Some people believe that attempting to adapt a Philip Roth novel is like sounding a death knell for your writing career. Roth focuses on the inner life of his characters, often eschewing traditional storytelling techniques, so that adapting his works for the big screen is a near-impossible feat.

So screenwriter James Schamus knew adapting a Phillip Roth book wasn’t the “smartest career choice.” But despite that, he was so drawn to Roth’s 2008 novel, Indignation, that he decided not only to write the script, but also to direct it, marking his directorial debut.

The movie is set in in 1950s Ohio, and stars Logan Lerman as a Jewish college student named Marcus, who falls for a young woman (Sarah Gadon) at his small conservative school while clashing with his dean (Tracy Letts).

The film premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to largely favourable reviews, with audiences particular enthusiastic about one pivotal scene, an 18 minute conversation between Marcus and the Dean.

Now, after a string of critically acclaimed films including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Ice Storm, it seems that Schamus might have another sleeper hit on his hands with Indignation, as well as a potential contender for awards season.

It also appears that he might have, at long last, broken the Roth curse.

Creative Screenwriting spoke to Schamus about his writing process for adaptations, the most challenging and rewarding scene to write, and what it was like to finally direct from his own script.

James Schamus on set of Indignation

What was it about Philip Roth’s book that you connected with?

It’s funny. I read it for fun and I had no thoughts that I would make it into a movie.

Usually adapting a Philip Roth book isn’t the smartest career choice. It’s a late book of his, one of the last novels he’s ever written – he was writing well into his 70s – and I found something really moving about it.

In particular, I felt a sort of foregrounding of the characters in a way that allowed me to imagine their transposition on to the screen, separate from the presence of his authorial voice, which obviously is something we love about Roth, but which is often extremely difficult to adapt to a screenplay. It leads to people making very specific choices and tones to the script and to movies that aren’t necessarily the easiest to pull off.

Philip Roth’s books are notoriously difficult to adapt for the screen. Can you describe your adaptation process and what helped you the most?

I have a tried-and-true adaptation process, which works like this: I go through the novel assiduously, I transcribe every piece of dialogue and description of action that I can, and then I type, “The End.” At which point I freak out and turn into a hot mess, and then I spend the next year or two trying to clean it up.

During this I methodically try to pull as much as the DNA from the book as I possibly can. Only then can I solve very specific film problems, like transition and tracking characters, like structural problems and things like that.

Sarah Gadon as Olivia and Lorgan Lerman as Marcus in Indignation © 2016 – Roadside Attractions

What was the most challenging part of your writing process with this particular book?

I hate writing. [Laughs] I just hate it. It’s painful. The most difficult part for me is just planting my rear end in front of the computer. I really dread it. The procrastination piles up and it gets worse and worse.

I mean, I’m not telling you anything that you haven’t heard before, but it’s really just about diving in. It was just the critical mass of Indignation. It took me a long time to think that adaptating the book was ever going to work.

What was it specifically about the script that you thought wasn’t working?

As I was going along with the script, after revising and revising, I noticed that there at the dead center of the film was a particular scene in the script – which has since been well received by critics and audiences, happily – that went on for pages and pages and pages. And it was just with two people talking.

I kept saying, “Oh, I’ll get around to trimming, solidifying and consolidating it.” But then, after a while, I thought about it and I was like, “Wait a second. That’s the hinge of the story. That’s the movie. Why have I been working all this time on this gigantic, indigestible two-hander with lots of dialogue sitting in the middle?” I had to really think about it, because that was the challenge. If I could make that scene work, the film would work. If I couldn’t, it would be a massive waste of time and energy.

Tracy Letts as Dean Caudwell in Indignation © 2016 – Roadside Attractions

That scene between Marcus and the college dean is the literal centerpiece of the movie. It’s 18-minutes, all dialogue, and it’s the emotional turning point in the story. How many drafts did that scene take?

The scene’s essence is completely ripped off from the novel. And then with each draft, I just fudged a tiny bit, clipped a little here, add a little transition there.

Then most of the effort went into thinking about the emotional underlying structure of it. The stuff that isn’t said. For example, one of the characters in the scene is literally dying. Not figuratively; literally.

And then there are things that are less about screenwriting, like design narrative and focal length. When do people move? Where are they situated? In this scene, there is more touching being done than any other scene in the movie. There’s an odd physicality to the scene that I had to really think about it.

In the film, there’s an underlying structure to the scene that carries it through. I think if you just did standard coverage and edited it like it’s a ‘scene’, it wouldn’t have worked.

When did you know that you got the scene right?

Well, I knew my actors were super human. We only had one day to shoot and I was shooting them in complete takes again and again and again. I just couldn’t believe what these guys were doing.

As a director, I made a pact with myself that day of the shoot that I was going to hold back on giving notes. It’s really easy to come up with three to four thousand notes to your actors for each take. So I made a pact to myself to give only one note to each actor after each take. I had to think about the pivots, for them to try something new, to move it forward.

My editor really struggled and I let him. I didn’t tell my editor about the structure I had in mind before he cut it because I wanted him to see it through fresh eyes. People have a different perspective than you do. So it was kind of perversely sadistic on my part to see him struggle with it a little bit.

And then we came up with an overall plan and at that point he rolled up his sleeves and really got into the pathology of the scene in an incredible way.

James Schamaus on set of Indignation

Besides adapting the screenplay, this was the first movie you’ve ever directed. How did that feel?

Pretty fun. I gotta tell you this directing gig is pretty great. [Laughs]. I had a great cast, great crew. We had a warm set. We didn’t have a lot of money. We didn’t have trailers. We prepped and prepped.

The difference when you are a writer/producer opposed to a director/writer is that when you’re a director, you’re always really doing what’s best for the film. You’re not checking emails between takes, or you’re not on the phone. Everything is about what you and your team are creating on the screen. You get to spend the day doing one thing without interruption.

Were you making changes to the script on set?

No. It’s not that the pressure is on the words.

While working with actors, during those few moments when actors trip over a line or have a problem delivering a line, I’ve discovered there are two ways of handling it.

One, I tell them, “Say the fucking line” [laughs]. And two: I worked with incredibly smart, talented and passionate and professional actors on this film. They’ve been rehearsing and are so completely committed. So, for example, when Logan said a line that I didn’t believe, I would often think, “You know what? Maybe something inside him is saying something isn’t truthful in the scene. And maybe I should think about that, too.”

And there were a couple of times, quite frankly, when that signal came out and then I would make an adjustment.

That said, I am not one of those directors who love actors to improvise on set. That’s not my jam. I’m not precious with the words, but what we went through during rehearsal is what we shot.

Lorgan Lerman as Marcus in Indignation © 2016 – Roadside Attractions

The supporting characters are so rich. Was it a deliberate decision on your part to make them so detailed?

The book affords a rich cast of characters. But the book’s narrative is tightly circumscribed, the narrator is speaking from a distant past and it’s very fable-like in its storytelling. So the characters aren’t given that much page time, or screen time.

Roth gave me great characters, but he didn’t give me a lot of details. He doesn’t give you the solutions necessarily. [Laughs]

It was really fun in the writing to get all the dirty fingernails of all these characters. Particularly with the character of Olivia, played by Sarah Gadon. I went very, very deep.

Sarah Gadon as Olivia in Indignation © 2016 – Roadside Attractions

In the book the narration is a tight point-of-view from a character who, I hate to say it, is kind of a putz. He’s an ignoramus. He has no idea what this woman has been through or what she’s feeling. We can’t hate him for that. But let’s face facts: he doesn’t get it.

So how do we root for a character and our narrator who’s weak, without overplaying our hand? Because if we overplay then the audience will really hate Marcus for not getting it when we get it. But at the same time we have to make her real and visible to us.

In Olivia’s time, there was a stigma around mental illness, and, also, abuse. There was no language for her to speak about what she was going through. She couldn’t communicate it. No one saw her.

A scene that I loved writing was when Marcus’ mother shows up at the hospital and takes one look at this young woman and goes, “Holy shit, trouble,” on one hand. But on the other hand, I’ve gotta say, Marcus’ mother is the only person in Olivia’s whole life who knew exactly the horror she was going through and empathized with her.

It was this simultaneous tragedy that had to be communicated silently and through questions about classes and “What’s your major?” The whole scene is really a horrific one because Olivia knows this woman, knows every one of her secrets, and knows this woman who loves her son will do everything to get rid of her. So I had to do this against the grain of the dialogue.

The dialogue on the page is completely innocuous. It’s actually a terrible, terrible scene. But it was also fun. [Laughs.]

Featured image: Sarah Gadon as Olivia and Lorgan Lerman as Marcus in Indignation © 2016 – Roadside Attractions

[addtoany]