Following the ‘Rules’: Author, Producer Collaborate on Screenplay

In bringing a sprawling novel to the big screen, surely the last thing a filmmaker would want is for the book’s author to adapt the material. Novelists work alone and aren’t used to collaborating about characters and plot points or to whittling their prose.

But producer Richard Gladstein said condensing the best-selling 800-page novel “The Cider House Rules” into a 136-page screenplay during a five-year collaboration with celebrated author John Irving was anything but gut-wrenching.

“From our first meeting, it was clear that John loved the collaboration,” Gladstein said. “He was so generous. We’d sit there, and he’d say, ‘Let’s forget the book and make the movie.’ ”

For Irving--who calls “The Cider House Rules” the “only novel of mine that tempted me” to personally adapt--the making of the film and the accolades that have followed are particularly gratifying.

They follow an unpleasant 15-year pursuit that entailed four different directors, numerous screenplay drafts and the purging of his painful Hollywood experience in a 1999 memoir called “My Movie Business.”

One of the best-reviewed films of the year, “The Cider House Rules,” directed by Lasse Hallstrom, has done steady business since its release Dec. 10 by Miramax Films. The $21.5-million film is now being touted as a likely Oscar contender for best picture.

It received two Golden Globe nominations--one for Irving’s screenplay and the other for Michael Caine in the best supporting actor category. Irving also won a best screenplay award from the National Board of Review, and Gladstein was nominated for the Producers Guild of America’s Golden Laurel Awards.

Irving, who began writing the script for “The Cider House Rules” the same year his book was published in 1985, says the tenacious 38-year-old Gladstein is “the reason this film got made at all.”

Gladstein, who worked with Irving at the author’s Vermont home, calls the movie “more than a labor of love. I was obsessed with getting it made.”

Gladstein convinced Harvey and Bob Weinstein at Miramax Films to option Irving’s book for him in 1995--when he left as head of production to form his own movie outfit, FilmColony.

“The Cider House Rules” tells the story of an orphan named Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) who as a young man ventures out to discover the world after growing up in the loving but sheltered womb of a Maine orphanage under the wing of the home’s doctor, Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine).

“The humanity of the story is tremendously touching to me,” said Gladstein, who has also produced such films as “She’s All That,” starring Freddie Prinze Jr., “54,” and “Hurlyburly,” starring Sean Penn. “The emotional resonance and decisions the characters make and the rules they choose to follow and break is what I found very profound and meaningful.”

For his part, Irving said he turned down requests by director George Roy Hill to adapt “The World According To Garp” and by director Tony Richardson to write “The Hotel New Hampshire.”

Irving said he could envision “The Cider House Rules” as a movie and felt his extensive medical research for the book would allow him to relay the story to moviegoers. The writer added, “I had a political motive,” when it came to how the subjects of abortion and life in an orphanage in the first half of the 20th century would be dealt with in the movie.

Irving said Gladstein and Hallstrom shared his vision of what the movie should be, making their collaboration “so smooth.”

Given the project’s rocky history, Irving said, Gladstein’s conviction to make the film “was even stronger than mine at times.”

The movie first came closest to being made in 1991, but producer/financier Beacon Communications abruptly pulled the plug just weeks before production with director Phillip Borsos (who has since died) and starring Matthew Broderick and Max Von Sydow. Irving even declined to identify the producers by name in his memoir.

“Beacon was a very different company in those days, struggling to find our way and how to be smart about producing and financing movies,” recalled Beacon partner Armyan Bernstein. “In that climate, ‘Cider House Rules’ didn’t come together in a way that was comfortable for us to proceed.”

Regarding the matter, Irving would say only, “Until I met Richard, and Richard took me to Miramax, no one was comfortable with the degree of control I insisted on.”

Irving got a letter of agreement with Gladstein guaranteeing him script, director and cast approval, which Miramax also readily honored.

“It’s to Miramax’s credit not only to have had the courage to make the film in the first place but to live up to the agreement to let us make all the creative decisions,” Irving said. “This was a three-man movie.”

Irving said he, Gladstein and Hallstrom agreed that if any one strongly opposed something in the script, the other two would accommodate.

“What’s remarkable is it never happened. We didn’t disagree,” the writer said.

When Gladstein first approached Hallstrom about doing the movie five years ago, the director of such quirky films as “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” and “My Life as a Dog,” declined because he found Irving’s script “so truncated.”

“I turned it down out of fear,” admits Hallstrom. “I couldn’t imagine going to Vermont to tell John Irving--this literary giant--how he would adapt his book.”

But two years ago, Hallstrom, who like Gladstein was a huge fan of the book, said when he saw “The Cider House Rules” reappear as an open directing assignment and he read Irving’s “improved” script, he called Gladstein and told him he wanted to direct the movie.

“I guess I had by then mustered enough guts to share my thoughts,” joked Hallstrom, who signed on to direct in the spring of 1998, then worked closely with Irving and Gladstein shaping the final shooting script. Production began that fall.

Gladstein is currently looking to secure financing for another Irving project, “A Son of the Circus,” which the author originated as a screenplay 10 years ago before writing the novel, published in 1994.

Irving has been developing the movie with director Martin Bell since 1989 when they went to India, where the story is set, to research the project. Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges are attached to star.

Gladstein said that despite the difficulty of finding funding for what is only a $10-million movie, he and Irving are hopeful that the continued success of “Cider House” and likely Oscar attention will help attract a financier/distributor.