'Shipping News' movie remains true to book, says author

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When Hollywood decided to turn E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Shipping News" into a major motion picture, the author had a pretty good idea about what could happen.

She said she was confident her book would be turned into a "wicked piece of slop."

"I was terrified," the writer said on a recent visit to Los Angeles from her Wyoming home. "I was braced for the worst."

But the film, directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench, Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett, was not as bad as she had expected. In fact, she liked it.

"I was intensely relieved," she said. "It is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking. Sure, they cut and condensed certain things, but the character and direction of the book were intact, and I understand that is somewhat rare in Hollywood."

Hallström is well aware of the movie industry's reputation for missing the boat on translating books to film, but he has a proven talent ("The Cider House Rules" and "Chocolat") for making successful adaptations.

"I wasn't daunted at all at the prospect of making this film," the director said. "I figured that if I could do it with 'Cider House,' this would be no problem."

Well, there was one little problem: It was called Newfoundland.

"I had a great time there for three or four weeks," the director said. "Then, in the fourth or fifth week, the remoteness of the place started to turn against me. It started to haunt me. It's a beautiful place to visit, but I don't think I could live there."

And this from a filmmaker who grew up in Sweden.

Most of the film, which opened Tuesday, takes place in a small fishing village in Newfoundland. Spacey's character, Quoyle, is a hapless loser who returns with his aunt and daughter to the home of his ancestors after his manipulative and adulterous wife (Blanchett) dies in a car accident. He finds work as a reporter on a local newspaper called The Gammy Bird, and unearths the love of his life in the middle of the frozen tundra.

Newfoundland is an island on the northeast corner of North America. The area where the film's exteriors were shot was a three-hour drive on primitive roads from St. John's, the capital city. There were no hotels at the remote locations, and the cast and crew had to stay in small inns and private homes. Icebergs were spotted off the coast.

"Sure, it would have been easier to shoot the film somewhere else, but the desolation is an important character in the story," Hallström said. "This is one of the darker films I've made, and the remote location gave the film its dark and brooding feel."

There was no direct contact between Hallström and Proulx during the making of the film.

"Yes, it was strange," Hallström said, "but we never got around to meeting. However, one of the producers (Linda Goldstein Knowlton) was in constant contact with Annie, so we weren't totally disconnected from the writer."

Proulx said she was too busy working on other projects to worry about what was happening to her book in Hollywood.

"I didn't think that much about it during those years when it was going from one person to another, and I'm not sure how much I cared if it ever got made," she said.

"Once it got into Lasse's hands, I started thinking about it more, but I didn't really want to be included in the process. I am well aware that movies and books are quite different things. Now that I've seen the movie, I am pleased that it is still my story up there on the screen.

"But while it is my story, it's not my thing. It's their thing. That's the way it should be."