Mundie Moms

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Cassie Clarifies Her Consultative Role in TMI Movie Franchise

Image found here.
Cassie answered a specific question with a more global answer regarding her consultative role in the TMI movie. I love the analogy of a sold house.
Q. Hi Cassie! I was just wondering something…I imagined Alec looking a bit more shy based on the descriptions in the book (like messy sweaters, hiding underneath his hair). Was this changed to not conflict with how Simon dresses in the movie? I love Kevin Zegers as the choice for Alec, but was wondering about the wardrobe choices. Thank you! -is-it-always-this-hard
Cassie: My darlings, I have not the faintest clue. I could venture random guesses, and indeed your guess about Alec not looking too much like Simon is probably a good one. But I don’t know. As the movie gets ever-closer, I think I should clarify my position in regards to it: i.e. the position of someone who sells a book property in relation to the movie made of that book property. Think of a book as like a house you own. Maybe you built it. Maybe you spent years decorating it so it was just right for you. And you have great memories associated with every piece of it. But you have to move, so you sell your house and you move out.

The movie people are in the position of the people who bought your house. They can do whatever they want with it, because it is now their house. They do not need to call you if they want to paint the dining room tomato red, even if you would never have painted the dining room tomato red, even if you hate tomato red. They are not legally or even morally obligated to consult you about their house.

Now, nobody knows the house better than you, and it might be in their interests to consult you, if they want to wind up with a nice-looking house. You are the only one who can tell them, perhaps, about the wobbly part of the floor where, if they walk on it, it will suddenly give way and they will fall into the basement. They would probably be better off asking you about it. But they are the ones who made the investment and they are the ones who run the risk and they do not have to ask you, even if it means they wind up falling into the cellar in a shower of plaster dust.

The producers and director and production designer were all nice enough to come to me to consult about various things. I gave my opinion. Sometimes they took it. Sometimes they didn’t take it. Sometimes they took part of it but not the rest. Some things I was never asked about and was as surprised as everyone else to see it (Valentine’s hair. :) Some things I was consulted on — sometimes very strange specific things (the exact shape of witchlight, specific Latin phrases, what Jace smells like. Really: I told them he smelled like pepper and citrus and apparently the UK marketing team sat under a whiteboard that said JACE=LEMONS for like six weeks. Mysterious.) But I feel uncomfortable being put in a position of defending or explaining choices that aren’t mine. And if you want to know why I didn’t go to them over every detail: imagine showing up at the house that you sold every day and telling the new inhabitants what you think of their paint job and where they parked the car and their new mailbox and whether they are going to pave the driveway. Eventually they will get a restraining order.

When you’re in a position, like I am and was, where you have no official title or job as regards the film adaptation of your book, you respond to the questions that are asked of you, and you try hard not to interfere unless asked to, because (as my mom always used to say) unasked-for advice is criticism. And the only thing that constantly criticizing a lot will get you is cut neatly out of the process, so that you may win your war to get Alec a sweater with holes in it, but you will never be there for the one about casting Magnus with an Asian actor because everyone will have stopped talking to you by then. Which they have a right to do.

In the end: issues of wardrobe and hair and even script aren’t decisions I can explain or defend or support or critique because they by and large aren’t mine. I was involved in casting, so I stand behind it and I love the cast, think they’re perfect, but I wasn’t involved in, say, hair or sweaters, so my feeling on that is that you should make up your own mind how you feel about it. See the movie, decide how it works in context. Whether you like it or not. Whether it suits the interpretation of the character, which, after all, is just that: an interpretation.

You can also always try asking Harald on his tumblr, haraldzwart, because he knows answers I don’t. Or bug @mortalmovie . The film team is a pretty responsive bunch. But these are questions I cannot, and probably even should not, answer.

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