Paranoia in Robert Altman's "The Player" and in michael Tolkin's "The Player" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Freiburg (Englisches Seminar), course: Novel / Film Adaptation", language: English, abstract: This paper attempts to analyze the treatment of paranoia in Michael Tolkin's The Player and in Robert Altman's movie adaptation with the same title. Both works, the novel and its filmic adaptation, feature the paranoid protagonist Griffin Mill, a powerful movie executive who is plagued by an angry screenwriter. Now in this paper I shall examine how the novel and the movie apply their respective techniques to establish the fear and paranoia that drive Griffin all the way to murder. I will show that Griffin's paranoia is generated mainly by his powerful position in the movie industry. His paranoia absorbs him completely, leaving no room for a conscience or guilt. Even though this paper is not about film adaptation primarily, it is necessary to consider the general differences between literature and movies. Then, after a few words about the treatment of paranoia in film and literature in general, I will analyze Griffin's paranoia in both, the novel and the movie. Having done that I will show how his paranoia can be linked to his powerful position in the Hollywood movie industry.
The novel use language to tell a story, whereas movies use pictures, dialogue and sound to show their stories to the audience. While novels are restricted to the use of language, movies can make use of multi-media techniques. Movies can show a large amount of information with a single sweep of the camera. The camera can capture complex images in a few seconds that would take many pages of prose to describe. The novel in contrast can provide insight in a character's interior thoughts and emotions, it can use language to allow the reader a look inside the character's brain. Literature and Film have different qualities, which does not make one better than the other. Yet one aspect they share: "both [are] narrative in format". Narrative, the quality that both media have in common, is one of the reasons for the many novels that have been filmed. In fact, "well over half of all commercial films have come from literary originals", the practice of using a literary source for a movie is as old as the movie industry itself. This strategy is a very successful one, "even the film industry regards all of its greatest achievements as derived from novels".