"You Don't Love Me Yet" Screenplay

9/25/08
Pages 51-62

In the screenplay we wrote for the novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, we covered the scene where Lucinda and Denise discover the kangaroo in Matthew's apartment. While writing this screenplay, I realized the enormous task Hollywood screenwriters must endure while adapting novels into films. In our scene of the kangaroo, there is little dialogue between the characters because Lucinda and Denise are attempting to sneak into Matthew's apartment without being heard. Fortunately for us as writers, they are both drunk, allowing us to add dialogue when needed to paint a picture of the scene without creating a confused mess of narration and dialogue in our adaptation. The dialogue itself was realitively simple because the characters do not have extraordinary diction and from reading the rest of the book we were able to determine what they could very well have said in the situation. For example, in the novel Lethem describes Denise and Lucinda drinking beer and then yearning for something stronger. In our version we skip the unneccesary dialogue and have Denise come out and say, "lets get shitfaced." This is all that is necessary to show the reader what is happening because during a film we could easily see that they are both getting drunk. Throughout our screenplay we take similar steps to cut down on the amount of words, but use language that the characters would use and that we ourselves may use in similar circumstances.