Isabelle Drake

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A year or so ago, I was interviewed for a documentary on Detroit's early punk scene. I was a scene kid back then, and so was asked to talk about my experiences. The film came out January 1. As part of the promo, the director made this silly clip of me talking about my thoughts back then...back when I was 15. Tucked into the fun is my real name reveal. Which, as many of you know, has never been a secret.

Decisions made during the scriptwriting of the film resulted in an effective, tightly-focused narrative structure that showcased the storyline and captured the 1970’s zeitgeist. Screenwriting expert, Syd Field, in his film industry handbook Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting, notes that when a writer adapts a novel into a screenplay, the screenplay must be viewed as an original project, one based on source material. The goal is not to reproduce the storyline of the novel, but to use it as an inspiration (258). One reason for this is that what works in a novel doesn’t work in a screenplay. “[I]n a novel the dramatic action of the story, the narrative line, is usually told through the eyes of the main character; the reader knows his/her thoughts, feelings, memories, hopes, and fears. [The] dramatic action usually occurs inside the main character’s head, within the mindscape of the dramatic action” (259). Thus, the novel’s story is told through the mind while the film’s story is...