ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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An article about the difference between the book and film of Bones and All. Are cannibals more marketable than ghouls? I haven't read the book but it sounds as if the changes are crucial to the film becoming THE Cannibal movie imho.
The first person Maren eats is her babysitter. She’s a baby when she does it, older than six months because she has teeth, but not old enough to swallow the bones just yet. That will come later—the devouring whole—when she’s matured enough to separate her actions from her ethics.
So begins Camille DeAngelis’s novel, Bones and All, about a young girl named Maren who is cursed with the volatile compulsion to eat anyone who desires her. As she grows, those she consumes are typically boys, then men. Always, they seal their own fates: it is their wanting that brings about their deaths. For Maren’s part, she can’t help it. She was simply born this way, drawn to eat those who crave her, chomping them up, bones and all, until their bodies become a part of her own. This thing Maren does is unacceptable, and yet, for her at least, it is always inescapable.
When her mother abandons her, Maren is forced to try and navigate the world alone, until she meets a young man named Lee who also happens to share her same cravings, and the two embark on a road trip across America as they attempt to understand their place in the world. DeAngelis’s book has recently been adapted for the screen by Luca Guadagnino, the director of the Academy Award winning film Call Me by Your Name (2017) and the recent horror remake of Dario Argento’s giallo masterpiece, Suspiria (2018). The film version of Bones and All has some marked differences from DeAngelis’s novel, but the heart of the story remains intact. However, the specifics of Maren and Lee’s condition have been altered considerably: while DeAngelis considered her characters “ghouls,” the film has been heavily marketed as “a cannibal love story.”
Screenwriter and producer David Kajganich admits that part of the reasoning for describing the film’s main characters as cannibals is simply due to marketing: “If you described them in a marketing campaign as ghouls, people would have a very different understanding of what the film was likely to be about,” he explains. “They needed to pick a word that would brace you for the fact that yes, you’re going to see people biting into and chewing on other people.” Still, this specific word has dominated headlines for months leading up to the film’s release, and while it certainly prepares the viewer for what they are going to experience, one can’t help but wonder if it’s a doubly clever marketing move, given that Timothée Chalamet—who plays Lee in the film—starred in Call Me by Your Name alongside Armie Hammer, who made headlines in 2021 over allegations of sexual abuse and speculation that he has a cannibal fetish. ...
https://lithub.com/cannibals-or-ghouls-the-elusiveness-of-language-in-bones-and-all/
The first person Maren eats is her babysitter. She’s a baby when she does it, older than six months because she has teeth, but not old enough to swallow the bones just yet. That will come later—the devouring whole—when she’s matured enough to separate her actions from her ethics.
So begins Camille DeAngelis’s novel, Bones and All, about a young girl named Maren who is cursed with the volatile compulsion to eat anyone who desires her. As she grows, those she consumes are typically boys, then men. Always, they seal their own fates: it is their wanting that brings about their deaths. For Maren’s part, she can’t help it. She was simply born this way, drawn to eat those who crave her, chomping them up, bones and all, until their bodies become a part of her own. This thing Maren does is unacceptable, and yet, for her at least, it is always inescapable.
When her mother abandons her, Maren is forced to try and navigate the world alone, until she meets a young man named Lee who also happens to share her same cravings, and the two embark on a road trip across America as they attempt to understand their place in the world. DeAngelis’s book has recently been adapted for the screen by Luca Guadagnino, the director of the Academy Award winning film Call Me by Your Name (2017) and the recent horror remake of Dario Argento’s giallo masterpiece, Suspiria (2018). The film version of Bones and All has some marked differences from DeAngelis’s novel, but the heart of the story remains intact. However, the specifics of Maren and Lee’s condition have been altered considerably: while DeAngelis considered her characters “ghouls,” the film has been heavily marketed as “a cannibal love story.”
Screenwriter and producer David Kajganich admits that part of the reasoning for describing the film’s main characters as cannibals is simply due to marketing: “If you described them in a marketing campaign as ghouls, people would have a very different understanding of what the film was likely to be about,” he explains. “They needed to pick a word that would brace you for the fact that yes, you’re going to see people biting into and chewing on other people.” Still, this specific word has dominated headlines for months leading up to the film’s release, and while it certainly prepares the viewer for what they are going to experience, one can’t help but wonder if it’s a doubly clever marketing move, given that Timothée Chalamet—who plays Lee in the film—starred in Call Me by Your Name alongside Armie Hammer, who made headlines in 2021 over allegations of sexual abuse and speculation that he has a cannibal fetish. ...
https://lithub.com/cannibals-or-ghouls-the-elusiveness-of-language-in-bones-and-all/