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Hands of Hollywood
No hard and fast rules can be laid down for the adaptations for the Talkers because the producers have not yet found a basic foundation for this new mode of writing. Indeed, adaptations of plays, novels, and stories for talking pictures, have been largely experimental. Every day, in Hollywood, new theories are evolved, fresh debates are heard, extravagant predictions are made, but the industry really is voicing that old-time California phrase, "Quien sabe?" "Who knows?"
Of one thing, however, we can be certain; in order to write adaptations for the Talkers, the writer must have knowledge of the value of dialog and particularly of the value of screen dialog. Certain lines of dialog in plays, novels, etc., may be very effective, yet those same lines, when heard in a Talker, frequently sound foolish, flat, banal.
Qualifications of Adapters: Knowledge of screen requirements, limitations and possibilities. Ability to discriminate between good stage or novel situations and good screen situations. Ability to judge what makes merely excellent reading in a book and what makes pic torial value. Ability to condense the "meat" of hundreds of written pages into one or two vivid, dramatic action scenes. Ability to "pad" a play or novel for the screen. (If the play or novel, stripped of non-screen value has not enough screen value left, the adapter must know how to add situations, in order to make a full-length picture.) Knowledge of existing censorship laws, coupled with the ability to change censorable situations in plays and novels into picture situations which do not offend against censorship restrictions. (This requires great subtlety and a fine sense of discrimination.) A good example of such changes may be found in "A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS," starring Greta Garbo. This picture was adapted from the play and book entitled, "THE GREEN HAT." Salaries of adapters range from $100.00 to $1000.00 per week. When adapters are not under contract, they receive from $500.00 to $5000.00 per adaptation or assignment. Some adapters receive more than; the above remuneration, but they are exceptional. They are highly gifted men and women, who can furnish their producer-employers with originals, adaptations and continuity.
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