I started the year by re-reading Rob Grant’s “Incompetence” which, as a side-project, I’m adapting into a screenplay. I’ve already started typing up the dialogue for individual scenes but I’ve yet to sew anything together. I’m also trying to work out how to reorder the story – the prologue, for instance, happens between chapters four and five – and how to work the first-person perspective. Do I go for the typical Film Noiresque voiceover approach, or have Harry Salt talk directly to the camera, to the audience High Fidelity style?
That’s not all, though – with my friend Rene Engström having recently wrapped up her webcomic, Anders Loves Maria, I mentioned on Twitter that I’d been fighting the desire over the last few days to adapt the story into a screenplay. And Rene, Glod bless the poor misguided fool, has given me her blessing. Yikes! I’ve already started making notes! Iv’e got two adaptations on the go at once, not to mention two Jump Leads scripts on the go and a website redesign in the works!
Considering current events in my personal life, I welcome the distraction. I need it. It’s either work on stuff like this, or waste my day playing Star Trek Online, and that’s something I can easily do at night, when most of civilized society (well, most of American society at least) are asleep. If you play STO, come find me online – Paddon@Squirminator2k.
Anyway, sigh and lament. I’m off to bed. Far too late, as usual.
Have you seen The Third Man? I wouldn’t suggest trying to write a screen adaptation of Incompetence before doing so, if not. And use that as your visual and storytelling cues – since the book is so hugely inspired by it, it would make sense to make the film explicitly so, as well (and certainly, at the very least, use the same narrative style). You could have a bit of fun with that, in fact.
But yes. Either way, it definitely needs to go the noir route – that’s how the book’s written, and it’d be a shame to lose that flavour.
It’s on my Netflix queue. Planned to watch it tomorrow.