fighter who just never got a chance. Instead, we are going to run directly at the truth.   We are going to run directly at the truth of a guy who was known as the bleeder because his greatest attribute was his ability simply to keep standing while people whaled on him.   We are going to tell a story of a guy who did go 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali. But we aren’t going to turn that fight into an epic battle; we are going to have one moment where he does knock Muhammad Ali down, as he did in round nine. But we are not going to shy away from the fact that he stepped on Muhammad Ali’s foot when that happened. Instead, we’re going to use that moment to get under the skin of the character.   And we are primarily not going to amplify the excitement of what is happening in the ring, but rather the sheer stick-to-it-iveness of this guy who just refused to go down. Who made it within 18 seconds of getting to the end of a fight with the greatest boxer of all time.   We aren’t going to turn this guy into a hero, we aren’t going to clean up his personal life, we are going to see the journey, and there are some spoilers ahead…   We are going to see the journey of his real relationship with his wife, Phyliss.   Sure, they may clean him up a little, in that they don’t tell you that she was his second wife. But we are still going to see his philandering. This isn't the story of Rocky and Adrian, these two people destined for each other, who love each other so much that she just can’t bear to watch him get hurt.   We are watching a story of the guy who has everything- the loving wife, the beautiful child, the chance to go toe to toe with Muhammad Ali-- but whose need for validation from other people is so strong, whose need for fame is so strong, whose need for women is so strong-- that most of the damage gets inflicted outside of the ring, and not upon him, but by him, upon the people he most loves - his brother, his wife, his daughter.   The writers make the decision not to clean up his drug problem, not to clean up his jail time. And in a really interesting structural move, the writers merge the structure of Chuck Wepner’s true life journey with the structure of the main character’s journey in Requiem for a Heavyweight, fusing these ideas together in the same way that Rocky and Rocky III took elements of Chuck Wepner’s life and then ran with them. Just as Sylvester Stallone allowed Rocky to at once grow from the inspiration of Chuck Wepner, and at the same time to be a separate character with his own wants, needs and structure, so too do these writers allow structure of The Mountain’s journey in Requiem For a Heavyweight and the real life structure of Chuck Wepner’s life story to merge into a unified character, and a unified journey, that is greater than the sum of its parts. This movie builds upon the structure of Rocky by rejecting that structure.   By taking the big fight and not putting it at the end but putting it in the middle. By turning the training sequence mostly into a story about how he has screwed up his relationship with his wife. B  y telling the Rocky-Adrian story not as a fable, but as a tragedy.   So, you can see that Chuck is turning the story of Rocky inside out. It is taking some of the same events and putting them in a different order, with a different polish, in order to tell a different story.   And it is doing it because the main character isn't a pull-himself-up-from-his-bootstraps hero.