COUNTERPUNCH LETTER : Hey, Hollywood: Giving Writers Some Respect Pays

Congratulations should go to Whitney Otto, Jocelyn Moorhouse and Jane Anderson for a fine novel and film adaptation in “How to Make an American Quilt” (“A Novelist Says Thanks to Filmmakers,” Calendar, Nov. 6). Otto is fortunate. The Hollywood film industry created a sensitive quality version of her text. How often does this happen? Rarely.

Yet filmmakers who alter texts and important thematic elements of the text for the purpose of enhancing the film’s commercial marketability are often undone by their own mercantilistic machinations. Take the latest version of “The Scarlet Letter” in which Hollywood’s obligatory “flash and smash, skin and sin” brush strokes have revisualized the Hawthorne masterpiece. “The Scarlet Letter” has been as quickly exiled to the occasional theater as “Showgirls,” while “American Quilt” maintains a strong multi-theater showing.

The point is, maybe Hollywood should let the novelist, if not have the final word, at least have some of the words to ensure that the spirit of the work is maintained. The excellence of “The Joy Luck Club” and “Like Water for Chocolate,” in which the authors--Amy Tan and Laura Esquivel, respectively--were allowed to write and co-write the script, is testament to this concept.

SCOTT F. COVELL

Adjunct faculty member,

Otis Institute of Art and Design

Los Angeles