Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508150098
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CARRIE RICKEY KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The rapturous movie about the swine who would be sheepdog is at the forefront of the latest, and most encouraging, Hollywood trend: films based on contemporary children's stories.
Put the emphasis on ``contemporary.'' These books aren't Victoriana such as ``Little Women'' or ``The Secret Garden'' - both of which recently were adapted to the big screen. They're present-day classics.
``The Indian in the Cupboard,'' the enchanting film based on the 1981 Lynne Reid Banks book, opened a month ago and has earned more than $25 million. ``Babe,'' which has the crossover potential of an ``E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial,'' opened Aug. 4. And ``The Baby-Sitters Club,'' inspired by Ann M. Martin's series about entrepreneurial adolescents, is due out on Friday.
And that's just the beginning. Also part of the kid-lit-on-screen tidal wave are adaptations of Chris Van Allsburg's ``Jumanji'' (due in theaters Nov. 17), and ``James and the Giant Peach'' and ``Matilda,'' both by Roald Dahl and in pre-production.
``I find it heartening that these are titles that don't just generate a `see the movie, buy the toy' interest. They're stories that children have really responded to,'' observed Diane Roback, children's editor of Publishers Weekly. Roback sees a trend away from ``faddish fare such as `Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' toward kid-tested and time-tested stories that people of all ages enjoy.''
Is this trend a function of Hollywood economics, an under-12 version of optioning the latest by John Grisham or Michael Crichton?
With the exception of the ``Baby-Sitters'' and ``Goosebumps'' projects (R.L. Stine's scare series is being adapted for the Fox Network), Roback thinks not.
``It's not just that these books have sold well,'' she says. ``It's that there's something substantial about the characters in these stories, something more fully formed than a group of people sitting around the room at a Hollywood concept meeting could think of.''
Unlike the sensation-filled works of Grisham and Crichton, popular kid lit boasts characters possessed of a strong moral compass.
For Miller, the creator of ``Mad Max'' who also produced ``Babe,'' and for Melissa Mathison, who wrote the original screenplay for ``E.T.'' and adapted ``Indian,'' the trend is a function of baby boomers' making movies they want their children to see.
``There are suddenly people my age, primarily women, who are in a position of power to make these movies happen,'' observed Mathison, who - with husband Harrison Ford - has two children.
Speaking from the family spread in Wyoming, the 45-year-old Mathison notes the industry forces encouraging the development of kid lit are women such as Lucy Fischer, the Warner executive behind ``The Secret Garden'' and ``A Little Princess,'' and Denise De Novi, producer of ``Little Women'' and ``James and the Giant Peach.'' ``And, of course, Kathleen Kennedy,'' who co-produced ``E.T.'' and ``Indian.''
Also behind the trend are Columbia executive Lisa Henson, who developed ``Little Women'' and ``Baby-Sitters''; producer Maggie Renzi, who developed and produced John Sayles' ``The Secret of Roan Inish''; and Scholastic Productions executive Jane Startz, who had a hand in ``Indian'' and ``Baby-Sitters.''
``It's really a women-driven phenomenon,'' Mathison says. ``In the case of the classic stories, the women remember how wonderful the access to these stories is, how `The Secret Garden' and `Little Women' helped them become who they are. They want that for their children.''
``Mothers read stories to children,'' Startz agrees. ``My children have brought me stories I didn't even know about.''
There are other motivating forces behind the trend. One, of course, is money.
``Hollywood has realized that family movies make money,'' observes Mathison, who believes kid lit equally appeals to adults. ``I think `E.T.' broke through the wall that separated so-called children's movies from family movies.''
``I know how tough it is for adults to find movies for their kids that they would also want to see themselves,'' Sayles told a reporter earlier this year. This motivated him to go ahead with ``Roan Inish,'' a fable about a seal-woman that, like ``Babe,'' resonates with the animistic connection between human beings and beasts.
But there is another, purely practical reason why kid-lit such as ``Babe'' and ``Indian'' - insta-classics optioned almost immediately on publication in the early '80s - are now seeing the screen.
``I bought the rights to `Babe' nine years ago,'' Miller says. ``But we had to wait for the technology to catch up with what we wanted to do at a price we could afford.''
Mathison, who also adapted the Walter Farley classic ``The Black Stallion'' for the screen, thinks it's a good sign that ``Hollywood is moving away from those classics of another age'' in favor of stories more immediate to contemporary kids.
``The stories my children consider classics are by Roald Dahl,'' she says of the irreverent writer of ``James and the Giant Peach'' and ``Matilda,'' yet another child's novel in the Hollywood pipeline.
``Roald Dahl will be the Edith Wharton of 1996,'' predicts Startz, referring to the American novelist whose books ``The Age of Innocence,'' ``Ethan Frome'' and ``The Buccaneers'' have been the subjects of recent screen adaptations.
``Dahl's books are wonderfully nasty. The children exhibit bad behavior as they rise above adversity, evil and wickedness,'' Mathison says with obvious relish. ``They're obviously not Victorian.''
On the other hand, Caroline Thompson - screenwriter of ``Edward Scissortails'' and ``The Secret Garden,'' and the writer/director of last year's ``Black Beauty'' - sees a connection between the Victorian sensibility and the new literary sensibility.
``There's a reason the Victorian revival took place. That's because stories like `Little Women' and `The Secret Garden' and `Black Beauty' are all about busting through repression - which is what all kid's lit is about, isn't it?''
by CNB